The Journey to Freedom in The Joy Luck Club and The Color Purple

3047 Words7 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Critical analysis of The Color Purple by Alice Walker

There is a common saying that “misery loves company.” Often times, this case is very true. When people are around some misery, they tend to become miserable too. However, sometimes misery is a way for people to connect and to form friendships and bonds. Females in oppressed societies especially feel misery and as a result, they band together and form a stronger power that can overcome their grief. They use each other’s support to be happy and they work towards the common goal of success together. Amy Tan, a famous Chinese American writer, writes with a style that “intermingles intercultural and intergenerational conflict,”(Qun). Tan is most famous for her novel The Joy Luck Club, which is comprised of short stories that various females belonging to a friendship circle narrate. In this novel, the females of Chinese descent portray their life experiences and struggles as women in the male dominated Chinese culture and society. They highlight their hardships, and challenges from their heritage. In addition, they emphasize how they survived and fought against their past situations. Similarly to Amy Tan, Alice Walker is one of the most famous African-American writers of all time. Her works focus on “double repression of black women in the American experience,” (Napierkowski). The novel that brought Walker fame is The Color Purple, an epistolary novel about an oppressed black female who writes letters to God to reveal her inner thoughts about her family and life. By explaining her inner thoughts and relying on the love of a loyal friend, Celie is able to overcome her oppressive state and live on her own terms. Although both novels take place in very different surroundings and both novels have very different focuses, both Alice Walker an...

... middle of paper ...

... of Daughters': Inter-Monologue Dialogicity in The Joy Luck Club." Critical Insights: The Joy Luck Club. N.p.: Salem, 2010. 113-44. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 15 Oct. 2013.
Wang, Qun. "The Joy Luck Club." Masterplots. 4th ed. N.p.: Salem, 2010. 1-3. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 15 Oct. 2013.
Winchell, Donna Haisty. "Letters to God: The Color Purple." Alice Walker. New York: Twayne, 1992. 85-99. Print. Twayne's United States Author Series.
Wood, Michelle Gaffner. "Negotiating the Geography of Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club.'" Midwest Quarterly 54.1 (2012): 82-96. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 15 Oct. 2013.
Xu, Ben. "Critical Readings: Memory And The Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club." Critical Insights: The Joy Luck Club. N.p.: Salem, 2010. 93-112. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 15 Oct. 2013.

Show More
Related

  • Mother Daughter Relationships In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    1083 Words  | 3 Pages

    No relationship is ever perfect no matter how great it seems. In the novel The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan, she tells the story of a few mother daughter pairs that are in a group named the Joy Luck Club. The Joy Luck Club is a group of women who come together once a week to play mahjong. The founder of the Joy Luck Club, Suyuan Woo, dies, leaving her daughter Jing-mei to take her place in the club. Her daughter, Jing-mei, receives money from the other members of the club to travel to China in order to find her mother's twin daughters who were left many years ago. In this book you get more of the details of this family and a few more. Amy Tan uses the stories of Jing-mei and Suyuan, Waverly and Jindo, and An-mei and Rose to portray her theme of, mother daughter relationships can be hard at times but they are always worth it in the end.

    Read More

  • Chinese Women In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    1258 Words  | 3 Pages

    Within Tan’s writing comparisons there lies a powerful teaching about changes occurring to different people throughout times, how those people cope differently within those times, and the importance of time, by identifying with the impacts created from events and influences carried by every character. As a result, this defines the evolution of the changes the characters experience over the course. Again Culture Learning describes that “A new type of person whose orientation and view of the world profoundly transcends his or her indigenous culture is developing from the complex of social, political, economic, and educational interactions of our time (41).” Furthermore, it has been quoted that “Time shows all things”, Amy Tan used time as scope to show the reader what most fail to realize. She analyzes the positive and negative aspects of the Chinese and American cultural identities that exist, as well as revealing said lasting effects from generation to generation. "After the gold was removed from my body I felt lighter, more free. They say this is what happens if you lack metal. You begin to think as an independent person (63)." Upon realization of the effects of cultural influence, Tan establishes creditability to both her own experiences and the overall message of “The Joy Luck Club”, in order to educate and enlighten the reader on the bigger

    Read More

  • Characterization in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club

    505 Words  | 2 Pages

    Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club uses much characterization. Each character is portrayed in different yet similar ways. When she was raised, she would do whatever she could to please other people. She even “gave up her life for her parents promise” (49), I the story The Red Candle we get to see how Tan portrays Lindo Jong and how she is brought to life.

    Read More

  • Comparing Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club and Waiting for Mr. Kim

    1577 Words  | 4 Pages

    In The Joy Luck Club, the novel traces the fate of the four mothers-Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair-and their four daughters-June Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Waverly Jong, and Lena St. Clair. Through the experiences that these characters go through, they become women. The mothers all fled China in the 1940's and they all retain much of their heritage. Their heritage focuses on what is means to be a female, but more importantly what it means to be an Asian female.

    Read More

  • The Powerful Words of Amy Tan, Maxine Hairston, and Mike Rose

    1313 Words  | 3 Pages

    Tan, author of the Joy Luck Club, was born and raised in San Francisco by her Chinese parents. Tan graduated from high school and pursued her college education at five different universities from 1969 through 1976. Contrary to what her teachers had always tried to push on her, Tan steered away from studies in math and science and earned her B.A. in English and Linguistics. She describes that her educational choices were rebellious in nature. In Tan's essay, she describes the hardships of growing up with a mother who encountered problems with the English language.

    Read More

  • Sacrifice In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    515 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout “The Joy Luck Club”, Chinese fables are used as significant teachings for life. ‘Feathers from a Thousand Li Away: Introduction’ is used for the first section because the chapters are about the mother’s journey from China to America. The story elaborates on the sacrifice the mother is making for a better life for their children. The story introduces the contention between American culture and Chinese culture conflict because the mother sees the Americanized daughter as the privilege. Amy wrote, “And over there [America] she will always be too full to swallow any sorrow!” (Feathers from a Thousand Li Away: Introduction, Page 17) This quote means that the daughters born in America will not understand the struggles the mother's faced

    Read More

  • The Joy Luck Club and The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

    643 Words  | 2 Pages

    Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club describes the lives of first and second generation Chinese families, particularly mothers and daughters. Surprisingly The Joy Luck Club and, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts are very similar. They both talk of mothers and daughters in these books and try to find themselves culturally. Among the barriers that must be overcome are those of language, beliefs and customs.

    Read More

  • Comparison of Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Walker's Color Purple

    2372 Words  | 5 Pages

    Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. Harcourt Bruce Jovanovich, Publishers. New York, San Diego, London, 1992

    Read More

  • Chinese and American Cultures

    4366 Words  | 9 Pages

    Xu, Ben. “Memory and the Ethnic Self; Reading Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club” in Memory, Narrative, and Identity: New Essays in Ethnic American Literatures. 261-77.

    Read More

  • Americanization in The Joy Luck Club

    1951 Words  | 4 Pages

    Shear, Walter. Generational Differences and the Diaspora in The Joy Luck Club. An excerpt from Critique, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Spring 1993). 1993. Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation.

    Read More

  • Bond between Mothers and Daughters in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    1751 Words  | 4 Pages

    Heung, Marina. "Daughter-Text/Mother-Text: Matrilineage in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club." Feminist Studies (Fall 1993): 597-616.

    Read More

  • Communication in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    578 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sadly, the characters revealed in The Joy Luck Club have personal histories so complicated by cultural and emotional misunderstandings that their lives are spent in failed attempts to cross the chasms created by these circumstances.

    Read More

  • The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan

    1002 Words  | 3 Pages

    The movie, The Joy Luck Club, focuses around the lives of four Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters. The story takes place a few months after Junes mother, Suyuan has died. The mothers and daughters hold very different principles, where the mothers are still very traditional to their Chinese upbringings the daughters are much more “American.” The movie can be viewed from the Feminist Literary Theory, since the 8 main characters are female. The women’s life stories are told through a series of flashback scenes that deal heavily with female gender roles and the expectations of women. While the mothers and their daughter grew up in vastly different worlds, some of their experiences and circumstances correlate solely due to that fact that they experienced them because they are females.

    Read More

  • Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club

    1520 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the Joy Luck Club, the author Amy Tan, focuses on mother-daughter relationships. She examines the lives of four women who emigrated from China, and the lives of four of their American-born daughters. The mothers: Suyuan Woo, An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-Ying St. Clair had all experienced some life-changing horror before coming to America, and this has forever tainted their perspective on how they want their children raised. The four daughters: Waverly, Lena, Rose, and Jing-Mei are all Americans. Even though they absorb some of the traditions of Chinese culture they are raised in America and American ideals and values.  This inability to communicate and the clash between cultures create rifts between mothers and daughters.

    Read More

  • Female Empowerment In The Color Purple By Alice Walker

    1840 Words  | 4 Pages

    It is not until Celie is an adult that she finally feels content with her life and understands her capacity to be a completely autonomous woman. The concept of racial and gender equality has expanded greatly throughout the twentieth century, both in society and in literature. These changes influence Walker's writing, allowing her to create a novel that chronicles the development of a discriminated black woman. Her main character, Celie, progresses from oppression to self-sufficiency, thereby symbolizing the racial and gender advancements our country has achieved.

    Read More

More about The Journey to Freedom in The Joy Luck Club and The Color Purple

Open Document