The Joy Luck Club

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Recommended: Essays on the gender difference in education

Everybody is different despite which culture they’re from, religion they practice or beliefs they accept as true. Finding one person of your same culture, practicing your same religion and believing all the exact, same ideas as you do is practically impossible. There are always a few factors that make you different from this person, and this idea is acceptable to most. Why then, if one found they were almost identical in thoughts and feelings as another individual, but found that this individual was of a different race, would this be considered unacceptable? There lingers an aroma of ignorance and naive ness around a few that make it so they’re blinded to the idea that a difference in ethnic backgrounds does not make a person inferior or superior. If one were to be categorized as inferior or superior, it would have to be based on their actions: whether it be wrong doings or accomplishments.
The main characters in this story are a generation of mothers and their daughters. This story is told in sections as a narrative, where each chapter is recounted by a different woman. The mothers speak of their experiences growing up under the strict conditions in China. They told of how their marriages were predetermined and how they had to do as any male ordered. The daughters, on the other hand, being raised under American ways, told of their hardships with pressure given to them by their mothers. They spoke of American husbands, equality between both sexes, and how they’d rather believe that their futures could indeed be controlled.
This novel being reviewed for recommendation in minority studies is The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, where the minority groups being presented are both the Chinese
Gelman – Page 2

and women. The view seen of women in the United States is that of a rising class; once always under the wing of a male, but in the present day, rising to achieve equality. The view seen of Chinese women though, still remains that they are being held in the male’s shadow. “Reading scores… and math scores… for minority students are falling further behind those of white students” (Heartland Institute). This is from a report taken in the United States, which could be applied to China as well. There, though, only the women are the minority, instead of all Chinese. The Chinese men got the better educations,...

... middle of paper ...

... get across to the youth before they have a mind of their own, they’d learn not to even notice the color of one’s skin, but to look only into their eyes, which is a doorway to what the mind thinks, the heart feels and the body experiences.

Gelman – Page 6
Bibliography

Hart’s War. Dir. Gregory Hoblit. With Bruce Willis, Colin Farrell, Terrence Dashon
Howard, Vicellous Reon Shannon, Cole Hauser, Rory Cochrane and Marcel Iures.
MGM, 2001.
McAlister, Linda Lopez. “‘The Joy Luck Club’ A Film Review.” The Women’s Show.
WMNF-FM (88.5). Tampa, FL. 02 Oct. 1993.
RARA Foundation. “Minority Role Models.”
n.d: n.pag. On-line. Internet. 21 Feb. 2002
Available WWW: HYPERLINK "http://www.minrm.com/index.html" http://www.minrm.com/index.html
The Heartland Institute: School Reform News. “Minority Academic Progress Falters.”
Jan. 1997: n.pag. On-line. Internet. 21 Feb. 2002
Available WWW: http://www.heartland.org/education/jan97/minority.html
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Maine: Thorndike, 1989

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