The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, describes the lives of four Asian women who fled China in the 1940s and their four extremely Americanized daughters. Throughout this novel, similarities and differences are shown between the mother and daughter pairs. In addition, the mothers and daughters reveal important messages and themes that the author, Tan, tries to express through these similarities and differences of the pairings. The novel also reveals messages and themes through the difficulties the pairings have in their relationships or personal lives. The mother and daughter pairing of Lindo Jong and Waverly Jong is the pairing that will be analyzed. The first chapter of the Jong mother/ daughter pairing is called “The Red Candle,” in …show more content…
An-mei introduced her to Tin Jong, Lindo’s future second husband. While pregnant with Waverly, Lindo bumped her nose on the bus, making it crooked. She suspects that the crooked nose damaged her thinking, for when Waverly was born, Lindo saw how closely she resembled her and feared that Waverly’s life path would resemble her own. She then named her Waverly, after the street they lived on, to let her know that America was where she belonged. She knew that by naming her daughter after their street, she was taking the first step in making her American, alienating her daughter from herself. In the beauty parlor mirror, Lindo notices that Waverly’s nose is crooked like her own and she urges her daughter to get cosmetic surgery, but Waverly laughs because she is pleased to share this feature with Lindo. She says she thinks it makes them look devious and Lindo Hass 5 thinks about the two faces both women share, and wonders which is American and which is Chinese. The mother/ daughter pair of Lindo and Waverly Jong has many similarities and differences in personality. One example of a difference between mother and daughter
To begin, Charlotte and The Mother from “Borders” have both struggled with society trying to shape them into a certain type of person. Charlotte has always tried to conform to what her mother wanted since she was you. She would “...obey all rules without question or argument.” (pg.226) when it came to her mother. As she got older she began to realize that thing can be done different ways then what her mother wanted. The Mother from “Borders” has a similar problem as Charlotte. She is a proud Blackfoot citizen living in Canada but doesn't consider herself a Canadian. While she is going to visit her Daughter in Salt Lake City she must cross the border. While at the border the guard asks her about her citizenship. She answered with Blackfoot; that wasn't the answer the guard was looking for. The guard tells her “...you
“When we got the letter in the post, my mother was ecstatic.”(Cass 1). This the first line of the book that I read called The Selection by Kiera Cass, which is the perfect way to start this dramatic story of America Singer. America Singer lives in a world built with castes, in which she and her family are fives out of eight castes. She gets a letter to enter The Selection, a competition for Prince Maxon’s heart. America’s name gets pulled and the next thing she knows, she is in the palace with 34 other girls. She goes on an emotional journey trying to decide if she wants to stay or go back home. I can easily evaluate that America has a lot of different thoughts running through her head right now. I found myself asking many questions such as
The Joy Luck Club is an emotional tale about four women who saw life as they had seen it back in China. Because the Chinese were very stereotypic, women were treated as second class citizens and were often abused. Through sad and painful experiences, these four women had tried to raise their daughters to live the American dream by giving them love and support, such things which were not available to them when they were young. These women revealed their individual accounts in narrative form as they relived it in their memories. These flashbacks transport us to the minds of these women and we see the events occur through their eyes. There were many conflicts and misunderstandings between the two generations due to their differences in upbringing and childhood. In the end, however, these conflicts would bring mother and daughter together to form a bond that would last forever.
Here is a journey that not only started "a thousand Li away", but from generations upon generations of tradition. The Joy Luck Club travels over time and continents to present the background and turmoil of eight amazing women. All of these women have had to deal with the issues of culture, gender, and family, each in their own way, yet all similarly. Amy Tan dedicates her novel to her mother with the comment "You asked me once what I would remember… This, and much more." Each of the mothers in Tan's novel wanted to teach their daughters the lessons learned in China while giving them the comforts of America. But language and culture barriers diverge the women until they were almost lost to each other. Each character had to take their own journey to finally understand what drove them apart and find their common ground.
Throughout the novel, The Joy Luck Club, author Amy Tan explores the issues of tradition and change and the impact they have on the bond between mothers and daughters. The theme is developed through eight women that tell their separate stories, which meld into four pairs of mother-daughter relationships.
She is a seventeen year old in her prime who feels immortal because she has a long life to live, therefore decision making are not based on careful planning but emotions, peer pressure and fantasies. Risk taking from a teenager normally comes from poor judgement, why would America take the decision of leaving the comfort of her home to go to a country which is mainly travelled by the men in her town? Why did she leave with the most unlikely candidate, her brother-in-law? In adversity her first yearn was for her mother’s touch, her food and her home, the fragile little girl in her cries for a mother touch when times are hard because that’s what she is used to, mom handling the
Nancy Lee is very proud of who she is and where she comes from. Until the scholarship she received was taken away from her, she holds her head high as an African American and loves who she is and the country she lives in. Even after the scholarship is taken away from her she promises to make a difference in the world. As the pledge comes to an end and the words “one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” are spoken, Nancy Lee thinks to herself “That is the land we must make.” She keeps confide...
The Joy Luck Club is the telling of a tale of struggle by four mothers and their four daughters trying to understand the issue of gender identity, how they each discover or lose their sense of self and what they mean to one another. Throughout the book each of the mothers works hard at teaching their daughters the virtues of Chinese wisdom while allowing the opportunities of American life. They try passing on a piece of themselves despite the great barriers that are built between the women. Each of the stories gives a wonderful glimpse into the Chinese culture and heritage that the mothers are trying to reveal to their daughters through the use of festivals, food dishes, marriage ceremonies, and the raising of children, essentially their past experiences.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as a maid. Vernita was so busy cleaning houses she didn’t have any time to take care of her daughter, Oprah. So she asked her mother Hattie Mae Lee, to take care of her. Hattie took Oprah under her own wing, and decided to raise her as if she was her own child on a farm in Wisconsin. Oprah and her grandmother would go to church ever...
Amy Tan is a Chinese-American author. She had become Americanized, according to her mother, who still held traditional Chinese values. They fought sometimes, just as the women and daughters of The Joy Luck Club, over who was right and who was wrong regarding many problems they encountered. Tan most likely modeled The Joy Luck Club after her relationship with her mother. She even dedicated the novel “To my mother and the memory of her mother. You asked me once what I wo...
Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club 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.
she was pretty and that was everything” (225). This captivation with herself along with the constant looking in the mirrors and thinking her mother was only pestering her all the time because her mother’s own good looks were long gone by now (225) shows a sign of immaturity because she believes everything revolves around whether or not someo...
influence all her life and struggles to accept her true identity. Through the story you can
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.
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.