The Joy Luck Club Identity Essay

The Joy Luck Club: Faces

An individual’s culture and history play undeniable roles in the person they are and the person they become. People are products of their environment, and regardless of how someone may feel about their life, their background, or their circumstances, these factors play an important role in their identity. Amy Tan explores the turbulent path to finding one’s identity in The Joy Luck Club, a novel that explores not only the strength of an individual, but the strength of a culture. Lindo Jong, a Chinese immigrant in the novel, describes this phenomenom as her two faces. Lindo believes that one always sacrifices part of oneself by putting on one’s ‘American face’ or one’s ‘Chinese face’. By choosing to wear one of these

faces, Lindo identifies herself as part of that culture, while slowly losing her attachment to the other. The struggle for the mothers and daughters to find their place between these two clashing ‘faces’ leads to many hardships in their lives, including their relationships with each other, their husbands, and themselves.

How can two people fully understand the thoughts and emotions of each other if they grew up in completely different environments and generations? The struggle between the mothers and daughters to find common ground and connect is not at the fault of either party, but truly circumstantial. Regardless, the mothers grew up in China, where they practiced traditional cultural activities and values, while their daughters were raised in America with western values. The disconnect is seen in each mother-daughter relationship told in the novel. Jing-Mei Woo, one of the daughters, recalls: “A friend once told me that my mother and I were alike, that we had the same wispy hand gestures, the same girlish laugh and sideways look. When I shyly told my mother his, she seemed insulted and said, “You don’t even know little percent of me! How can you be me?” And she’s right” (14-15). This quote shows how acutely aware both mother and daughter are of the fact that they do not know each other on a deeper level, and the manner in which it is addressed reflects hurt feelings. While it is acknowledged, there remains a sense of sadness and anger at how little they know about each other’s lives and past experiences. Similar feelings surface in Lindo and

Waverly Jong’s dialogue: “A daughter can promise to come to dinner, but if she has a headache, if she has a traffic jam, if she wants to watch her favorite movie on TV, then she no longer has a promise” (42). When Waverly wears her American face, she is caught up in the superficial ideology and lifestyle of the careless American culture and prioritizes that over spending time with her own mother. The tone of regret and disappointment in Lindo’s voice shows the degree to which they wear their American or Chinese faces and therefore live separately driven lives. Later in the novel, Waverly says she “couldn’t fend off the strength of her [mother’s] will anymore, her ability to make me see black where there was once white, white where there was once black” (186). Waverly’s tone borders on resentment towards her mother, blaming her for seeing things in a different and substantially more negative light. It is as if Waverly has no sense of value for the lessons or thoughts that her mother shares with her, but is actually angry because they are so different from her own. The Chinese face and the American face are colliding. The daughters have spent all their lives trying to fit in and assimilate themselves to American culture, constantly wearing their American faces and trying to forget about their Chinese ones. The mothers are doing the same but to a much lesser degree, and their attachment to their Chinese face and Chinese values and customs is much greater, making it infinitely harder for them to understand each other.
Second to the mother-daughter relationships are the spousal relationships, past and present. The daughters all end up marrying American men, which could be seen as the last desperate grasp to seal themselves into their American faces. By marrying a man without any Chinese background and isolating the marriage from their family and culture, it is clear that the daughters want to forget or lose that part of themselves. However, challenges with dating and relationships arise, as the daughters remain visible minorities. When Rose meets her boyfriend Ted’s mother for the first time, she is told about his “need to concentrate on his medical studies” and even assures Rose that “she had nothing whatsoever against minorities” (124). While Rose tries to wear her American face, her appearance still attracts discriminatory behaviour. The challenges of being a young, Chinese woman in a white, male-dominated society become clear to Rose when it comes to dating. Later on in the novel, when their relationship develops, Rose and Ted fall into specific gender-based roles. The damsel in distress who needs to be saved by a strong, successful man is the role that Rose begins to play. The thought of being protected and finally having the love and support that Rose never got from her family were draws to finding a spouse. As Rose says, “The emotional effect of saving and being saved was addicting to both of us. And that, as much as anything we ever did in bed, was how we made love to each other: conjoined where my weaknesses needed protection” (125). Insecurites stemmed during childhood intice Rose into a relationship where love is secondary to feelings of security and protection. Growing up with the constant hardship of being a visible minority and emersed in a culture within a culture created long-term feelings of exclusion and lonliness. The daughters are quick to blame their Chinese culture and upbringing for many of the hardships they experience. Rose says that “at first [she] thought it was because [she] was raised with all this Chinese humility,” but was then forced to think when her therapist asked, “why do you blame your culture, your ethnicity?” (170) The automatic excuse for anything bad that happens to Rose is her Chinese upbringing, but that cannot be blamed for the personal decisions that she makes as an adult. Ted and Rose’s relationship dynamic clearly demonstrates the difficulties of trying to forget a cultural ‘face,’ especially one that is taught during childhood.
Lastly, and most importantly, the relationships of the women with themselves is affected by the constant pull of two very different cultures. How they view themselves and how they view other parts of their lives changes drastically over the course of the book, from childhood to adulthood. The younger years show a greater freedom and inner strength. Lindo talks about her teen years, saying she “threw [her] head back and smiled proudly to [herself],” and “still knew who [she] was” (53). Even when Lindo was faced with extremely difficult circumstances in her teenage years, she managed to find her inner strength and perservere, knowing that she was capable of doing so. This poses an alternate way to look at the transition from life in China to life in America. While Lindo lost many freedoms, she also gained many. The chance to escape from cultural and societal norms that forced repression of identity was available. Many sacrifices were made in America, but whether or not they knew it, the mothers had many more freedoms and opportunities. However, for many of the mothers, it seems that they accepted their defeat quite soon after their move to the United States. Their courage and strength quickly subsided as new challenges arose. Ying-Ying St. Clair blamed many things for her unhappiness, but in the end, she allowed herself to disappear. “All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. And because I moved so secretly now my daughter does not see me” (64). The mothers are partially responsible for the disintegration of their identities. Being in a foreign environment is hard, but no one can be defeated without thinking that they have been defeated. The sense of having given up taints the strength of Ying-Ying. However, it is unfair to say that the mothers completely abandon their sense of personhood. Each mother in the novel continues to respect and practice the Chinese values and customs that they were raised with. As much as any of the mothers try to withstand their own assimilation into American culture, they can never hide the influence that it has on their identity. Even Lindo says: “I spoke their language. I used their local money. But still, they knew. They knew my face was not one hundred percent Chinese” (304-305). It was very interesting that Amy Tan chose to bring up the idea of faces once again at the end of the novel, a conclusion to the cultural struggles. Living with the constant exposure of two distinctly different cultures makes the mothers question who they are and where their true values lay. They want to both hold on to their traditional Chinese background and to adapt to the new surroundings and the ideals that their children are being taught. The mothers are able to maintain their Chinese faces, but to a much lesser degree than before, and their American faces are strong enough to be identified by others. This makes sense, but Lindo’s tone seems desperate and deeply saddened. Finding the right balance between the two faces is a struggle of identity and personhood.
Navigating between duelling cultures and finding a place in society is a difficult task, and the struggles to do so are well represented in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. The effects are easily viewed when examining the mother and daughter characters in the novel and their relationships with each other, their spouses, and themselves. Finding a ‘face’ that emcompasses a person’s past, present, and future is a life-long journey that those in and out of the novel hope to achieve.