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Essays over the joy luck club
Essays over the joy luck club
Essays over the joy luck club
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The Joy Luck Club (1985) was written by Amy Tan (1952). The Joy Luck Club is the story of a Chinese mother who leaves everything behind, a mother who leaves her family in China in order to get her children (in this case our protagonist June) a better life. Or as Amy Tan says: “The Joy Luck Club, about a woman whose mother has just died and who regrets that she never knew who she truly was. The stories poured out. They were what I felt and had to say before it was too late. I had found my reason to write.” (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/19/amy-tan-joy-luck-club-guardian-book-club)
The Joy Luck Club is the story of a Chinese mother who leaves everything behind but it is also the story of a Chinese-American woman who realises in a way or in another what his mother has sacrificed for her. When we read this novel one of the things we can observe is that strong relationship between mothers and daughters. That relationship starts when the daughter is in the mother’s womb. They are connected through the umbilical cord. They share something during their whole lives. Chinese mothers, on the one way, they are very submissive to their husbands and they never challenge to what their husbands tell them. On the other way, we have Chinese-American daughters. They are more independent, they have the option of divorce if they are not happy with their husbands. They think that they have the right to express their opinion and they can not to be if they do not want to. They think they have the right to choose. We can see this on Queen Mother of the Western Skies She looks in the mirror and sees reflections of her. She realises that she is part of one whole spirit that extends into past and future generations. No matter if they are born in ...
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...hey have done it for their daughters to have a better life, for them to find the freedom that they (the mothers) could not have in China.
In conclusion, The Joy Luck Club is a story of sacrifice, of leaving things behind. It is a story of not to look behind. It is a story of changing your life and those lives of who are at your side. The Joy Luck Club is the story of those mothers who had the courage of changing their quiet lives in China, although submissive to their husbands and their country for their daughters to be free of choosing their own fates. Maybe this I am going to say could seem a little bit exaggerated, but it is the story of picking Coca-Cola, it is the story of being them own. It is the story of choosing love over marriage. It is the story of choosing to be themselves no matter what the society could think about them. That is The Joy Luck Club.
Amy Tan 's novel, The Joy Luck Club, explores the relationships and experiences of four Chinese mothers with that of their four Chinese-American daughters. The differences in the upbringing of those women born around the 1920’s in China, and their daughters born in California in the 80’s, is undeniable. The relationships between the two are difficult due to lack of understanding and the considerable amount of barriers that exist between them.
Traditions, heritage and culture are three of the most important aspects of Chinese culture. Passed down from mother to daughter, these traditions are expected to carry on for years to come. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, daughters Waverly, Lena, Rose and June thoughts about their culture are congested by Americanization while on their quests towards self-actualization. Each daughter struggles to find balance between Chinese heritage and American values through marriage and professional careers.
Summary: Breathing Underwater is about an teenage boy at the age of 16 who is in love with his girlfriend, but does not really know how to treat her right. He claimed to have loved his girlfriend a lot and often did not listen to what he has to say about things and disagrees with her which causes him to get angry. One day he had gotten very angry and had slapped her, not knowing what had got into him he apologized for his behaviour and said never to do it again. But the day of the talent show he had told her not to sing because people would laugh at her and he did not want her to display herself up on stage singing to everyone. After the show had finished, anger and jealousy filled up inside of him causing to not know what he was doing, next thing he knew he was calling her names and throwing a fist at her and beating her to the floor. Caitlin was than taken away from a few friends, including Nick’s best friend. Caitlin and her parents than procured a restraining order to keep Nick away from her, and the judge had also sentenced him to Mario Ortega’s family violence class, where he sat around with other men who beat their wives or girlfriends because they are unable to keep their hands to themselves. Another sentence the court gave Nick was to write journals about his relationship with Caitlin, before the incident and what caused him to do what he had done to her. From the journals he wrote the story drifts back and froth from present to past of their relationship. It allows the reader to follow along with Nick (main character), it shows the struggles of losing all his friendships, popularity and respect he had among the school, being known as a abuser, and also the girl he loved did not no longer love him back for the actions he had done. Towards the end of the novel he realizes all the stuff he had put Caitlin from through the beginning of their relationship and how badly he had treated her feeling guilty of his actions he had no longer knew what to do, but he knew how to treat a girl with more respect in the future.
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
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.
The Chinese mothers, so concentrated on the cultures of their own, don't want to realize what is going on around them. They don't want to accept the fact that their daughters are growing up in a culture so different from their own. Lindo Jong, says to her daughter, Waverly- "I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents' promise. This means nothing to you because to you, promises mean nothing. A daughter can promise to come to dinner, but if she has a headache, a traffic jam, if she wants to watch a favorite movie on T.V., she no longer has a promise."(Tan 42) Ying Ying St.Clair remarks- "...because I remained quiet for so long, now my daughter does not hear me. She sits by her fancy swimming pool and hears only her Sony Walkman, her cordless phone, her big, important husband asking her why they have charcoal and no lighter fluid."(Tan 64)
The Joy Luck Club, is a film that shows a powerful portrayal of four Chinese women and the lives of their children in America. The film presents the conflicting cultures between the United States and China, and how men treat women throughout their lives. People living in the United States usually take for granted their roles as a male or female. The culture of each country shapes the treatment one receives based on the sex of the individual. Gender roles shape this movie and allows people, specifically the United States, to see how gender are so crutcial in othe countries.
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Published by Penguin Books 1989. New York, New York, U.S.A.
She sees the opportunities that America has to offer, and does not want to see her daughter throw those opportunities away. She wants the best for her daughter, and does not want Jing-Mei to ever let go of something she wants because it is too hard to achieve. "America is where all my mother's hopes lay. . .There were so many ways for ... ...
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.
The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan is a piece of literature that displays the power of femininity. Through the past couple of centuries the role that women play in society has drastically changed. Women in various societies have experienced turmoil due to being discriminated against and looked down upon often. Women were viewed upon as being the house caregiver and leaving majority of the other jobs in society to men. Women have moved up the social ladder, politics, jobs, and in households. Femininity is shown throughout The Joy Luck Club. These women each have their own life experiences and stories but through it all they remained strong. Rules and regulations for women in China were very restrictive. Women had to live up to the ideal model of being obedient, hard working, bearing children, hide her unhappiness, and to not complain about anything. In China the women had little worth and were only seen as valuable to their immediate family members. Most of the mothers left China for the reason of improving their daughter’s lives in America. The novel demonstrates various characteristics of how women are represented. The theme of women is demonstrated through the hardships experienced, ethics and self-worth.
... and in her hurry to get away, she (falls) before she even reach(s) the corner,” (87). This foreshadows the relationship between the mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club. The daughters can not understand the reasoning behind their mothers’ decisions. However, the mothers realize their daughters are so much like them and they do not want this to happen. The daughters grow up being “Americanized,” but as they grow older they begin to want to understand their Chinese culture. All of the characters learned many valuable lessons that will be passed on to their own children.
In The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, the characters Suyuan and June have a mother-daughter relationship fraught with conflict, but ultimately rooted in deep love and commitment for one another. Because of drastic differences in the environments in which they were raised and in their life experiences, these two women have many opposing ideas and beliefs. This coupled with their lack of communication are responsible for many of the problems they encounter during the course of their relationship. These conflicts are only resolved when June learns about her mother's past and accepts their respective differences. The manner in which their relationship develops and the conflicts June and Suyuan face reveal some of the themes that Amy Tan intends for the readers to learn. These themes concern such topics as finding life's importance, making choices, and understanding ourselves and our families.
The complexitities of any mother-daughter relationship go much deeper then just their physical features that resemble one another. In Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, the stories of eight Chinese women are told. Together this group of women forms four sets of mother and daughter pairs. The trials and triumphs, similarities and differences, of each relationship with their daughter are described, exposing the inner makings of four perfectly matched pairs. Three generations of the Hsu family illustrate how both characteristics and values get passed on through generations, even with the obstacles of different cultures and language.