Language and Cultural Barriers in Amy Tan's "The Joy Luck Club"

625 Words2 Pages

Communication is the heart and soul of our society. We communicate in everything we do from buying a cup of coffee to presenting a project at work or school. Since we express ourselves everyday having one primary language that is used in that particular region is very helpful by reducing and preventing language barriers to an extent. As we express ourselves daily we often use metaphors to explain ourselves. For those of us who are bilingual or trilingual some of these expressions are not correctly translated or they just simply cannot be translated. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club there is not only a language barrier but also cultural barrier between the mothers and daughters and the meaning of “Joy Luck”. I believe that although it might be hard, anything can be translated if not by words, but through actions and character.
To prove my opinion, the stories prove especially powerful in The Joy Luck Club because of the cultural and language barriers that stand between the storytellers, which often are the mothers, and the daughters. Due to the fact that the mothers grew up in China and...

Open Document