Expectations Kill
Parents having different thoughts or ideas for their children is something imminent. If it is not about the way they dress ,it's about the way they think or their own goals for you, but it is something that your parents will talk to you about sometime. In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan delves into how parental pressures and expectations change the mindset of their child. These mothers and daughters have their differences not only in time ,but mindset. Lindo and Suyuan Woo were born in china meanwhile June and Waverly were born in the Bay Area.The stories in the book,”The Joy Luck Club” show that when children fail to meet their parents expectation, they begin to think differently from one another and split apart.
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.
In the book of the Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan. We can see there are many conflicts between mothers and daughters base on culture shock, generation, and misunderstanding, but we still can feel that there is finally rooted in deep love. The culture shock can build a great wall in their relationship due to different values. Also, generation can create a problem between parents and children. Children who born in different generation received different information and education, which will result in misunderstanding with their parents. In this article, I will give three examples to describes three conflicts between mothers and daughters, such as culture shock, different
Although mothers and daughters are genetically related, sometimes they seem like complete strangers. When immigrants raise their children in America, there is a great concern for these parents that American culture will negatively affect their children. In the novel, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, four mothers try to instill their Asian culture into their daughters' lifestyle; however, these daughters rebel against them, due to their desire to assimilate themselves into American culture.
"Imagine, a daughter not knowing her own mother!" And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. (Tan 40-41)
Of the many stories involving the many characters of "The Joy Luck Club", I believe the central theme connecting them all is the inability of the mothers and their daughters to communicate effectively.
Parents always want what is best for their children, regardless of culture or ethnicity. In The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, and in “Life With Father” by Itabari Njeri, the parents express their parental methods upon their daughters. Children will all react differently to their parent’s methods, as do Waverly, June, and Itabari, but they still share a common resentment for their parents. It is shown in the two stories how parental methods expressed to children can be misinterpreted, thus influencing the child’s behavior.
Instead of beating around the bush Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club exposes the not so chipper relationships between Chinese mothers and their polar opposite Chinese-American daughters. The mothers struggle to express the importance of their Chinese heritage while also keeping balance with “good” American characteristics to their daughters; while the daughters struggle with their identities and relationships with others. The Joy Luck Club is written as a collection of flashbacks told by the Chinese mothers and their American daughters. The book ventures through time via the memories of the mothers and daughters and contrasts are made to show comparisons between the mothers’ lives versus their American daughters. The mothers constantly try to instill Chinese teachings, morals, and ways to their daughters but their daughters turn a deaf ear and disregard their mothers’ preaching. The Chinese mothers understand the special unbreakable and in “[their] bones”, yet the daughters lack this understanding causing caustic relationships between mother, daughter, and culture (Tan 27). Amy Tan’s style of using flashbacks reveals the indestructible link not only mother and daughter, but also between person and culture.
The lives of eight Chinese women are told throughout the book The Joy Luck Club. How their childhood was, their first marriage was and all their hopes and dreams that they wish to come true. A mother’s love for a daughter can some be joyful or very painful. In the case of these women all the mothers want was their daughter would not make the same mistakes that they did in the past, and for them to learn for those mistake. That is the love for a daughter from her mother. A mother gives her daughter advice about everything in life.
In the novel, The Joy Luck Club, the author, Amy Tan, intricately weaves together the roles and experiences of Chinese mothers with their American born daughters. During a time of war, the mothers flee from China to America, leaving behind a past filled with secrets that unravel as their daughters mature. While sharing their difficulties, these mothers must be able to teach Chinese beliefs and customs to their daughters in a way that relates to American society. However, this is difficult because the daughters seek to identify themselves with their own American culture. A lack of understanding and knowledge amongst these societies exists between the mothers and daughters, making it difficult for the two generations to connect with each other. Nonetheless, these mothers have "a legacy that they wish to bestow on their daughters," ( The Joy Luck Club ). A cultural clash and a generation gap are the roots to the problems the mothers and daughters must overcome in order for their relationship to be stronger. One such example is the relationship between Lindo and Waverly Jong.
The importance of this bond between mothers and daughters plays a key role in today’s society and acts as a common theme seen in literature. In her novel, The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan stresses the importance of a strong, functional mother-daughter relationship. The emphasis on the necessity of this relationship presents itself through the bonds present in An Mei’s family. The most vivid example of a mother-daughter bond in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club lies in Part 1 when An Mei describes the relationship between her mother and her grandmother.
Both books center on mother and daughter conflict. Mothers are continuously shown to have high hopes for their daughters in these books. Though their daughters fail many times, a lesson is learned from each experience. The daughters are noted to feel equivalent to a failure in their mothers’ eyes, but this is only due to the lack of communication between them. In The Joy Luck Club, generational roles that women play help establish the pattern of relationships between a mother and a daughter. To explain the relationship, this book is divided into mother stories in the first two halves and daughter stories in the last two halves while Amy Chua models her book in chronological order of occurrences. In the end of it all, mothers and daughters learn to accept each other for what they are.
In life we sometimes experience cultural differences. In The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan shows how mother daughter relationships are affected by these cultural differences. Therefore each of the mothers and daughters has a different view on their Chinese culture.
Every twelve months of every year the seasons change from spring, summer, fall and then winter. The cycle repeats itself every year having similar weather conditions as the previous season before. Like the four seasons mother and daughter are very similar in the way they change and grow throughout time. A mother learns from her mother and then passes on her morals and rituals on to her daughters. As the daughters grow with age they have a tendency to take on many qualities of their mothers such as their cultural ways and some day they will pass these traits onto their children. Through years of experience and hard work, Amy Tan shows the viewers the experiences of the mother and daughters while growing up in Chinese and American lifestyles.
Born to Chinese immigrant parents, Amy Tan is a second-generation Chinese American. Although Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1989) isn’t strictly autobiographical, Tan has managed to slide bits and pieces of her life in the novel. Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club (1989) consists of four sections narrated by four Chinese Immigrant mothers and four of their American born Chinese daughters; The Joy Luck Club (1989) is divided into four main sections narrated in third person by the mothers and daughters. The novel contains the struggles of first generation immigrant mothers and their second generation immigrant daughters due to language barriers and cultural differences.
I believe that parents in the American culture are more accepting to the teenage rebellion phase. They understand that in order for children to mature into stable adults, they have to learn from their mistakes. By allowing us to rebel they let us follow our own opinions. This phase defines who we are. The Chinese mothers in "Joy Luck Club", want their daughters to react to situations a certain way and have specific emotions connect with it. In the quote, "In America I will have a daughter just like me...Over there nobody will look down on her, because I will make her speak only perfect American English." it is shown the ideal of the Chinese mothers in this book. They expect their daughters to be perfect.