The Power of Love in Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club

1458 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Influence of mythology on literature

The Power of Love in Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club

In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, Four pairs of mothers and daughters embark on the journey that is life. Each young woman comes to realize how valuable the relationships with their mothers are. As each daughter learns from her mother, she goes through the sometimes-painful process of trying to understand her enigmatic mother. To finally unravel the mystery surrounding their mothers is to understand who they, themselves, really are.

Suyuan Woo started the "Joy Luck Club" the year she left China. She began the club as a relief from the heartache that she and her friends experienced "My mother could sense that the women of these families also had unspeakable tragedies they had left behind in China and hopes they couldn't begin to express in their fragile English" (1Tan 6). Jing-Mei Woo, the daughter of Suyuan, recalls a story told by her mother, "Over the years she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine"(1Tan 7). Jing-Mei comes to realize that the story she thought was a fairy tale was actually an event in her mother's life. As she learned more about her mother's past by her stories of China:" There were things so strange and beautiful you can't possibly imagine them...We were a city of leftovers mixed together"(1Tan 8) she comes to respect her mother. When she faces trials of her own she is able to take her mother's advice. When Jing-Mei is thirty-six her mother dies of a brain aneurysm, her memory of her mother gives her strength, she realizes that her mother felt the same during her life. Suyuan's voice echoes in her head "Can you imagine h...

... middle of paper ...

...

Each woman through many trials and tribulations learned who they were and where they came from. No matter what happened they had the love of their mothers. Many lessons were learned and relationships strengthened. Throughout their lives they had one constant: the love of their mothers.

Works Consulted:

Huntley, E. D. Amy Tan: A Critical Companion. Westport: Greenwood P, 1998.

Schell, Orville. "Your Mother is in Your Bones." The New York Times Book Review. 19 March 1989: 3,28.

Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York: Ivy Books. (1989).

Internet:

Liu, Ping (1997). Adjusting to a New Society: A Study of Educated Chinese Women: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~tdo/ea/chineseWomen.html

Interview with Amy Tan: The Joy Luck Club Lady: http://detnews.com/menu/stories/23098.htm

Show More
Related

  • Chinese Women In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    1258 Words  | 3 Pages

    At the beginning of the novel, Suyuan Woo begins telling the story of The Joy Luck Club, a group started by a small family of Chinese women during World War II, where "we feasted, we laughed, we played games, lost and won, we told the best stories. And each week, we could hope to be lucky.

    Read More

  • Characterization in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club

    505 Words  | 2 Pages

    Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club uses much characterization. Each character is portrayed in different yet similar ways. When she was raised, she would do whatever she could to please other people. She even “gave up her life for her parents promise” (49), I the story The Red Candle we get to see how Tan portrays Lindo Jong and how she is brought to life.

    Read More

  • The Importance of Mothers in All Over but the Shoutin’ by Rick Bragg

    707 Words  | 2 Pages

    No matter what actions or words a mother chooses, to a child his or her mother is on the highest pedestal. A mother is very important to a child because of the nourishing and love the child receives from his or her mother but not every child experiences the mother’s love or even having a mother. Bragg’s mother was something out of the ordinary because of all that she did for her children growing up, but no one is perfect in this world. Bragg’s mother’s flaw was always taking back her drunken husband and thinking that he could have changed since the last time he...

    Read More

  • Comparing the Hero in Sophocles' Oedipus the King, Homer's Odyssey, and Tan's Joy Luck Club

    2135 Words  | 5 Pages

    Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Vintage Contemporaries. New York: A Division of Random House, Inc., 1991.

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    1319 Words  | 3 Pages

    One function of a novel is to allow readers to gain insight on new perspectives. We expect that reading a novel will provide us with various perspectives and ideas to relate to our own realities. Throughout history, postmodernists have used literature to prove that an objective reality does not exist. Fictional books allow readers to connect to the characters more easily and therefore understand the various perspectives of characters. In her novel The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan uses defamiliarization to show the reader perspectives on America that they may be unaware of. Tan proves that there is no absolute reality of America and its culture. Ultimately, Tan successfully utilizes this technique to insight her audience of readers with new

    Read More

  • Bond between Mothers and Daughters in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    1751 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan

    1002 Words  | 3 Pages

    The movie, The Joy Luck Club, focuses around the lives of four Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters. The story takes place a few months after Junes mother, Suyuan has died. The mothers and daughters hold very different principles, where the mothers are still very traditional to their Chinese upbringings the daughters are much more “American.” The movie can be viewed from the Feminist Literary Theory, since the 8 main characters are female. The women’s life stories are told through a series of flashback scenes that deal heavily with female gender roles and the expectations of women. While the mothers and their daughter grew up in vastly different worlds, some of their experiences and circumstances correlate solely due to that fact that they experienced them because they are females.

    Read More

  • Mother Daughter Relationships In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    1083 Words  | 3 Pages

    Jing-mei Woo has to become a member of the Joy Luck Club in place of her mother, Suyuan Woo, who passed away. Before Suyuan's passing Jing-mei does not know much about her mother, as the story continues to develop Jing-mei realizes how much she did not know about her mother and learns more and more new things about her on her journey of finding her sisters. “Your father is not my first husband. You are not those babies” (26), this quote is from Suyuan Woo and shows Jing- mei that her mother has a lot of secrets that she does not know about. “Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine” (21). This quote shows how Jing-mei did not know much

    Read More

  • Americanization in The Joy Luck Club

    1951 Words  | 4 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club

    1520 Words  | 4 Pages

    The hardest problem communicating emerges between Suyuan and Jing-Mei.  Suyuan is a very strong woman who lost everything she ever had in China: "her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls" (141). Yet she finds the strength to move on and still retains her traditional values.  She remarries and has Jing-Mei and creates a new life for herself in America.  She is the one who brings together three other women to form the Joy Luck Club. The rift is the greatest between Suyuan and June.  Suyuan tries to force her daughter to be everything she could ever be. 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 ...

    Read More

  • The Significance Of Relationships In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    813 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Amy Tan's novel "The Joy Luck Club" the readers can explore each character's past experiences and relationships to help the readers to understand each character's current situation. In this novel, Tan uses four different families, the Woo's, the Hsu's, the Jong's, and the St. Clair’s including 3 mothers' and 4 daughters'. This arrangement represents the four seats at the Mah-Jong table. Each chapter in a section is devoted to one mother or daughter, and their stories eventually intertwine to the point that the story of Jing-Mei and Suyuan Woo becomes a symbol of fulfillment for all of them. The mothers shape their daughters, imparting wisdom while seeming blunt and at times even ignorant.

    Read More

  • Comparing Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club and Waiting for Mr. Kim

    1577 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Similarities Between The Joy Luck Club And For A Daughter Who Leaves

    1322 Words  | 3 Pages

    Amy Tan, the author of The Joy Luck Club, displays life lessons mothers pass down to their daughters through the character An-mei, while Janice Mirikitani mirrors the morales presented in Tan’s novel through her own work, “For a Daughter Who Leaves”. The Joy Luck Club follows a series of mothers and their daughters and how they perceive and react to the cultural gap between them. An-mei’s story follows her through her life in China and her new life in America. In China, she witnesses the abuse her mother goes through and eventually her mother’s suicide. She does not want her daughter, Rose, to repeat the same mistakes her mother and herself made, so she tries to teach Rose how to live a happy and full life without regrets.

    Read More

  • Mothers and Daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club

    1798 Words  | 4 Pages

    Throughout Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club, the reader can see the difficulites in the mother-daughter relationships.  The mothers came to America from China hoping to give their daughters better lives than what they had.  In China, women were “to be obedient, to honor one’s parents, one’s husband, and to try to please him and his family,” (Chinese-American Women in American Culture).  They were not expected to have their own will and to make their own way through life.  These mothers did not want this for their children so they thought that in America “nobody [would] say her worth [was] measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch…nobody [would] look down on her…” (3).  To represent everything that was hoped for in their daughters, the mothers wanted them to have a “swan- a creature that became more than what was hoped for,” (3).  This swan was all of the mothers’ good intentions.  However, when they got to America, the swan was taken away and all she had left was one feather.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Family In The Grapes Of Wrath

    833 Words  | 2 Pages

    The relationship between a mother and her family is one of strength and commitment. A mother will go through long anything to make sure her family is safe. In 1982, in Lawrenceville Georgia, Mrs. Angela Cavallo saved her son, Tony Cavallo,who was pinned down by his Chevrolet Impala. The Chevrolet slipped off his car jack and fell on Tony. Angela was able to lift the car and then provide CPR for her son and saved his life. Family is the most important thing, and Ma demonstrates her maternal characteristics throughout the book to show that sticking together saves families.

    Read More

More about The Power of Love in Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club

Open Document