Chinese Mothers and their American Daughters in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club
““No choice! No choice!” She doesn’t know. If she doesn’t speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn?t try, she can lose her chance forever.
I know this because I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people?s misery, to eat my own bitterness.
And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.” (Tan 241)
In desperation, mother An-Mei Hsu describes her frustration over her own mother-daughter relationship in Amy Tan?s The JoyLuck Club. Four Chinese born mothers and their four American born daughters tell stories from their own point of view about their relationships with one another: mother-mother, mother-daughter, and daughter-daughter. The way these stories weave in and out of the past and present, and how these women?s lives unfolded tell much of what women are taught to think of themselves, and how it shapes their lives. How a mother hopes to give her daughter strength, respect for herself, and a bond between mother and daughter, as told by the mothers, is reflected back by how each daughter processes what she perceives her mothers? lessons to be.
All of the mothers came to America to escape the horrors of war. They hoped for the prosperity and ease that living in the United States would afford them. With them they brought the sacred teachings of Taoism and Confucianism. Peter Tavernise defines these ancient traditions in "Fasting of the Heart: Mother-Tradition and Sacred Systems in Amy Tan?s The Joy Luck Club." Jing-mei describes her limited understanding of these concepts as, ?The elements were from my mother?s own version of organic chemistry.? (Tan 19) Tavernise states, ?Just as in the Confucian ritual system, very little of the mother-tradition in the text is told explicitly from mother to daughter: ritual actions are supposed to be observed, absorbed, read, and understood in order to be transformed, preserved and handed down in turn.
The 1980s saw great political and military action throughout the world. However, one particular event that took place began in the early 1980s which was the Iran-Contra Affair. The Iran-Contra scandal is said to be the result of President Ronald Reagan’s attempt to accomplish two things. The first being his desire to see that the Americans which were being held as hostages by Iran, to be freed and the second was that he wanted to provide assistance to the contras in Nicaragua by going around congress. As obvious and as famous as the previously mentioned appears to be, the key states or countries involved are a matter of investigation. The heavy hitters in the Iran-Contra scandal aside from the United States, were Nicaragua, Iran, and Israel, which possess the question; how did several countries from various places around the world become so entangled in one of the world’s most memorable, multinational, scandals of all time?
At the congressional hearings, Oliver North took full responsibility for the scandal, claiming he did it in the name of patriotism. In reality, he and his security advisor, Admiral John Poindexter had lied to Congress, shredded evidence, and refused to inform the President of details in order to guarantee his “plausible deniability”. Ultimately, the Iran-Contra investigation raised more questions than it answered. Reagan held fast to his plea of ignorance, the full role of the CIA director remained murky, and the role of Vice President Bush remained mysterious as well. The Iran-Contra affair revealed how secretive government officials undermine the Constitution and compromise Presidential authority under the facade of patriotism.
The investigation assesses the extent of significance of President Reagan’s role in the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980’s. Reagan’s role will be looked at while aiding the Nicaraguan Contras, releasing American hostages, both which led to the Iran-Contra affair, and during the cover up, in America and partly in Iran. An investigation account and American history are mostly used to evaluate Reagan’s role. Two of the sources used in this essay, Firewall: The Iran-Contra conspiracy and cover-up written by Lawrence E. Walsh and The Age of Reagan by Sean Wilentz will then be evaluated for their origins, purposes, values, and limitations.
As the four women entered America, which is far from their motherland China, they experience a change of culture, the American culture, which was dominant than the Chinese. The Chinese mothers are faced with a difficult task of how to raise their American-born daughters with an understanding of their heritage. The daughters clearly show a gap in culture between the Chinese culture and American culture. The mothers wanted their daughter to follow the Chinese traditions, but the daughters followed the American traditions and even some of them got married to American men. The mothers tried to tell their daughters the story about the Chinese ancestors but the daughter could not follow them and the daughters thought their mothers were backwards and did not know what they are saying. As much as the mothers tried to show love to their daughters, the daughters usually responded negatively. They often saw their mothers’ attempts to guidance as a failure to understand the American culture. Being Chinese and living in America, both the mothers and the daughters struggle with many issues like identity, language, translation, and others. The mothers try to reconcile their Chinese pasts with their American presents; the daughters try to find a balance between independence and loyalty to their heritage
The Joy Luck Club is a representation of the persistent tensions and powerful bonds between mother and daughter in a Chinese American society. The book illustrates the hardships both the mother and daughters go through in order to please the other. Also, it shows the troubles the daughters face when growing up in two cultures. This book reveals that most of the time mothers really do know best.
Rodríguez, Ana Patricia. 2009. Dividing the Isthmus: Central American transnational histories, literatures & cultures. U.S.: University of Texas Press, 130-167
While transactional leadership relies on a system of rewards and penalties it doesn't provide a lot of in conditions of inspiration to encourage folks to travel past the fundamentals. Given this truth the supporters of transactional leaders may get happy and develop a propensity to attain smallest expectations solely that might facilitate them avoid penalties (Bass, 1990). Therefore the leader and also the follower ar in associate conformity on what the follower would take delivery of achieving the negotiated level of performance (Bass, 1990). The success of such leadership depends on the extent of satisfaction the leader and followers have in following this technique of performance based mostly appraisals (Bass, 1990)
The Joy Luck Club is the telling of a tale of struggle by four mothers and their four daughters trying to understand the issue of gender identity, how they each discover or lose their sense of self and what they mean to one another. Throughout the book each of the mothers works hard at teaching their daughters the virtues of Chinese wisdom while allowing the opportunities of American life. They try passing on a piece of themselves despite the great barriers that are built between the women. Each of the stories gives a wonderful glimpse into the Chinese culture and heritage that the mothers are trying to reveal to their daughters through the use of festivals, food dishes, marriage ceremonies, and the raising of children, essentially their past experiences.
Oftentimes the children of immigrants to the United States lose the sense of cultural background in which their parents had tried so desperately to instill within them. According to Walter Shear, “It is an unseen terror that runs through both the distinct social spectrum experienced by the mothers in China and the lack of such social definition in the daughters’ lives.” This “unseen terror” is portrayed in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club as four Chinese women and their American-born daughters struggle to understand one another’s culture and values. The second-generation women in The Joy Luck Club prove to lose their sense of Chinese values, becoming Americanized.
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.
However, color-blindness is not the answer and may even be detrimental to the desired result. People need to be aware of how racial interactions affect all races, and be wiling to participate in open and honest discussions. This hiding of feelings and over compensating with color-blindness is not helping anyone to move past racist thoughts and behaviors. This idea that backstage racism should be accepted is absurd, and causes irreparable damages. “The “fun” for young Whites in a private backstage has real and serious consequences that ratify and perpetuate old racist stereotypes, contributing to and maintain contemporary racial hierarchies (as evident in higher education, health care, the legal system, housing, etc.) that Whites have the privilege to ignore” (Pg. 206). These backstage behaviors make it apparent that racism is not dying out “with Gram-pa,” as one student alluded to in their journal. Racism is still very prevalent, but Whites now participate in racist conversations behind closed
Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club describes the lives of first and second generation Chinese families, particularly mothers and daughters. Surprisingly The Joy Luck Club and, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts are very similar. They both talk of mothers and daughters in these books and try to find themselves culturally. Among the barriers that must be overcome are those of language, beliefs and customs.
The mother-daughter relationship is often complex and confusing. Amy Tan explores this relationship with novel The Joy Luck Club narrated by four daughters and three mothers: Jing-mei Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Lena St. Clair, Waverly Jong, An-mei Jordan, Ying-Ying St. Clair, and Lindo Jong. June narrates in her late mother's place. The mothers talk about their difficult pasts in China and how they have been changed. The trauma from their past causes their daughters not to be able to connect to . The women are finally able to connect to each other. The women are forced to learn from the past, overcome adversity, and learn to understand one another.
“Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” is an excerpt from Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua, a Yale Law professor. In this excerpt the author explains why Chinese children tend to be more successful in life and expresses her dislike towards Western parenting. The first idea Chua explains is a list of activities her daughters are allowed to do and not do in order to focus solely on academic progress. Second, the author demonstrates the contrast in mindset between Chinese mothers and Western mothers by explaining how Chinese mothers feel differently than Western mothers in regards to academic success and learning. Furthermore, she describes how Chinese mothers can demand things from their children. Finally, they can also say
Transformational leadership is the process by which a leader engages with others and creates a connection that raises the level of motivation and morality in both the leader and the follower towards the greater good (Northouse, 2010, p. 172). Transformational leaders are different than managers, which as Burns claims are the differences are in characteristics and behaviors. Burns also established two concepts transforming leadership and transactional leadership. The transformational leader elevates followers to make the whole work environment more successful and have everyone be successful, while transactional leaders are focused only on the accomplishments of tasks. Transformational leadership is a way of life, and there is