The Search for Self in The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan's novel, The Joy Luck Club, presents a character with a divided self. One buried half of the self represents the mother, the mother's Chinese heritage, and the cold obedience she tries to instill in her daughter caused by her tragic past. The other half of the self represents the daughter, the daughter's American heritage, and the endless indignation she uses against her mother in ignorance of her mother's tragic past and her own ties to Chinese heritage.
The mother, Suyuan Woo, speaks broken English, shows no emotion, and wants her daughter to be the best, a prodigy. All of these characteristics can be attributed to her former life in China. Tan skillfully creates the dialogue for the mother so the reader can pick up on her broken English and her Chinese dialect. For example, the mother says, "Just like you. Not the best. Because you not trying" (Tan 1210). Not only does Tan's use of choppy English help establish a distinctiveness for the mother's character, but it also demonstrates a stern voice that is incapable of showing emotion.
The mother immigrated from China during the post-World War II era with many aspirations about America that made her push her daughter to be something she was not. According to Jing-mei, the daughter,
My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. America was where all my mother's hopes lay. She had come to San Francisco in 1949 after losing everything in China: her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls. (1208)
The mother's great losses in China and the cold obedience instilled in her from her childhood are what make Suyuan Woo l...
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... and daughters love each other and how their heritage can be influential in itself.
Works Cited
Dorris, Michael. "Mothers and Daughters." Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 59. Ed. Roger Matuz. Detroit: Gale, 1990.
Schell, Orville. " 'Your Mother Is In Your Bones'." Contemporary Short Criticism. Vol. 59. Ed. Roger Matuz. Detroit: Gale, 1990.
Tan, Amy. "Two Kinds." The Harper Anthology of Fiction. Ed. Sylvan Barnet. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. 1208-1215.
Tavernise, Peter. "Fasting of the Heart: Mother-Tradition and Sacred Systems in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club." America Online. Online. 15 Mar. 1998.
Willard, Nancy. "Tiger Spirits." Contemporary Short Criticism. Vol. 59. Ed. Roger Matuz. Detroit: Gale, 1990. 97-98.
Wang, Qun. The Joy Luck Club. Masterplots. 2nd ed. Vol. 6. Ed. Frank N. Magill. California: Salem Press, 1996. 3357.
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.
It was simply amazing hiking out there, the mountains covered in tall trees that dug into the rocky soil, the beautiful sky, when visible. Even in the midst of strenuous exercise I still en...
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.
Heberle, Mark. "Contemporary Literary Criticism." O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Vol. 74. New York, 2001. 312.
The American daughters, on the other hand, the other half of the inseparable pair, tell stories of how their mothers tradition, culture, and beliefs, helped them come to many realizations about themselves. These realizations are both positive and negative. Jing-Mei Woo tells the story of how her mother wanted her to be the next Shirley Temple. "My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. You could open a restaurant...You could become instantly famous.
"My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America" (491). This ideology inspired Jing-mei’s mother to work hard to create a better life for herself and her family in a new country. The search of the American dream exerts a powerful influence on new arrivals in the United States. However, realizing that they may not achieve the dream of material success and social acceptance, parents tend to transfer that burden to their children. It is a burden where dreams usually fall short of expectations.
The second and third sections are about the daughters' lives, and the vignettes in each section trace their personality growth and development. Through the eyes of the daughters, we can also see the continuation of the mothers' stories, how they learned to cope in America. In these sections, Amy Tan explores the difficulties in growing up as a Chinese-American and the problems assimilating into modern society. The Chinese-American daughters try their best to become "Americanized," at the same time casting off their heritage while their mothers watch on, dismayed. Social pressures to become like everyone else, and not to be different are what motivate the daughters to resent their nationality. This was a greater problem for Chinese-American daughters that grew up in the 50's, when it was not well accepted to be of an "ethnic" background.
Tan, Amy. "Two Kinds." Literature: A Portable Anthology. Ed. Janet E. Gardner, et. Al. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin's, 2004. 348-357.
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 ... ...
America was not everything the mothers had expected for their daughters. The mothers always wanted to give their daughters the feather to tell of their hardships, but they never could. They wanted to wait until the day that they could speak perfect American English. However, they never learned to speak their language, which prevented them from communicating with their daughters. All the mothers in The Joy Luck Club had so much hope for their daughters in America, but instead their lives ended up mirroring their mother’s life in China. All the relationships had many hardships because of miscommunication from their different cultures. As they grew older the children realized that their ...
Baym, Nina. “The Norton Anthology of American Literature.” Rev. 6 ed W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 2003.
When analyzing the Joy Luck club it is important to consider the life of the author. It is apparent after studying both The Joy Luck Club and Amy Tan that there are some incredible similarities among the two, particularly the story of mother Suyuan-Woo and her daughter Jing-Mei Woo. Suyuan is a main character and plays an extremely important role in the novel even though she passed away. She created the Joy Luck club years ago and is the main reason why this tight kit family exists today. Suyuan decided to create the Joy Luck club during a ve...
Tan, Amy. “Two Kinds”. Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Longman. Boston. 10th ed. 2011
In this work an attempt will be made to illustrate Augustine's view of free will. Such categories
Just as with her books, Tan’s focus in this essay is her mother. Tan considered her book, The Joy Luck Club, a success after her mother read it and exclaimed over how easy it was to read. However, the audience of this essay is not Tan’s mother, but rather it is anyone who can relate to this situation. Tan’s purpose was to bring to attention the fact that when the language spoken at home is different from that spoken by the general public, problems will arise for those caught in...