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. In Mirikitani’s …show more content…
Both An-mei’s mother and her daughter, Rose, allow others to use and step on them. Amy Tan exhibits it clearly in An-mei’s point of view when she says, “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” (215). Both An-mei’s mother and her daughter are used for other’s personal gain. They are only a tool for others, having the same ending and beginning, never being able to be more than just a step. This theme and life lesson Amy Tan presents in her novel reflects in Mirikitani’s poem. The beginning of the poem starts …show more content…
An-mei is telling her daughter how young girls are easily influenced to be weak at a young age. She says, “A girl is like a young tree... You must stand tall and listen to your mother standing next to you. That is the only way to grow strong and straight. But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak. You will fall to the ground with the first strong wind. And then you will be like a weed, growing wild in any direction, running along the ground until someone pulls you out and throws you away’” (191). Women, especially in An-mei’s past, have been used and demolished for how weak they were to bend to other’s wills. She encourages her daughter to be strong and unyielding against destructive forces. The symbolism of a tree is vital because it represents a tenacious person who will not lean and fall to someone else’s desires. Mirikitani also uses symbolism of a strong, reliable plant to describe the speaker’s daughter in the
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.
“Only two kinds of daughters,” “Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!”(476). When a mother pushes her daughter to hard, the daughter rebels, but realizes in the end that their mothers only wanted the best for them and had their best interest at heart. In the beginning, Jing-mei, is “just as excited as my mother,”(469). Jing-mei eagerly hoped to make her mother proud. However, her mother’s obsession with becoming a prodigy discouraged Jing-mei.
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.
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.
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.
No relationship is ever perfect no matter how great it seems. In the novel The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan, she tells the story of a few mother daughter pairs that are in a group named the Joy Luck Club. The Joy Luck Club is a group of women who come together once a week to play mahjong. The founder of the Joy Luck Club, Suyuan Woo, dies, leaving her daughter Jing-mei to take her place in the club. Her daughter, Jing-mei, receives money from the other members of the club to travel to China in order to find her mother's twin daughters who were left many years ago. In this book you get more of the details of this family and a few more. Amy Tan uses the stories of Jing-mei and Suyuan, Waverly and Jindo, and An-mei and Rose to portray her theme of, mother daughter relationships can be hard at times but they are always worth it in the end.
To guide the reader into following the storyline of The Joy Luck Club, Tan utilizes literary techniques in order to emphasize events and ideas in the novel. One of the various techniques used in the novel is foreshadowing. Lena and her mother, Ying-ying, is one of the four mother-daughter relationships which exemplifies foreshadowing. Lena describes her mother to have the ability to foretell unfortunate events which she views as a pessimistic viewpoint. For example, when Lena was eight years old, Ying-ying warned if Lena did not eat every piece of rice in her bowl that she would end up marrying a bad man. Although concerned with her mother’s pessimistic views, Lena comes to understand Ying-ying when she realizes everything she projected
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.
In the Joy Luck Club, the author Amy Tan, focuses on mother-daughter relationships. She examines the lives of four women who emigrated from China, and the lives of four of their American-born daughters. The mothers: Suyuan Woo, An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-Ying St. Clair had all experienced some life-changing horror before coming to America, and this has forever tainted their perspective on how they want their children raised. The four daughters: Waverly, Lena, Rose, and Jing-Mei are all Americans. Even though they absorb some of the traditions of Chinese culture they are raised in America and American ideals and values. This inability to communicate and the clash between cultures create rifts between mothers and daughters.
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.
An-Mei Hsu was born and raised in China, but not by her mother. Her mother became the concubine of another man when An-Mei’s father had died. So An-Mei and her little brother went to live with there grandmother who they called Popo. At the house in which they lived they were not aloud to talk about, or even speak of there mother and soon enough, An-Mei and her little brother had forgotten her altogether. But Popo becomes very sick, and An-Mei’s mother returns to the home. When she was there she cuts a piece of her arm off and puts it in to soup for Popo. This was to show great respect, and was also a way of trying to cure the sick. "Here is how I came to love me mother. How I saw my own true nature. What was beneath my skin. Inside my bones." (pg40) This is the point where An-Mei is thought about respect and honor. She saw what her mother had done for Popo, and found it in her heart to forgive her and love her again. From then on she wanted to make sure that her daughters would have honor, and respect for the family ways. "The pain you must forget, because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones." (pg41) She saw what her mother take a piece of her own flesh and give it to Popo in order to earn her respect and honor back.
... and in her hurry to get away, she (falls) before she even reach(s) the corner,” (87). This foreshadows the relationship between the mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club. The daughters can not understand the reasoning behind their mothers’ decisions. However, the mothers realize their daughters are so much like them and they do not want this to happen. The daughters grow up being “Americanized,” but as they grow older they begin to want to understand their Chinese culture. All of the characters learned many valuable lessons that will be passed on to their own children.
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...
In Amy Tan 's Two Kinds, Jing-mei and her mother show how through generations a relationship of understanding can be lost when traditions, dreams, and pride do not take into account individuality. By applying the concepts of Virginia Woolf, Elaine Showalter, and the three stages of feminism, one can analyze the discourse Tan uses in the story and its connection to basic feminist principles.
...ith Jing Mei and her mother, it is compounded by the fact that there are dual nationalities involved as well. Not only did the mother’s good intentions bring about failure and disappointment from Jing Mei, but rooted in her mother’s culture was the belief that children are to be obedient and give respect to their elders. "Only two kinds of daughters.....those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!" (Tan1) is the comment made by her mother when Jing Mei refuses to continue with piano lessons. In the end, this story shows that not only is the mother-daughter relationship intricately complex but is made even more so with cultural and generational differences added to the mix.