The Joy Luck Club Cultural Analysis

Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club, weaves together the stories of four Chinese immigrant women and their American raised daughters. The novel is divided into four sections each containing four separate narratives. While exploring the relationships between the four mother daughter pairs, Tan sheds light on the role of culture as a constraint for universal human rights. The tension between the American and Chinese value systems, demonstrated by the generational conflict between the mother daughter pairs, is representative of the tension between a universal conception of human rights and communitarian or local culture practices. Tan forces the reader to acknowledge the role of culture when evaluating the choices the characters make. At the novels’

An-Mei’s mother is evidence of this. For example, when An-Mei details her Grandmothers treatment of her mother it is clear that cultural values have prevented her from achieving full autonomy and thus a full expression of universal human rights. When An-Mei’s mother becomes a concubine following her husband’s death she disgraces her family. An-Mei’s grandmother disowns her daughter because of the shame this brings her family. While An-Mei’s mother’s identity stems from the family, without a husband and then as a fourth wife she brings her family shame. In one scene her mother cuts off a piece of her arm to serve in a soup for An-Mei’s grandmother. While this was done of her own volition, the act of cutting off flesh and mutilating ones body is only acceptable because of the value placed on self-sacrifice for family. Additionally, this practice is only expected of women and is how “daughters honor mothers (Tan,48.)” Later, An-Mei’s mother commits suicide so that An-Mei may live a better life unconstrained by the shame of her mother. Her mother sacrifices herself for her family and loses her right to life so that An-Mei may achieve happiness. The notion of a good mother recurs throughout the story and is almost always in the context of self-sacrifice. Often, the American daughters fail to recognize the sacrifices made by their

In the beginning of the novel, the Aunts of the joy luck club tell Jing- Mei that they have collected money so that she may visit the sisters her mother left behind when she fled Kweilin. Jing- Mei however expresses concern that she does not know her mother. In response, the Aunts describe all of the traits that make her a good mother many of which are values associated with Chinese culture such as “dutiful nature to family (Tan,40.)” Jing- Mei notes that her aunts react so strongly to her worry that she does not know her mother because in Jing- Mei’s relationship with Suyuan they see themselves. By the conclusion of the novel, Jing- Mei is reunited with her lost sisters who were abandoned as babies by her mother and is able to relay to them all of the characteristics of her mother. When Jing- Mei sees that the three sisters together resemble Suyuan, the novel comes to its true conclusion. The real challenge for Jing- Mei has been not to find these long-lost sisters, but to find her inner Chinese identity, and to use that as a bridge to her mother. In finding her sisters, Jing- Mei accomplishes both; and her success serves as a hopeful example for the other characters in the book, as they continue to struggle for closer mother-daughter bonds despite gaps in age, language, and culture. Jing- Mei’s acceptance of