Dreams Of Joy Analysis

Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club and Lisa See’s novel Dreams of Joy focus on the dynamics and nature of the relationships between Chinese immigrant mothers and their American born daughters. The mothers in both novels represent the culture and the mother tongue. All the mothers’ stories, which took place in Chine, were tragedies. However, in Amy Tan’s novel the daughters embody America, its language and culture. Respectively each mother from The Joy Luck Club feels pain from the cultural separation between herself and her daughter. In Lisa See’s novel Dreams of Joy it is the daughter that suddenly wants to reconnect with her Chinese roots, even though she is an American born. Nevertheless, the pain from both emotional and physical separation

The parents do everything they can for their children, thus the children are supposed to be grateful. In the mind of the mother the daughter should cherish the hard-gained chance and practice hard. Contrasting this typical Chinese idea, the Americans tend to believe that since the parents have brought their children into this world, they do not owe anything to their parents. This shows the typical clash between the collective and the individualistic types of culture. The mother’s traditional views are that daughters should be obedient. She wants her daughter to have a Chinese character in American circumstances. Language is also an issue in both novels. Linguistic barriers have triggered many misunderstandings between the mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club. Furthermore, the language in Dreams of Joy becomes necessary if not lifesaving. In Lisa See’s novel, Joy does not speak Chinese, nor does she know the local dialects. Upon her arrival in Red China, she is being kept under close surveillance. Since English language and everything western has been banned from Red China, learning the language becomes necessary for Joy’s survival besides being her way of