Mother-Daughter Relationships In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

The American Literature consists of artists from various cultural and social background who devoted their life in literary works. There are number of female authors who are known for their magnificent writings. Sarah Winnemucca, Zora Neale Hurston and Amy Tan are some of the famous female American authors. They belong to different racial and cultural backgrounds but share a common ground when it comes to expressing their life experience and opinions through their literary art works. Moreover, they are thought to be the public figures who have contributed to American literature over the past decades. The authors mentioned above have their own writing

The first novel of the The Mother-Daughter Book Club series introduces us to a motley crew of four strong willed girls and their mothers who are part of a monthly book club. The mothers come together to form a book club though the girls are not so excited about the idea. Jess is missing her mother so much to care about reading a book, Emma has read practically every book you can think of, Cassidy prefers hockey practice and Megan is more interested in shopping. However, the monthly book club ritual that begins with the reading of Little Women soon becomes a platform where the four girls help each other deal with the challenges of middle school. Taking lessons from Jo March, they deal with a range of issues from first dance fashion fiascos, bullying, secret journals, secret crushes and familial

Jing-mei and her mother have some very good examples of internal conflicts. It was one part of the story when Jing-mei feels sad that she couldn’t live up to be that person that her mother wants her to be. It is showing that Jing-mei feels bad. She’s not living up to the dream that her mother thought up for

Amy tan use motifs in her work to the describe the theme of Joy Luck Club. one of the motifs are mothers and daughters not seeing eye to eye. Like when June and Suyuan Woo have an argument about playing the piano after the tellit show that she embarises her family at. Also when Waverly Jong and An-mei Hsu having an argument about her winning a chess championship and her mother walks around with her and a magazine with her picture on it and saying that she was her daughter and she won the chest championship.

Amy Tan is an American writer who has written several bestselling novels, non-fiction essays, and children’s books. Amy was the second-born out of three children to Chinese immigrants, Daisy and John, who was an electrical engineer and a Baptist minister. She was born in Oakland, California. John, Amy’s father and Peter, Amy’s older brother both died of brain tumors within a month of each other which made her mother decide to move her and her younger brother to New York, Washington, Florida, Germany, Netherlands, and finally to Switzerland, where they eventually settled down and where she graduated high school. After so, they moved back to the United States and they settled in San Francisco. Amy Tan had her fair share of painful life experiences,

For first generation Americans, finding belonging in a new country can feel impossible. They are often caught between the traditions and ideals of the two differing countries. Raising a family in the new home with different values can lead to miscommunications or even a significant disconnect between parents and children. This is modeled well in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, particularly in the relationship between Ying Ying Saint Clair and her daughter Lena. The prejudice Ying Ying Saint Clair feels for American culture causes her to have a difficult time understanding and communicating with her daughter.

The ability to see the world as others do occurs only once. This is before the instance of any stimuli, any thought or experience; before the first breath. Culture is a foundation of beliefs and morals that are specific to one’s ethnicity. This is the distinct quality that everyone has based on their abstract views and varying backgrounds. The foundation of how people identify themselves and others is shaped by their experiences and interactions throughout life. Family and social norms are the two most prominent factors of how perception is influenced by culture.

To begin, the strained relationship between Suyuan and Jing-Mei Woo signifies the misinterpretations that frequently occurred between mother-daughter pairs during the novel. Initially viewed as hypercritical

“The Hero’s Journey” is term for a narrative style that was identified by scholar Joseph Campbell. The narrative pattern would depict a character’s heroic journey, and categorize the character’s experiences into three large sections: departure, which contained the hero’s call to adventure, fulfillment, which consisted of the hero’s initiation, trials, and transformation, and finally the return. The novel The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan investigates the relationship and actions of four Chinese women and their daughters. The character Lindo Jong’s youth in China exemplifies the three part heroic journey in how she leaves the familiar aspects in her life, faces trials in the home of her betrothed, .....

In Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club, the different stories show how the different characters develop and progress. Rose Hsu Jordan begins “Half and Half” as someone who clearly lacks of conviction as she allows everyone but her to make decisions. Throughout “Without Wood”, however, Rose Hsu Jordan begins to learn, with the help of her mother, how to speak up. In both stories, Rose Hsu Jordan’s development transforms her from a timid and passive girl, to an assertive woman who doesn’t allow others to step on her. Nonetheless, this change was brought upon not by an event, but rather, it was brought upon by Rose’s mother. An-Mei is responsible for transforming Rose from a timid and passive woman into one with an actual “voice”.

Lena describes her mother as being very timid and apathetic to her circumstances, especially after she loses a baby. Although she is always technically around, Ying-Ying is a very absent mother to Lena. Lena realizes this upon observing the life of her neighbor, a girl about her age named Teresa, who comes from a loud Italian family. Lena believes that Teresa’s mother is going to kill her, as they are always yelling at each other. However, upon talking to Teresa, Lena finds out that they yell at each other so much because Teresa can be reckless, and her mother cares about her well being. Says Lena, “‘Won’t she be mad when she finds you?’ ‘Nah, she’ll just be glad I’m not dead or something’”(114). . In observance of this situation, Lena begins to wonder how Teresa thinks of her. She says: “Maybe she had listened through the walls and heard nothing, the stagnant silence of our unhappy house” (114). Lena is associating the loudness of her neighbor’s home with the love she expects from her own mother, and the silence of her house so strongly opposes that which she expects. This stark contrast of home lives showcases how different cultures approach motherhood, which really reinforces the idea of being American versus being Chinese that is explored so much in this novel. Lena desperately wants her mother to understand the expectations associated with motherhood in America, and doesn’t understand why her relationship with her mother is so much more broken than her peers’ relationships. Without these expectations from both Lena and Ying-Ying about how it is acceptable to mother, their relationship would have endured significantly less

Research shows that up to 70% of people who have gone through something traumatic, have shown positive psychological growth in their lives (Gregoire). Life after trauma can be hard to regain due to the instability we experience throughout that hard time in our lives. But having a strong, and satisfying relationship or relationships can help to bring people to peace in a slightly more uncomplicated way. This example of dealing with grief is brought to attention in Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club. Due to the turbulent times in Shanghai, China, and then coming together in San Francisco, California, these four women and their daughters rely on each other to get through it all. Each conflict the characters go through, relates back to how they

“Communication is the key to a successful relationship, attentiveness, and consistency. Without it, there is no relationship,” (Bleau). The Joy Luck Club is a novel written by Amy Tan. Set in the twentieth century, this novel depicts the life of four Chinese immigrant women escaping their past and their American-grown daughters. The novel reveals the mothers’ hardship-filled past and motivations alongside with the daughters’ inner conflicts and struggles. Throughout the entire novel, the mothers and daughters face inner struggles, family conflict, and societal collision. The divergence of cultures produces tension and miscommunication, which effectively causes the collision of American morals, beliefs, and priorities with Chinese culture which

In Obasan, although many characters try to forget their past, characters like Aunt Emily give the Japanese-Canadians hope. Her hard work and perseverance for her heritage lead to true results. People like her formed the Co-operative Committee of Japanese Canadians who sent a formal appeal that stated, “the deportation of Canadians of Japanese racial origin are wrong and indefensible . . .” (Kogawa 297). This appeal lead to reinstatement of citizenship for Japanese-Canadians and a formal apology from the Canadian government. Throughout the novel The Joy Luck Club, Jing-Mei Woo struggles with her sense of identity and belonging in a community as she is often embarrassed of her heritage, and prefers to live her life in the shadows. However, at the end of the book, Jin-mei finds peace when she seeks her roots and sisters in China. She finally finds her inner Chinese that she described is “in your blood waiting to be let go” (Tan 306). This shows that although immigrants of the time period often struggled with self identity, deep down they wanted to find acceptance in their

Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club is an amazing representation of what Chinese immigrants and their families face. The broad spectrum of the mothers’ and daughters’ stories all connect back to a couple of constantly recurring patterns. These patterns are used to show that how the mothers and daughters were so differently raised affected their relationships with each other, for better and for worse.