Comparing Joy Luck Club And The Woman Warrior

The Joy Luck Club is the first novel by Amy Tan, published in 1989. The Joy Luck Club is about a group of Chinese women that share family stories while they play Mahjong. When the founder of the club, Suyuan Woo, died, her daughter June replaced her place in the meetings. In her first meeting, she finds out that her lost twin sisters were alive in China. Before the death of Suyuan, the other members of the club located the address of June’s half-sisters. After that, they send June to tell her half-sisters about her mother’s life. In our lives there are events, and situations that mark our existence and somehow determine our life. In this novel, it shows how four mothers and their daughters were impacted by their tradition and beliefs. In the traditional Asian family, parents define the law and the children are expected to follow their requests and demands; respect for one’s parents and elders is critically important. Traditions are very important because they allow us to remember the beliefs that marked a whole culture.

Many women find that their mothers have the greatest influence on their lives and the way their strengths and weaknesses come together. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, the lives of four Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters are followed through vignettes about their upbringings and interactions. One of the mothers, An-Mei Hsu, grows up away from her mother who has become the 4th wife of a rich man; An-Mei is forced to live with her grandmother once her mother is banned from the house, but eventually reunites and goes to live in the man’s house with her mother. Her daughter, Rose, has married an American man, Ted, but their marriage begins to end as he files for divorce; Rose becomes depressed and unsure what to do, despite

The Joy Luck Club is Amy Tan's first novel. It consists of four sections with sixteen short stories. One of the main issues of the novel is the relationship between Chinese mothers and their Chinese – American daughters. ‘‘Your mother is in your bones.’’ (Tan 1998, 30) There is a cultural chasm between them because of the difference in the way they were brought up and different influences of the environment.

Throughout Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club, the reader can see the difficulites in the mother-daughter relationships.  The mothers came to America from China hoping to give their daughters better lives than what they had.  In China, women were “to be obedient, to honor one’s parents, one’s husband, and to try to please him and his family,” (Chinese-American Women in American Culture).  They were not expected to have their own will and to make their own way through life.  These mothers did not want this for their children so they thought that in America “nobody [would] say her worth [was] measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch…nobody [would] look down on her…” (3).  To

 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

Communication between generations has always been an issue and with that, a misunderstanding of the past and culture comes along. In Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, she shows the stories of four Chinese mothers and their American born daughters. Throughout the novel, the characters encounter both external and internal conflicts in order to contrast the different relationships held by the mothers and daughters with their past and where they came from. The mother-daughter pair of Lindo and Waverly Jong shows the gap between the generations very clearly. Everything is different, from language to name to marriage.

The author, Tan, has written the books The Joy Luck Club, and The Kitchen God's Wife. She is Asian-American, her parents are originally from China, but moved to Oakland, California. The audience in Tan's essay is people 20-35 years old who are culturally diverse. Tan focuses on this audience in order reach out to those who are in her past situation. In her house, there were two languages spoken: English and Chinese. Tan knew how to speak

The relationship a mother has with her daughter is one of the most significant relationships either person will possess. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, the stories of four mothers and their respective daughters are established through vignettes, which reveal the relationships between them. Throughout the novel, the mothers and daughters are revealed to be similar, yet different. Lindo and Waverly Jong can be compared and contrasted through their upbringings, marriages, and personalities.

Lena and Ying-Ying from Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club both face injustice in their patriarchal relationships, just as Mariam and Laila from A Thousand Splendid Suns, however on very different terms. Lena, like Amir and Laila, struggles with confrontation and complete deference of others. However, under the influence of her mother, Lena realizes the problematic recurrences in relationship with her husband. Ying-Ying, aware of her daughters submissiveness, must lead Lena to intervention to confront herself and reconnect with her Chinese heritage in order to save her struggling relationships. While Ying-Ying sees the imbalance in Lena and Harold’s relationship as an embodiment of the flaws in her own marriage she reflects on her past and thinks to herself, “So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. The pain that cut my spirit loose. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughters tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose” (Tan, 153). She has sacrificed so much for her daughter, Lena, and accepts her American ways despite the fact that broadens the cultural gap between her Chinese heritage. Ying-Ying already experienced her loss of identity and self through her own marriage because she was unable to be assertive towards her husband. Here, just like Mariam and Hassan in Hosseni’s novels, Ying-Ying gives up her freedom in order for Lena to live a better life than she had. Although Ying-Ying doesn’t give up

The gender expectations have changed over time, In the book “Joy Luck Club” written by Amy Tan many characters are expected to things they did not want to do. This book is about the obstacles of sexism that Jing Mei and her relatives had to go through. But in reality is there more gender expectations now or in the novel? I believe that everyone should be treated equally and should be treated with respect from everyone. Woman in the novel are being segregated more than in real life.

“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking” -Marcus Aurelius. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan revisits the troubles Chinese immigrants faced before coming to America in search of a new life. Each mother in the Joy Luck club recalls her past and the people and items she left behind, along with regrets later regrets. Personal stories and struggles in the novel are similar to real world events that have occurred within the past year.

“They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds “joy luck” is not a word, it does not exist” (Tan 41). In the novel The Joy Luck Club all of the problems that narrators have with their mothers are caused by the fact that they do not completely understand one another’s thoughts. This is most evidently shown with Jing-Mei Woo’s struggle with her mom about her desire and push to make Jing a prodigy, Lena St. Clair’s inability to understand what her mother was trying to say, and Waverly Jong’s not understand why her mother was so active in her chess career.

In a 1992 speech given to the Novel of the Americas Symposium at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Tan says, “there is no unified racial description. Nobody can define cultural identity. There is no consistency in race” (Snodgrass 12).This statement says a lot about Tan and her determination to not be identified as any race. Race has been an issue for her since she was a child and she’s still dealing with being identified as an “Asian writer”. She proved everyone wrong by showing that she is more than an ethnic writer. Her first novel, The Joy Luck Club, published in 1988 and brought the author great victory. The reviews were positive and it became a best-seller in many countries (Huntley 41). The book was based on eight women, 4 mother and daughter duos. The mothers in the book deal with having an American-raised daughter and the struggles they face. The main character, Jing-Mei, takes a trip to China with her father. Her mother has passed away but her lifelong dream of finding her twin daughters never died. Jing-mei’s mother, Suyaun, had twin daughters when she was previously married in China. The twins were older than Jing-mei but Suyaun abandoned them when they were babies. Suyaun was the wife of an officer before marrying Jing-mei’s father. Just by reading this short description of The Joy Luck Club, it’s clear that Tan was inspired by her mother’s early confession of her previous daughters. Jing-Mei comes back to China and decides to gather her mother’s three friends. She ends up creating “The Joy Luck Club” and allows the women to talk with one another about their relationship with their daughters. The book allows young girls to relate to everyday problems girls have with their mothers. The platform Tan created for young women in her writing is what aided in her success. In 1993, The Joy Luck Club went on to become a well-known motion picture ("Daisy Tan Dies at

In The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, the mothers and daughters are able to overcome the common generational barriers created by immigration by communicating through stories. This book preaches an important message of unity and acceptance, much like this image. Before the girls learn about the courage and hardships of their mothers, one of the daughters speaks of the language barrier, “my mother and I spoke two different languages, which we did. I talked to her in English, she answered back in Chinese.” (1).

Marina has published the Daughter-text / Mother-text: Matrilineage in Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club, which discusses the theme of the Joy Luck Club, the story of four Chinese daughters and their mothers, and their mother's marginal position in Chinese