Culture In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

I think to myself what if I had a fight with my mother? What if, the fight, I was in trouble? What would I do? After the chapter “ Rules of the Game ”, I think that I have a good idea on what Waverly will do next.

The American voice is the capability to renovate and challenge stereotypes of America through copious amounts of literature. The American voice is incredibly unparalleled because of the tremendous sacrifices, tragedies, and challenges authors have endured and conquered. The events that are formative to the American voice are the differences and uniqueness between America and other foreign countries. The people that formulate the American voice are American writers that express their thoughts, feelings, and decisions through poems, short stories, and novels. The American voice was formed by the diversity of people and the struggles they overcame; therefore, hope and loss are common themes throughout the creation of the

“A true relationship is two imperfect people refusing to give up on each other” - Unknown. Relationships are never perfect, there are always a few bumps down the road. This goes for any relationship between boyfriend, girlfriend, brother, sister, husband, wife, etc. Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club brings to light the imperfections of family dynamics. This imperfect relationship focuses on the struggles between mothers and daughters. The broken relationships invite readers to question their own relationships, but also see how they relate to the relationships of The Joy Luck Club. Tan uses animate and inanimate objects to express the love and hate in one’s relationship, even if it’s through wobbly furniture, a jade pendant, or a

Amy Tan’s “The Joy Luck Club” is a novel written in various short stories between four immigrant Chinese mothers and their four Chinese-American born daughters. The mother’s represent their heritage, tradition, culture, and native tongue. Their daughters; however embody America and its culture, along with language. Each mother and daughter share the emotional feeling of cultural separation between themselves and their relationship with each other. With their cross-cultural relationship, the daughters are at a stance with their mother, her upbringing, and wisdom. Through the mother’s stories, Amy Tan convey’s cross-cultural relationships amongst the mothers’ and daughters through symbolism and anecdotes. By facing disadvantages each mother learns to become strong through their own struggle and have become protective of their daughters from pain that they had endured in China. Although, with the daughters being brought up in a cross-cultural environment, primarily American culture, they ironically mistake their mother 's’ guidance and love as judgement. They feel pressured and criticized by their mothers and correlate it as an inability to understand the American Culture.

Different races, ages, and cultures determine the way people interrupt concepts. In The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan, shows the cultures an interpretations of the mothers and daughters. Asian mothers and Asian-American daughters understand and see themes and concepts in distinct ways.

The Joy Luck Club is a representation of the persistent tensions and powerful bonds between mother and daughter in a Chinese American society.  The book illustrates the hardships both the mother and daughters go through in order to please the other.  Also, it shows the troubles the daughters face when growing up in two cultures.  This book reveals that most of the time mothers really do know best.

In her novel The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan tells of the lives of four Chinese immigrant mothers, their hopes, their dreams and the way each of their daughters feel about their mother's lives.  Mother-daughter relationships are the basis for the entire story.  Tan shows the hardships each mother experiences as a child and young adult, and how they all want better lives for their daughters.  She shows the struggles between the mothers and the daughters;  these struggles result from many different things, from the cultural gap, to dreams and goals that may have been set too high.  Each daughter knows her mother means well, but this does not make the battles any

            Nearly every mother and daughter in America has had some kind of struggle where the mother wants one thing, but the daughter wants another.  There's nothing different in "Two Kinds".  At first when Jing-Mei's mother comes up with a plan to make her a prodigy, Jing-Mei is excited and enjoys the attention her mother bestows upon her.  Later on, she is not so happy, and she wishes her mother would just leave her alone to be her mediocre self.  The reader gets this idea when she says, " . . . in the beginning I was just as excited as my mother, maybe even more so."(Tan  491).  Everything began to change when Jing-Mei failed, yet again, in her attempt at becoming a prodigy and,

In order to demonstrate the communication barrier that is created at the fault of immigration, Tan showcases different sets of values between the mothers and their daughters through incomprehensible interactions. An example is when An-Mei and Rose were discussing about the latter’s failing marriage. Rose was telling her mother that, “‘there is no hope. There’s no reason to keep trying’”( Tan 139). Yet, An-Mei retaliates that, “‘this is not hope. Not reason. This is [Rose’s] fate. This is [her] life, what [she] must do’”(Tan 139). This interaction shows the different mindset they have on this situation. Rose thinks the marriage is a lost cause and that there is nothing she can do about it. In contrast, An-Mei thinks this is something she must face and control to manifest her own destiny. An-Mei’s mentality is based upon her own

In her novel about cultural collision, Tan used Jing-Mei’s responses to depict the different sides of the two generations, Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters. To clarify, Jing-Mei voices for the concerned mothers (as she speaks for her dead mother) and also represents the American-raised daughters (as she is one of them). Towards the end of the first story on page 40, Jing-Mei said, “What will I say? What can I tell them about my mother? I don’t know anything…They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when

The Joy Luck Club is Amy Tan’s first novel that is a tribute to several generations and different cultural connections. Tan has written: “To my mother / and the memory of her other / You asked me once / what I would remember. / This, and much more.” The Joy Luck Club is set primarily in modern- day San Francisco’s popular Chinatown, but much of the book occurs in flashbacks of the mothers’ lives in China. While and after reading this book, you can ask yourself many questions that could spark up an evolving conversation like for example, “Throughout The Joy Luck Club, characters think and communicate using stories. Why might they choose to stories instead of direct statements?” This question is a great conversation starter about the book in

This response deals with the children of immigrants. The Joy Luck Club mothers shared the same desire for their daughters which was to live the American dream and be successful. The mothers wanted their daughters to be Chinese but the girls were just too Americanised. When Waverly was worried that she might not be let back into the country following her trip to China, her mother Lindo scoffed that only her skin and hair were Chinese, inside she is all American-made. I have decided to look at an article on present day first generation North Americans of Asian descent to see if the experiences of these children of immigrants are reflected in the Joy Luck Club.

How many English’s do you speak? Do you notice when speaking to strangers or at work that you actually speak differently than you would to your close family members? Meet Amy Tan, she is known for her book called The Joy Luck Club (1989). Tan has also been featured in several other magazines and she has authored Children’s books as well.

The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan, has many stories within the actual book that describe the relationships between the four Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters. The mothers and daughters hold weekly parties where they play games and enjoy each others company. “And each week, we could hope to be lucky. That hope was our joy. And that's how we came to call our little parties Joy Luck.”(pg.25) However, Jing-mei “June” Woo, the main character, replaced her mother’s seat after her untimely death. All of the characters have truly captivating stories, but June specifically tells many stories eventually leading up to realizing that she is Chinese and that she should embrace it despite being American-born. This novel is truly mesmerizing