External Conflicts In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

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.

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

Traditions, heritage and culture are three of the most important aspects of Chinese culture. Passed down from mother to daughter, these traditions are expected to carry on for years to come. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, daughters Waverly, Lena, Rose and June thoughts about their culture are congested by Americanization while on their quests towards self-actualization. Each daughter struggles to find balance between Chinese heritage and American values through marriage and professional careers.

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 ‘Joy Luck Club’ was formed by four Chinese women who moved to the US in an effort to follow the American dream just like many others. Every week they met to play mahjong and tell stories to one another. What sets these women apart from the typical immigration story, is that each of them went through agonizing experiences before moving to the US. Because of their past they all wish to raise their children without the mistakes and faults that they committed, but history inevitably repeats itself through their daughters. The mothers’ experiences have a common theme of peril and portrayal as victims and finally success because their daughters are happy with their lives.

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 Jong and Waverly can be compared and contrasted through their upbringings, marriages, and personalities.

Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan offers some insight into the lives of Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters. Though the book provides the stories of four very different families, there are noticeable repetitions of the same themes and problems between them all. Tan shows recurring themes in all the families in order to show the similar struggles that all Chinese-American families, such as the one she grew up in, face.

The common theses of Amy Tan’s work include hope, loss, mother-daughter relationships, failure, and success. Amy Tan is extremely effective in connecting with the reader through themes and lessons. The prominent theme of mother-daughter relationships is evident in The Joy Luck Club because “[her] mother believed you could be anything you want in America” (Tan 132). The effect and influence of mother-daughter relationships is evident in The Joy Luck Club because it demonstrates the formation of the American voice by expressing the deep connection intertwined between four women and their daughters that were born in America. In the novel, Aunti An-Mei hoped that “in America, [she] will have a daughter just like [her]. But over there nobody will say her worth is measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch. Over there nobody will look down of her, because I will make her speak only perfect American English” (Tan 17). This quote encompasses hope for a new life in America that will provide an opportunity for her daughter to fulfill her own dreams and goals for the new future ahead in America. This quote also demonstrates the theme of mother-daughter relationships by making a point about wanting the best for her daughter in America in every

Chinese and American cultures and societies have many differences and similarities seen in Chinese-American children. An example of this can be seen in the realistic fiction novel, The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan. Happiness is described in many ways, but as many things are described, 'beauty (happiness) is in the eye of the beholder.' Tan writes sixteen short stories to exemplify the differences in happiness between Chinese and American cultures. This is displayed in The Joy Luck Club with short stories detailing the lives of four Chinese-American daughters trying to define their own idea of happiness.

In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Jing-Mei (June) Woo, having neglected her Chinese heritage for the majority of her life, struggles to reconcile both of her backgrounds. As a Second-Generation American, June understands that being Chinese is a big part of her identity, but being an American also takes her attention. Still, the death of her mother propels her on a journey of self-discovery that includes bridging the gap between the past and the present as well as the gap between her Chinese and American identities.While Jing-Mei Woo struggles to incorporate a new lifestyle that respects her Chinese ancestry as well as her new American identity, she finds her Chinese heritage is an integral part of her life.

Different themes in the book Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, feed into the reasons as to why many versatile readers have interests in this novel. It captures the hearts of the young and old, American or non-American, and even the immigrants who seek for someone that understands them. The novel portrays four Asian women and their adult Asian-American daughters as they struggle to find themselves in America. The older generation seeks to find their old traditions, customs, and character amongst their daughters who have become clashed with American culture. And the daughters try to seek their identity and deal with internal

The novel, The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, shows a realistic illustration of the relationships between Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters. The four mothers: Lindo, An-Mei, Ying-Ying, and Suyuan had all experienced life-changing events before immigrating to America which forever changed their perspectives of how to raise their daughters. Their four daughters: Rose, Lena, Waverly, and Jing-Mei are all Americans who adopted a different culture and tradition from their mothers. Consequently, the conflict between mothers and daughters increased because of cultural differences, lack of communication, and the mothers’ perspective of raising daughters. The relationship between Lindo and Waverly is a prime example in the novel that

Curley’s wife had a dream that she was not able to fulfil because of The Great Depression, her marriage to Curley and her mother that was against her becoming an actress. When Curley’s wife finds Lennie in one of the stalls, she speaks to him about her dream of becoming an actress that she could not achieve as a result of her strict mother that did not permit for her to leave home at such a young age to become an actress. She married Curley thinking that she could fulfil her dream afterwards and live happily, but her dream cannot be fulfilled because of her husband that treats her like a property unless she finds freedom from her controlling husband. Curley’s wife believes that if her mother agreed to her of becoming an actress her life would

In this story, Waverly meets her mother, Lindo, at a restaurant for lunch and tries to find a way to tell Lindo about her decision to marry her boyfriend Rich. Lindo had never

In Amy Tan's novel, The Joy Luck Club talks about the many mother-daughter relationships between the people in the story, relationships between spouses, their friends, and even their enemies. These relationships ,in the largest probability,are different aspects of the relationship that Amy Tan had with her mother, and other parts are just things that she made up. Therefore, Amy Tan believes that the effects of cultures and tradition between a family can cause burdens and can cause the whole family to fall apart.