How Does Amy Tan Use Feminism In The Joy Luck Club

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.

Furthermore, the author explores the tone of the novel by providing specific details. In An-mei's childhood story, the author chooses to describe the pain An-mei feels as the soup pours over her by providing details of the twinge. She describes it as "the kind of pain [specially] terrible that a little child should never remember it" and how it still remains "in [An-mei's] skin's memory" (Tan 39). By depicting these details of the pain, Tan expresses the feeling of misery An-mei feels, which appends to the melancholy tone. Additionally, in the story of Ying-ying's first marriage, the author presents explicit details of the emptiness Ying-ying feels by portraying details of her as "a tiger that neither pounce[s] nor lay[s] waiting between the trees" and "an unseen spirit" (Tan 285). This emptiness Ying-ying feels seems to indicate the melancholy tone that appears noticeable in the novel. Clearly, the details Amy Tan chooses to describe in the novel seem to specify the somber tone.

 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

    The complexitities of any mother-daughter relationship go much deeper then just their physical features that resemble one another.  In Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, the stories of eight Chinese women are told.  Together this group of women forms four sets of mother and daughter pairs. The trials and triumphs, similarities and differences, of each relationship with their daughter are described, exposing the inner makings of four perfectly matched pairs.  Three generations of the Hsu family illustrate how both characteristics and

In the novel The Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan, there are several stories that intertwine into one novel. Each of the stories takes place China where the roles and the actions of woman are vastly different compared to American tradition. In the different stories, they all are about different mothers and daughters. Throughout the book, the reader can see the development in each relationship between mother and daughter with their conflicting backgrounds from China to America.

The novel, The Joy Luck Club describes the life of four mothers: Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair and their four daughters: Jing-mei "June" Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Waverly Jong, and Lena St. Clair. All four of these families fled China in the 1940s and tried to retain and maintain their culture and heritage. All of the four daughters are very Americanized and the mothers try to show and teach each of their daughters a little about the chinese culture. All these mothers hope to give their daughter strength, respect for herself, and to create a strong bond and relationship between themselves. Tan gives us something to relate to by telling us the story of Chinese women and their daughters. The all may

“I will tell her at eighteen the prettiness drained from my cheeks. That I thought of throwing myself in the lake like the other ladies of shame. And I will tell her of the baby I killed because I came to hate this man so much.” (P.248) After knowing her husband left her, Ying-ying aborts the baby in her own womb due to her hatred and sees the baby as her husband’s leftover in her life, regardless that it’s her own blood and flesh. She turns to her black tiger side, hides her true self and feels nothing toward killing her own baby.

As she recalls back on this time by telling her daughter what she calls her Kweilin story, Suyuan describes her feeling during this horrible time as “And inside I was no longer hungry for the cabbage or the turnips of the hanging rock garden. I could only see the dripping bowels of an ancient hill that might collapse on top of me. Can you imagine how it is, to want to be neither inside nor outside, to want to be nowhere and disappear?” (22) At this point in her life Suyuan was separated from her husband who is in the military and eventually is forced to abandon her two young daughters. This aspect of Suyuan’s life parallels the life of Amy Tan’s mother. Daisy tan was also married to a military man during the Chinese Civil War and like Suyuan was forced to abandon her two daughters in Shanghai. This was an experience that would affect her mother for the rest of her life and a story she would continue to tell and never forget. The life of Amy Tan is also a parallel to the life of Jing-Mei Woo of “June”. As a young girl June was forced to play the piano and practice constantly to become the best like Amy Tan was as a child. Along with playing the piano Suyuan also had high expectations for June as far as her future. She wanted her daughter to be the best in her class and go off to medical school to become a well educated doctor, the same expectation’s Amy Tan’s mother had for her. Both daughters decided to follow their dreams and

After the death of her husband, Mother struggles to keep her family together by providing the support and guidance they need, and encouraging them to use good judgment and think of the family as a whole before making their decisions. As the family faces various obstacles, each seemingly more severe than the last, Mother begins

    Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club is a novel that deals with many controversial issues. These issues unfold in her stories about four Chinese mothers and their American raised daughters. The novel begins with the mothers talking about their own childhood’s and the relationship that they had with their mothers. Then it focuses on the daughters and how they were raised, then to the daughters current lives, and finally back to the mothers who finish their stories. Tan uses these mother-daughter relationships to describe conflicts of history, culture, and identity and how each of these themes are intertwined with one another through the mothers and

Unfortunately, with more children on the way, the mother could not focus solely on her oldest daughter anymore, though she missed the times they used to have. For example, towards the end of the story, the mother realizes that her daughter, who was usually timid and soft spoken, actually loves to be on stage and makes success with her comedic talent and

Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club, portrays four different mother-daughter journeys where they all struggle to learn and appreciate the cultural differences between their generations. Among the four mother-daughter relationships and history in the novel, Lindo and Waverly Jong share a unique way of showing affection for one another. Lindo has a past that heavily affects the way she views her daughter’s happiness; however, Waverly struggles in understanding her mother’s message and misinterprets it as dislike and hatred. Tan lucidly depicts this mother-daughter pair’s journey together through misinterpretations, history, and appreciation for one another.

Lena and Ying-Ying’s relationship is shaped by the lessons Ying-Ying learned as a result of her own mother’s teachings and the

Amy Tan is an American Born Chinese, daughter of immigrants, and her family shares many features with the families depicted in her novels. Tan's novels offer some glimpses of life in China while developing the themes of mother-daughter relations, cultural adaptation and "women with a past".  Tan’s novels share many themes and elements, but this paper will focus mainly on two episodes of the novel The Joy Luck Club: "The Joy Luck Club" and "Waiting Between the Trees"; and will make references to The Kitchen's God Wife and The Hundred Secret Senses.

Jing-mei’s inability to connect with her mother arises from her upbringing. Mrs. Woo pushed Jing-mei to extremes with her parenting and failed to realize the lasting trauma it had on her daughter. Jing-mei as a fragile child wants nothing more than for her “mother and father [to] adore [her]” (233). The developing girl is looking for acceptance through her parents, but Mrs. Woo does not understand the positive reinforcement required in those early stages of development. Instead