Joy Luck Club Themes Essay

Characterization is a widely-used literary tool in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. Specifically, each mother and daughter is a round character that undergoes change throughout the novel. Characterization is important in the novel because it directly supports the central theme of the mother-daughter relationship, which was relevant in Tan’s life. Tan grew up with an immigrant mother, and Tan expresses the difficulties in communication and culture in the stories in her book. All mothers in the book are immigrants to America, and all daughters grew up living the American lifestyle, creating conflict between the mothers and daughters due to miscommunication. Characterization of the mothers and daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Club creates and

“The Arrival,” by Shaun Tan, is a wordless novel that depicts the experience immigrants go through when vacating their home countries to start new in a different country. Readers can see that on the first page there is a collage of headshots from multiple people of different ethnicity and religion. The first image page of the wordless novel helps viewers get a clearer image of what the novel is about. In “The Arrival,” Shaun Tan depicts the hardships and enjoyment that immigrants experience when moving to a new country, since the piece was written in 2006, there seems to be more hardships than enjoyment when coming to the United States, which means the idea of the United States being a melting pot is flawed.

In the novel, Joy Luck Club, we see Waverly Jong and June Woo’s competitiveness when Waverly becomes a child chess prodigy and June struggles to master the piano. This rivalry reflects how success and worth are depicted in this novel. A mother’s success would be encouraging or coercing their child to master a particular hobby and to improve constantly. A daughter’s worth would be determined by the daughter’s talents, and whether or not the daughter brings a good reputation for the family. We can tell that Lindo Jong was very proud of her daughter Waverly Jong when she was a chess prodigy, competed in different cities, and would bring home a myriad of trophies. Because Lindo was so proud of Waverly, she would brag excessively about her and

First of all, the setting of this novel contributes to the Rivera family’s overall perception of what it means to be an American. To start this off, the author chooses a small American city where groups of Latino immigrants with their own language and traditions, lived together in the same apartment building. All these immigrants experienced similar problems since they moved from their countries. For example, in the novel after every other chapter the author

Whether it is wholesome or tough love, the bond of a mother and daughter can never be broken. “The Joy Luck Club” is the epitome of this notion. The anthology contains a series of sixteen vignettes, four of which belonging to one of each of the four members of The Joy Luck Club. These vignettes cover the perspectives of mothers who immigrated to America from China, along with the flip side point of view, taken over by each of their daughters. In the anthology, Tan reflects on her past life and incorporates it into the book, exploring cultural, relationship, and internal conflicts.

The first issue that many Latino author’s address is the problems in many Latin American countries. In Esperanza Rising Esperanza’s family faces the backlash of the Mexican revolution. Esperanza’s family has land in Mexico which makes them a target for many unhappy citizens in Mexico. Esperanza’s mother has to explain to her that, "the wealthy still own most of the land while some of the poor have not even a garden plot. There are cattle grazing on the big ranches, yet some peasants are forced to eat cats" (Ryan, 25). Eventually Esperanza’s father is murdered by bandit’s and they are forced to leave the dangerous country. Mexico is not the only place with major issues. Young Adult literature often reaches into the historical hardships of other Latin countries, such as the dictators of the Dominican Republican in Julia Alvarez’s novel Before We Were Free. Alvarez talks about the distrust of the police, stating “Back home, [her father] had been tailed by the secret police for months and the family had only narrowly escaped capture their last day on the Island” (Alvarez 233). Young Adult literature reflects this often as a background story, forcing the protagonists into the environment they are in. As well, it frames the families’ mindset and the hardships many have faced before

Immigrating to a new country is not easy; immigrants’ lives become very hard. They are often discriminated against race, nationality or skin color. These problems occur many times in the book Dragonwings. Moon shadow’s family face all these challenge coming to America. They have to suffer many hardships, and they are lonely due the fact that they leave their families back in China. He in his father face multiple difficulties and challenges in the new world they know as the Land of the Golden Mountain. The historical event that is remarkable and important for Chinese people that address this book is the great earthquake of 1906 in San Francisco.

When people struggle to communicate with one another or disagree, the usual response is to ask questions and make an effort to fix the issue. Unfortunately, owning up to responsibility can be much more difficult when the argument is with a close friend or family member. Coming from two time periods, this is a prevalent issue for the women of the Woo family, especially since both individuals are intolerably headstrong and unable to accept humility. Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, displays how years of generational contrasts in American and Chinese values affect June and her mother Suyuan’s relationship, who, despite having little in common and being separated by cultural and language barriers, attempt to slowly rekindle a mutual understanding after Suyuan’s sudden death.

During the 19th century China, poverty and political wars ravaged the lands, and people from all social classes, especially the peasant farmers, struggled to make ends meet. When the Immigration Act of 1965 was passed, the United States of America opened its gates to immigrants from Asia. The Chinese were suddenly granted a new opportunity, and a new wave of immigrants made their journey across the vast Pacific and Indian ocean. Some Chinese managed to return to their homeland, and stories of the new exotic land with chances that can attain “real wealth for a minimum amount of work” sent many to a frenzy to become immigrants.However, following immigrants will experience a different vision of cruelty than what they had expected. The migration

Culture is more than just a practice done at home. It is meant to be a set of laws enforced upon a family to keep peace and harmony. Oddly, it can be a culprit that strains and ruins one’s relationship. In Amy Tan’s, Joy Luck Club, mothers are portrayed to be misunderstanding creatures who struggle to display their love to their daughters. Tan emphasizes the story of four newly-immigrated mothers who are at constant battle with their daughters due to the differing ways that they were raised.

Mother’s Love Moving from hometown to another city is always hard for people, imagine moving to a whole new country, where people speak a different language, different culture and different lifestyle, it will take us years to blend in the new environment, some people won’t blend in forever. In the novel The Joy Luck Club generation gap is a big problem between four mothers and daughters. The author Amy Tan herself is a first generation Chinese American, she was born in Oakland, California, her parents emigrated from China to America two years before she was born. She moved to Santa Clara after spending much of her childhood in the bay area. Sadly Tan

The differences between the novel and movie version of Amy Tan’s famous work, The Joy Luck Club, are subtle. Nevertheless, the ways that the movie used to express the story did allow The Joy Luck Club to relate more to the audiences’ life. The level of success of both the novel and movie, however, still mainly depends on personal preference.

Produced by an Academy-Award winning filmmaker—Oliver Stone and best-selling author—Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club is by far the most compelling film I have ever seen. Now, I know how people say that a motion picture never compares to the actual book. But this movie in particular happens to be co-written by the author herself.

In the movie “The Joy Luck Club”, we learn about the pasts, conflicts, and resolutions of four mothers and four daughters. The mothers lived and grew up in China, while their daughters grew up in America and live in San Francisco with their mothers. It begins with a party celebrating June going to china to see her twin older sisters. She tells about her deceased mother always having high hopes for her and how she believed her mother abandoned her twin sisters as babies, leaving them to die. As the movie goes along it talks about the mother's pasts and their daughter's struggles.

The movie is composed in contemporary San Francisco. An American-born Chinese woman is invited to get together the Joy Luck Club, a weekly group composing of the best three friends of her mother, who has recently died. June always considered her perfectionist mother was disappointed with her.. Now she recognizes that she has two half-sisters still living in China. A visit to them would give to her a chance to pass on her mother's legacy of hope.