June's Lack Of Cultural Background In A Joy Luck Club, By Amy Tan

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.

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.

From June’s, or Jing-Mei’s, perspective is an assumed unspoken communication that may never have existed.  "I had always assumed we had an unspoken understanding about these things; she really didn't mean I was a failure, and I really meant I would try to respect her opinions more" (27).  June felt that her mother saw her as a failure, "and after seeing my mother's disappointed face once again, something inside of me began to die" (144).  "I hated the tests, the raised hopes and failed expectations" (144). June began to resent her mother for pushing her so hard in everything she did.  She wanted to give up being a child prodigy.  She wanted Suyuan to love her for who she was not what she had the potential to become. June never had the chance to heal that rift between her mother and herself for her mother died abruptly before they could ever make peace.

“Here is how I came to love my mother.  How I saw her my own true nature.  What was beneath my skin.  Inside my bones.” (Tan 40)

All of the woman who migrated from China all have a curtain pride for their own mothers and cultures cultures respectively. Major acts of pride go into what these woman do while raising their daughters, as they want to push their daughters for success. “What will I say? What can I tell them about my mother? I don’t know anything. . . .” The aunties are looking at me as if I had become crazy right before their eyes. . . . And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant. . . . They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese . . . who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation.” The other mothers are flabbergasted that June does not know that much about her mother. The mothers also have their own pride in their daughters, and all the daughters have been together, so this phrase from June scares the other mothers of what their own daughters might think about them. In Chinese tradition, respecting your mother is very important, due to June being raised in America, she does not realise what she has just proclaimed as bad until the other mothers react to it.

June wants to learn more about her mother and her culture with the added pressure of meeting Suyuan’s lost daughters in China. She starts to embrace the Chinese culture and is excited to eat a traditional Chinese meal, even though she does not get the chance (page 278). She also asks her father more about Suyuan’s time in China and the meaning of her name (page 280). When June finally meets her sisters, they murmur, “‘Mama, Mama’” (page 287). June finally feels a connection with her mother and with her Chinese background. Therefore, June’s character developed because of her mother’s passing.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan follows multiple Chinese-American women who struggle with their self-identity and creating a balance between American and Chinese culture. Because of their immigration and many hardships in life, many of the women feel like they cannot truly tell who they are anymore, and throughout the novel these women are portrayed as ghosts. Ghosts are used to symbolize these women because they share many parallels including being only a remnant of who they once were, or who they could be. Ying-ying St. Clair is one of the women, who has a daughter named Lena St. Clair, she has had a troubled past in China, which has made her lose her fighting spirit, and her spirit in general. Ying-ying is fully aware of her loss of spirit and is embarrassed because she considers ghosts to be shameful and weak, and wants to save her daughter, Lena, from her fate.

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.

This song would play as Jing-Mei “June” Woo’s mother, Suyuan Woo, would make Jing-Mei try different things to see if there is something she is automatically good at. In the book Suyuan is certain her daughter has an unknown talent just waiting to be found for her to be discovered as a prodigy at something. She first tries making June a “Chinese Shirley Temple” putting curls in her hair and making her sing and dance. Next, they tried math, card tricks, head stands and then even predictions. June was not successful at any of them. As each day went by, over time the mom’s confidence decreased that her daughter would discover this hidden expert talent. June got frustrated at having to try all these different things that she wasn’t interested in.

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

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.

History, Culture and Identity of Mothers and Daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club

Throughout The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan inserts various conflicts betweens mothers and daughters. Most of these relationships, already very fragile, become distanced through heritage, history and expectations. These differences cause reoccurring clashes between two specific mother-daughter bonds. The first relationship exists between Waverly Jong and her mother, Lindo. Lindo tries to instill Chinese qualities in her daughter while Waverly refuses to recognize her heritage and concentrates on American culture. The second bond is that of Jing-Mei Woo and her mother, Suyuan. In the beginning of the book Jing-Mei speaks of confusion in her recently deceased mother's actions. The language and cultural barrier presented between Jing-Mei and Suyuan

Conflicts play a crucial role in novels. Without conflict, novels would be uninteresting and very dull. Conflicts are seen in many different forms, as internal conflicts, when a character must deal with private problems, and external conflicts, when a character must deal with problems originating from an external source, like another person or society in general. Some common conflicts seen in other novels are person versus society, as in The Scarlet Letter when Hester is forced to face her mistake of adultery due to the obsession of the unforgiving town. An example of an internal conflict is present within Animal Dreams, when Cody must decide where she belongs and

Interestingly, the narrator's mother does not apply this believe to herself. This demonstrates that she is attached to Chinese tradition culture that her opportunity in life was gone. She could not envision herself moving ahead. The narrator and her mother have similar history; however they went through a difficult time because they did not believe in the same culture. Furthermore, the narrator and her mother did not get along because they were raised