Parental Pressure In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

Further, Tan depicts Jing-me as defiant in the face of her mother’s expectations for her. This defiant attitude can be seen when Jing-me finds out that she will be taking piano lessons from Mr. Chong. She throws a fit and asks her mother “Why don’t you like me the way I am?” (597). While at the piano lessons she further shows her defiance of her mother’s expectations when she learns that she can “be lazy and get away with mistakes, lots of mistakes” (598). Jing-me is upset with her mother for forcing her to take lessons, so she gets back at her by making a minimal effort to learn. Also, Jing-me displays her bold attitude a few days after she completely embarrassed her parents with a miserable performance at a talent-show. For example, she thought that after her poor performance at the talent-show, she “never had to play the piano again” (601). She further shows her defiant attitude when her mother reminds her that it is time to practice. Jing-me replies “I’m not going to play anymore” (601). All of these actions clearly shows Jing-me’s defiant nature, which results in a strained relationship between mother and daughter.

Jing Mei’s mother Ann Mei forced Jing Mei to do tests and pushed her hard to become a prodigy in piano. “She would present new tests, taking her examples from stories of amazing children”(143). Ann Mei placed unreal standards that no child should ever be forced to live up to. My mother never forced me to be a prodigy, but she did push me to do the best I could. She understood that I have limits to my skills and chose not to try and drill in concepts that I was not ready for. Ann Mei on the other hand forced Jing Mei to become the best pianist at a very young age. This type of stress can frustrate the child and pit the child against their parents. It is unhealthy to force these type on kids. The kids will only resent their

Throughout the story, Jing-mei’s feelings toward her mother change in dramatic ways. When Jing-mei was a young girl, she idolized and looked forward to impressing her mother. Eagerly, Jing-mei retorts,

The strong determination that both Jing-Mei and her mother possess lead to two strongly different views on the life Jing-Mei desires to live. Jing-Mei’s mother wants her daughter to be a perfect child and have a successful life. She pushes her to be someone that Jing-Mei has no desire to be. Jing-Mei longs to be an ordinary child and live a normal life. She does not wish to have her mother pushing her to do tasks that are impossible for her. Jing-Mei hates to let her mother down, but she later becomes frustrated and says that she will not allow her mother to transform her. She says that she will be the ordinary child that she dreamed of becoming.

I won't be what I'm not” (Tan 223). She gets the idea that her mother is trying to mold her into something else, that being herself will never be good enough. When Jing-mei had to take a multitude of tests, she “hated the tests, the raised hopes and failed expectations” (Tan 223). Continuously failing must have had a great toll on her self-esteem and worth, causing her to instinctively to think that this bitterness was forced upon by her mother. If Jing-mei had realized that her mother was just trying to bring out the best in her, something that every parent wants, then she’d understand she didn't need to become someone else.

In her Chinese culture, they pushed their children to the extreme in academics, music, or sports. Her mother had always pushed her daughter to find something she was good at. Jing-mei had come to a breaking point after her mother had pushed her past her limit. Jing-mei had told her mother, “You want me to be someone that I’m not!”

Most parents want their children to be happy and successful but with that also comes pressure and too many expectations that is put upon the children. The Joy Luck Club, a fiction novel written in 1989 by Amy Tan demonstrates what leads to children giving up. The book focuses on four Chinese immigrant families who moved from China in the mid 1900s to San Francisco. The book shows different situations where parents, more specifically mothers put superfluous amount of stress and pressure on their daughters. In the book, Amy Tan emphasises that consequent to high pressure and expectations that parents put on their children, children become unmotivated, unsuccessful and fail.

The main character, Jing-Mei is pushed by her mother to become a child prodigy. She is convinced that this is the easiest way to live the “American Dream”. “America was where all my mother’s hopes lay. She had come here in 1949 after losing everything in China: her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls. But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better,”(Tan 3). This shows that Jing-Mei’s mother sacrificed a lot for them to be living in America. Jing-Mei and her mother have a good relationship and love each other very much. After her mother tried and tried again to find something her daughter was good at, it began to drive them apart. ”And the next day I played a game with myself, seeing if my mother would give up on me before eight bellows. After a while I usually counted only one bellow, maybe two at most. At last, she was beginning to give up hope,”(Tan 17). Her mother had pushed her daughter in hopes of making her a prodigy. This was hurtful to their relationship. Jing- Mei felt that her mother did not like her the way she was and wanted to change her into something

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.

Parents always want what is best for their children, regardless of culture or ethnicity. In The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, and in "Life With Father" by Itabari Njeri, the parents express their parental methods upon their daughters. Children will all react differently to their parent's methods, as do Waverly, June, and Itabari, but they still share a common resentment for their parents. It is shown in the two stories how parental methods expressed to children can be misinterpreted, thus influencing the child's behavior.

The Chinese mothers, so concentrated on the cultures of their own, don't want to realize what is going on around them. They don't want to accept the fact that their daughters are growing up in a culture so different from their own. Lindo Jong, says to her daughter, Waverly- "I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents' promise. This means nothing to

It goes without saying that parents want the best for their kids. A common misconception is that Asian parents brutishly force their parentally-defined ideas of success onto their children. This misunderstanding is further made salient by Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. A memoir of her life raising two daughters, she writes about how most Chinese mothers are superior through their “tiger mom” parenting style, one that often lacks nurturing and is sometimes even seen as abuse by their western counterparts. This silly stereotype is, of course, unsurprisingly false, for the majority of Chinese parents. In spite of Chua’s widespread ideas, it’s been revealed that some Chinese parents don't fit the “tiger mom” mold, as seen in The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan. In Tan’s book, renowned for its accurate depiction of Chinese families, four immigrant mothers struggle with the age, circumstance, and cultural gap of raising their American-born daughters. As the story progresses and intricate conflicts, brought from their traditional Chinese heritage meshing with their American daughters’ modern problems, are handled, it is clear to see these mothers are, indeed, not cruel. They simply yearn and strive to resolve these problems to the best of their ability, and to teach their daughters how to be both successful and content. To achieve these goals, the Joy Luck Club mothers seek to instill into their Americanized children three valuable lessons : the importance of taking action, that family deserves sacrifice, and that they all truly just want what's best for their daughters.

Throughout Jing-mei’s life, her and her mother did not seem to connect when it came to culture because they were not open to one another’s thoughts. In the story “Two Kinds,” Jing-mei thinks that Suyuan wants her to be something she is not, but Suyuan just wants her to do well. Because of the pressure from her mother, Jing-mei feels like she will never be good enough. Jing-mei thinks her mother thinks of her as a failure when what Lindo is actually unhappy about is the fact that Jing-mei did not seem to care about being the best she could be or have high hopes for herself. In the story “Best Quality,” Suyuan tells Jing-mei that she thinks differently than everyone else.

The cultural gap itself can contribute to the difference within American and Chinese upbringing and culture. For example, “asian families… tend to place an extraordinary emphasis on the importance of education” because early education in addition to proper education throughout one’s life is immensely significant in Asian culture (Souris 384). This cultural upbringing along with Jing-Mei’s mother’s past would explain the intensity for which Jing-Mei’s mother wanted a prodigy daughter (Xu). In addition, In American society is seemingly more relaxed when it comes to education and skill and focuses more on emotional well being as well as individual passion and desire in a the childhood age. In addition, obedience and

Culture is best described as a common set of core values, traditions, and rituals that a specific group of people share. With that being said, as more and more cultures begin to blend together and migration becomes a larger part of modern life, new cultures are always forming and being adopted. Even though cultures are always changing, they can still be categorized according to two types of culture. The first type of culture is ?high? culture, which refers to a more aesthetic and advanced culture such as that of the Chinese.[endnoteRef:1] ?High? culture is usually characterized by refined and complex values, whereas the second type of dynamic culture, ?low? culture, is sometimes seen as less refined and aesthetic.[endnoteRef:2] In addition, ?low? culture refers to the general life and traditions in countries such as the United States.[endnoteRef:3] Not only are Chinese and American Culture defined in two distinct ways, but they also have completely different views on family, commitment, competitiveness, and much more. With that being said, Amy Tan?s esteemed novel ?The Joy Luck Club,? not only chronicles the struggles of melding traditional American and Chinese views, it also shows how the cultural differences that result lead to miscommunication and separation between the daughters and their mothers. [1: Joel Dubois, ?The Essential Element of Culture,? Arts and Ideas of Asia: Medieval and Modern, 2009,