Summary Of Amy Tan's 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.

   Each person reaches a point in their life when they begin to search for their own, unique identity. In her novel, Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan follows Jing Mei on her search for her Chinese identity – an identity long neglected.

Many times plot development is thought of as a key detail in keeping a story organized, while others would say that plot structure tends to add too much order to a piece of work and hinder the reader from exploring true creativity. A great example of these two contrasting ideas is illustrated in Amy Tan’s well-known novel “The Joy Luck Club”. Although some could argue that there is no definite plot structure portrayed at all within the book, this is not true. A slight plot lies within each individual short story. While there might not be an overall rising and falling action connected throughout the novel, an exposition, climax, and resolution are clearly illustrated in each story.

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

There is a common theme of hope throughout the stories of The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. Even in the face of immeasurable danger and strife, the mothers and daughters in the book find themselves faithful in the future by looking to the past, which is only helped by the format of Tan’s writing. This is shown specifically in the stories of Suyuan and Jing-Mei Woo, Lena and Ying-Ying St. Clair, and Lindo and Waverly Jong. The vignette structure of The Joy Luck Club allows the stories to build on one another in a way that effortlessly displays both the happy and dark times in each mother’s life, which lets their experiences act as sources of background and guidance to their daughters in times when they need it most.

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.

 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

“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.

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

Hidden Intentions Behind Miscommunication In this passage of “The Voice from the Wall” from The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan explores how language and miscommunication impacts lives of women, mainly the relationship between Lena and her mother. Communication is the foundation of a strong bond between people. Therefore the inability to communicate properly with one another can create misunderstandings and obscure people’s true intentions.

But the main problem between mothers and daughters in Amy Tan's novels is the lack of communication. As will be discussed below, mothers usually have some terrible hidden secret, something that even her closest relatives ignore. In "The Joy Luck Club" is the fact that Suyuan Woo had been formerly married and had two lost children in China in The Kitchen's God Wife, we have the same again; and, finally, in The Hundred Secret Senses, the father is the one who had a secret past life, but here also the relationship between mother and daughter are somewhat problematic. Olivia is not very close to her mother, who used to care more about finding an exotic partner than for her children.

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

As she ran to her to beg her wish, she saw the Lady drop her clothes and turn into a man. When in retrospect of this event, the mother says she forgot how she was found, what she wished for, or what girl they had found, because it had not been the one that had fallen into the lake. This event led to the loss of her individuality, and in this chapter she was even told, “ ‘Haven’t I taught you- that it is wrong to think of your own needs? A girl can never ask, only listen” (Tan, 70). Those words taught her that she should not live how she desires, but how she is told, which leads to her point of view being that of someone who is oppressive over customs and tradition. On the other side, Lena’s point of view in the story is very different from her mother’s. While Ying-Ying is at a loss for individuality, Lena is always fearing that the worst will occur. Lena is very self-conscious and unsure, leading her to not be sure in her marriage and in other aspects of her life. As a young child, she was always immensely struck by the death of her younger brother and Arnold, who she believed she killed, leading her to believe they are being

This passage is adapted from Wayson Choy’s ‘The Jade Peony’ and portrays the fear of a young boy who has recently lost his mother. The reader is able to infer the situation from the passage despite it not being clearly mentioned. The reader infers that the passage is about a juvenile boy who sits beside his dying mother and is then taken care of by family friends, predominantly the Chins.