The Joy Luck Club By Amy Tan

There is a linguistic gap between the mothers, who are the first generation of Chinese immigrants, and their American-born daughters. The mothers speak only fragments of English and their daughters speak little or no Chinese at all. So the communication often becomes a matter of translations and leads to misunderstandings. The first misunderstanding with translation is shown when Jing-mei tries to explain the significance of the club’s name,

Four Chinese mothers have migrated to America. Each hope for their daughter’s success and pray that they will not experience the hardships faced in China. One mother, Suyuan, imparts her knowledge on her daughter through stories. The American culture influences her daughter, Jing Mei, to such a degree that it is hard for Jing Mei to understand her mother's culture and life lessons. Yet it is not until Jing Mei realizes that the key to understanding who her

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.

Communication between generations has always been an issue and with that, a misunderstanding of the past and culture comes along. In Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, she shows the stories of four Chinese mothers and their American born daughters. Throughout the novel, the characters encounter both external and internal conflicts in order to contrast the different relationships held by the mothers and daughters with their past and where they came from. The mother-daughter pair of Lindo and Waverly Jong shows the gap between the generations very clearly. Everything is different, from language to name to marriage.

Amy Tan’s ,“Mother Tongue” and Maxine Kingston’s essay, “No Name Woman” represent a balance in cultures when obtaining an identity in American culture.  As first generation Chinese-Americans both Tan and Kingston faced many obstacles. Obstacles in language and appearance while balancing two cultures. Overcoming these obstacles that were faced and preserving heritage both women gained an identity as a successful American.

In “Mother Tongue,” Amy Tan an American writer, shares her experience growing up with the family where no one speaks perfect English, and how it affected her education and her life. As the second generation of Chinese immigrants, Tan faces more problems than her peers do. Her mother, who speaks limited English needs Tan to be her “Translator” to communicate with the native English speakers. Tan states, “I was ashamed of her English” (2). Her mother is like a burden to her, at least in Tan’s early years. But the cultural conflict she becomes the theme of her writing and it is under this situation she wrote many novels and essays including “Mother Tongue.”

Over there nobody will look down on her, because I will make her speak only perfect American English.  And over there she will always be too full to swallow any sorrow!  She will know my meaning because I will give her this swan- a creature that became more than what was hoped for.”  (Tan 1)  The culture in China the mothers of Joy Luck dealt with was unlike anything their daughters could ever imagine or appreciate. Between the mothers Lindo, Suyuan, An-mei and Ying-ying, the Chinese culture forced them into being married by a matchmaker, giving up babies, witness desperate attempts to save loved ones, and having an abortion.  In many ways the Chinese culture scared each woman, although they were proud of their heritage, their daughters deserved better.  These four mothers had very high hopes for the better lives that they wanted to give their daughters by raising them in America.  They didn’t like or want to have their daughters looked down upon, just because they were Chinese women.  From each of their own experiences, they learned that they wanted to improve the lives of their following generation.

Mother Tongue is a story that describes how Amy Tan’s mother was treated unfairly because of her “broken English”. As the second generation of Chinese immigrants, Tan faces more problems than her peers do. Her mom, who speaks “limited” English, needs Tan to be her “translator” in order to communicate with the native English speakers. Tan has felt ashamed of her mother “broken” language at first. She then contemplates her background affected her life and her study. However, she changes her thought at the end since she realizes things behind language might be more valuable than language itself sometimes. Through the various different literary devices and rhetorical strategies such as the ethos, pathos, and logos appeals, as well as a

Culture defines humanity. Culture makes humans different than any other living organism ever known. Culture is what makes humans unique, and yet culture is easily the most misunderstood characteristic of individuals. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan develops the theme of incomplete cultural understanding leads to an inability to communicate one’s true intentions through juxtaposition and conflict between mothers and daughters and their cultures.

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.

Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker expresses prominent themes of language and racial identity. Chang-Rae Lee focuses on the struggles that Asian Americans have to face and endure in American society. He illustrates and shows readers throughout the novel of what it really means to be native of America; that true nativity of a person does not simply entail the fact that they are from a certain place, but rather, the fluency of a language verifies one’s defense of where they are native. What is meant by possessing nativity of America would be one’s citizenship and legality of the country. Native Speaker suggests that if one looks different or has the slightest indication that one should have an accent, they will be viewed not as a native of

“Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan and the text by Diana Eades focus specifically on the form of language used and the discrimination it entails. Amy Tan describes the language used by Daisy Li as “broken or fractured English” (Tan, A, 1990). This is an example of language discrimination as it criticises and condemns the variation or form of English spoken by Li, which is Chinese-English. This language discrimination is also prominent in the experience of Daisy Li conversing with the stockbroker in New York, as she forces her daughter to speak for her. This is due to the certain limitations accompanied with her particular form of English.

Her most recent trip to Berlin was not pleasant because she felt out of place. She felt incompetent because she could not understand street signs in Germany. In addition, the culture and the food were unfamiliar. Her grandfather on her dad’s side immigrated to the US from German in the World War II and never visited German afterward. She felt that she might be influenced by his unpleasant experience of his original country. Sue also shared her limited experience with the Chinese people over her high school and graduate school. She had a Chinese classmate in high school whose parents owned a restaurant. Her classmate was born in the US and had no accent. In graduate school, Sue had a classmate who came from China. Sue had little trouble understanding her English. Sue feels interaction with people of another culture at a personal level helped her to know that every individual is different even though they may look similar. Although she did encounter some challenging foreigners, she understands it is not an issue of a certain ethnic group but a general human

Returning to the U.S. at age four, learning English proved easy—I had already lived extensively in Beijing, where a child’s sponge-like brain quickly absorbed Chinese. However, high school exposed how unremarkable I was in any language despite my aptness in both. Thus, my dedication to debate stemmed logically from a desire to grasp in English the mastery that eluded me of my Asian dialect. Children wielding words like weapons and brandishing ideas like sabers enchanted me. I became drunk on the successes of my novice year, but my

Language is one of the many things covered in the book as the mothers in the book tend to have a language barrier. The mothers started off in a country where they didn’t speak the common language. One of the mothers, Lindo Jong, says that, “…I tried to get a job as a salesgirl, but you had to know English for that.” She says this as she tries to find a job in a country she had recently moved to. This language barrier continues even when she finds a job, “…She picked up one of the strips of paper and read it aloud, first in English… Then she translated in Chinese.” The problem that Lindo Jong faces isn’t just in English; she also faces this problem with her future husband as he spoke Cantonese and she spoke Mandarin Chinese: “So we were shy at first, your father and I, neither of us able to speak to each other in our Chinese dialects.” Ultimately, the language barrier helps her get engaged to her future husband: “I don’t know this word ‘spouse.’ Tonight I will look in my dictionary. Then I can tell you the meaning tomorrow.” The mothers aren’t the only ones who have to deal with a language barrier. One of the daughters, Jing-mei Woo, experiences this when she goes to China to meet her half-sisters, “Aiyi and my father speak the Mandarin dialect from their childhood, but the rest of the family speaks only the Cantonese of their village.”. She as well states that, “I understand only Mandarin but can’t speak it that well.” This language barrier extends to both the mothers and