The Joy Luck Club Identity Essay

Many women find that their mothers have the greatest influence on their lives and the way their strengths and weaknesses come together. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, the lives of four Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters are followed through vignettes about their upbringings and interactions. One of the mothers, An-Mei Hsu, grows up away from her mother who has become the 4th wife of a rich man; An-Mei is forced to live with her grandmother once her mother is banned from the house, but eventually reunites and goes to live in the man’s house with her mother. Her daughter, Rose, has married an American man, Ted, but their marriage begins to end as he files for divorce; Rose becomes depressed and unsure what to do, despite

The Joy Luck Club is Amy Tan's first novel. It consists of four sections with sixteen short stories. One of the main issues of the novel is the relationship between Chinese mothers and their Chinese – American daughters. ‘‘Your mother is in your bones.’’ (Tan 1998, 30) There is a cultural chasm between them because of the difference in the way they were brought up and different influences of the environment.

Amy Tan, who wants to understand and figure out her own affiliation between her another mother, wrote The Joy Luck Club. This book explains and uses words to show the differences between the daughters and their mothers by putting in the Chinese culture and the western culture in the article. The Joy Luck Club has four different sections. And they all have common backgrounds but have different meanings behind them.

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

Mostly, Jing-mei 's fears echo those of her peers, the other daughters of the Joy Luck Club members. They have always identified with Americans (Jing-mei also goes by the English name"June") but are beginning to regret having not paid attention to their Chinese history. Her fears also speak to a two-way fear shared by the mothers, who wonder whether, by giving their daughters American opportunities and (the ability to survive with no outside help), they have abandoned them from their Chinese history.

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

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.

The book The Joy Luck Club is a novel written by Amy Tan, who is very famous in writing about mother-daughter relationships. There are four pairs of mothers and daughters whose stories are told in The Joy Luck Club. All of the mothers were born in China and came to America because of some kind of problem, but their daughters were born in the United States. Due to the fact that the daughters were born in the United States, they are extremely Americanized. Consequently, they do not value the Chinese heritage which their mothers valued dearly. As the daughters are growing up, this conflict between them increases. Suyuan Woo and her daughter, June or Jing-mei, two characters from the book, had major conflicts over the Chinese belief system of

    The complexitities of any mother-daughter relationship go much deeper then just their physical features that resemble one another.  In Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, the stories of eight Chinese women are told.  Together this group of women forms four sets of mother and daughter pairs. The trials and triumphs, similarities and differences, of each relationship with their daughter are described, exposing the inner makings of four perfectly matched pairs.  Three generations of the Hsu family illustrate how both characteristics and

In The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, Jing-Mei and her mother have a very rocky relationship. Tan develops a relationship between Suyuan and Jing-Mei that is distant in the beginning due to culture differences and miscommunication, but gradually strengthens with time and understanding. Both of them have different backgrounds and have been influenced by two different cultures. Suyuan grew up in China and behaves according to the Chinese culture and her American-born daughter Jing-Mei is influenced by the American culture that surrounds her and wants to become part of it.  Their relationship is also shaped by the pressure Suyuan puts on Jing-Mei. She wants her to be a perfect

Identity Search Everyone has a different personality, has preferences, and enjoys doing a special hobby or pastime. In the book The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, the young Chinese-American girls make themselves believe they should be different than who they are. The same concept follows with the article “Stop the Absanity” by Taffy Brodesser-Anker about false body imaging. A common theme both pieces of writing share is being true to one’s self. In the article, Anker asks, “Is it time to talk about why we’ve chosen abs as the thing we pick on?”

But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better” (page 132). The Joy Luck Club, assembled by Suyuan, was a group of four Chinese women who celebrate the joys of life with weekly feasts and mahjong games which helped Suyuan to overcome her depression as well as leaving the past behind. Because of her misfortunes she wanted her daughter, Jing-Mei to have a perfect life in America. “My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America” (page 132).