The Joy Luck Club Research Paper

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.

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,

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.

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.

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.

In the novel The Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan, there are several stories that intertwine into one novel. Each of the stories takes place China where the roles and the actions of woman are vastly different compared to American tradition. In the different stories, they all are about different mothers and daughters. Throughout the book, the reader can see the development in each relationship between mother and daughter with their conflicting backgrounds from China to America.

The Joy Luck Club finishes with the story of Lena. Lena is the American born daughter of immigrant Ying-ying, and she is married to Harold. Unlike Lindo, her marriage was not arranged; however, her marriage fits the recurring theme of toxicity within relationships of opposing sexes. Similar

The relationship a mother has with her daughter is one of the most significant relationships either person will possess. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, the stories of four mothers and their respective daughters are established through vignettes, which reveal the relationships between them. Throughout the novel, the mothers and daughters are revealed to be similar, yet different. Lindo and Waverly Jong can be compared and contrasted through their upbringings, marriages, and personalities.

Jing-Mei “June” Woo was asked by her father to replace the fourth corner of the Joy Luck Club which was her mothers spot. Her mother “Suyuan Woo” died about two months ago from a cerebral aneurysm. Joy Luck Club was an idea her mother had in Kweilin from her first marriage but when her mother came to the United States she started the San Francisco version in 1949. June started going into a flashback about the story her mom used to tell her of her time in Kweilin. Her mother said she dreamed about Kweilin she thought it was a beautiful place were you cannot have any worries at all but when she arrived there she realized how dilapidated her dreams were. Kweilin had strange but yet beautiful things, however her mother did’t come for that. She was brought there because the man she was married to was part of the Kuomingtan and thought that her and their two children were going to be safe from the Japanese. The city they were staying at was full of people from different places which didn’t even get along. During one very hot summer night she thought about an idea to have four women, each at one of the corners of her mah jong table. Each week they would cook up a feast and eat. After eating they would go to the mah jong table and play but with seriousness, the women found their happiness through winning. They would stay up through the night until the

    Amy Tan's immensely popular novel, The Joy Luck Club explores the issues faced by first and second generation Chinese immigrants, particularly mothers and daughters. Although Tan's book is a work of fiction, many of the struggles it describes are echoed in Maxine Hong Kingston's autobiographical work, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. The pairs of mothers and daughters in both of these books find themselves separated along both cultural and generational lines. Among the barriers that must be overcome are those of language, beliefs and customs, and geographic loyalty. The gulf between these women is sadly acknowledged by Ying-ying St. Clair when she says of

Before the death of her mother, Jing-Mei Woo’s life is saturated with American culture and livelihood due to her upbringing. When she is first asked to replace her mother as “the fourth corner at the Joy Luck Club,” she is not sure if she will be up to the task or not (19). Instead, she is overwhelmed by the responsibilities she has to take up, “with the unfinished business [her mother] left behind.” Jing-Mei’s bleeds American blood, so the job of carrying on her mother’s legacy is daunting. Often cultural translation, from the rich Chinese history to the new and foreign American culture, it was hard for Jing-Mei and her mother to communicate effectively. Instead, the two of them “translated each other’s meanings” (37). The two communicated either in fractured English or Chinese, often gaining more or less meaning than the other intended. This inability to communicate impaired their relationship, as it’s hard to have a relationship with someone who barely speaks the same language. Along with having a smaller grasp on her Chinese background, Jing-Mei Woo became more of an American day by day, as her home was in San Francisco, and her life was one of convenience. Despite searching for a sort of way for her to be a prodigy at something, she eventually gave it up, even faking her mother out on the piano until one day it all fell apart. Rather than truly practicing, she “played some nonsense that sounded like a cat running up and down on top of garbage cans” (137). Eventually, she decides enough is enough and

    With all the cultural clashes that the mothers and daughters are facing in The Joy Luck Club, it is hard for the characters to have a sense of identity. The daughters are torn between Chinese and American culture and are trying to figure out who they are. The daughters are also trying to figure out who their mothers are and how that affects them. The mothers have two lives, the ones they live in America and the ones that they left behind in