The Movie, The Joy Luck Club, By Amy Tan

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.

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.

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.

Some aspects of the film were very different between the cultures. These aspects are traditionally associated with nurture. A major difference was how often the parents were interacting with the child. The

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.

The author, Tan, has written the books The Joy Luck Club, and The Kitchen God's Wife. She is Asian-American, her parents are originally from China, but moved to Oakland, California. The audience in Tan's essay is people 20-35 years old who are culturally diverse. Tan focuses on this audience in order reach out to those who are in her past situation. In her house, there were two languages spoken: English and Chinese. Tan knew how to speak

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.

In her 1989 novel, The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan hones into the narratives of four Chinese American immigrant families living in San Francisco. The novel is structured into four distinct, anecdotal sections: two dedicated to mothers and two dedicated to daughters. Tan’s approach to structure allows the interlocking stories between mother and daughter to place emphasis on the issue of sexism. The purpose of Tan’s novel is to highlight that, even though American and Chinese societies drastically differ, there still remains a recurring theme of chauvinism. Erica Jong says, “Sexism kind of predisposes us to see men's work as more important than women's, and it is a problem, I guess, as writers, we have to change.” Through her purpose, Tan is

There are age related conflicts, cultural conflicts, religious conflicts and value based conflicts.  This movie is a film highlighting many cultural conflicts.  These conflicts continuously erupt in a working class Michigan neighborhood.  We will first examine a scene with religious cultural conflict. In the same scene we will see age based cultural conflict as well.  Next, we will examine a racial cultural conflict between the Hmong people and an American. After examining cultural conflicts, we will show two examples of popular culture in the film.  Then, we will provide the conflict management styles we would have employed to bring the same result as the current ending without the bloodshed and a general opinion of the film.

    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

The author already expresses the tension between warring nations and sets up a precedent for the rest of the novel. After leaving the original Joy Luck Club, Suyuan tries to create a new life for herself in America. Amy Tan deceptively portrays America as the place to start a new, yet the same cultural tensions exist in America as well. Although the setting changes, the key elements remain the same, a Joy Luck Club still exists, demonstrating that anxiety and confusion still endure. Moving to America has not done anything to alleviate these tensions, throughout the novel The Joy Luck Club persists as a place for four women to discuss and reflect upon their problems. Diverging from The Joy Luck Club, the setting of The Namesake begins in the U.S. where cultural anxiety is infused within the story line.