¶ … Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan
Multiple meanings, multiple experiences: Multiculturalism and mother-daughter relationships in "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan
In the novel "The Joy Luck Club," author Amy Tan delved into the dynamics and nature of relationships between Chinese mothers and second-generation Chinese-American daughters. Illustrating through the relationships of four mother-and-daughter pairs, Tan reflected how multiculturalism had contributed to the strain in the relationships of people exposed to different beliefs, values, and viewpoints in life. The novel centered most particularly on the relationship between Suyuan Woo and Jing-mei "June" Woo, whose antagonistic treatment against each other was the result of misperceptions and misunderstandings from the different cultures they had known and grew up with.
The antagonistic nature and conflict-filled dynamics of Suyuan and June's relationship reflected Tan's objective, which was to portray through their characters how multiculturalism had created a 'gap' between the two characters, straining their relationship until Suyuan's death. Their relationship was just one of the many conflicts that emerge from multiculturalism, an inevitable social change in American society that led to the hybridization of numerous cultures extant in the society. June's Chinese and American heritage created conflict within her, wherein she was not able to reconcile whether she should be Chinese or American; to reconcile both would result to an altogether different identity. Whichever cultural identity June chooses, she was met with criticisms by her mother -- by being 'not too Chinese or American enough.' Similarly, Suyuan's Chinese identity clashed against June's pluralist view of her
These themes are: (1) multiculturalism had created a feeling of void or inappropriateness to feel empathy for the other for both Suyuan and June and (2) Suyuan and June's different cultures, while most of the time detrimental and results to conflicts, actually complement each other in that it allowed each to further understand the other's feelings and thoughts.
The first theme was explicated through a story in the novel's introduction. In it, Tan illustrated the experience of the Chinese woman who had been hopeful about her new life in the United States. Symbolically representing this hope, aspirations, and a part of herself through a swan feather, the Chinese woman resembled the life of the individual who had diminished, if not lost, her hopes of fully sharing with her daughter the life and experiences that she had in China. The diminishing of hopes furthered when she realized that she raised her daughter in a society radically different from her own, distancing the woman from her daughter:
Now the woman is old. And she had a daughter who grew up speaking only English and swallowing more Coca-Cola than sorrow. For a long time now the woman had wanted to give her daughter the single swan feather and tell her, "This feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions." And she waited, year after year, for the day she could tell her daughter this in perfect American English.
This passage highlighted multiculturalism and its limits in creating a close relationship between mother and daughter. Evidently, a void was illustrated in the…
Joy Luck Club and American Culture Section One (1-2 paragraph summary). Introduce and summarize the main plot of the movie. Describe the main story and characters involved. To do this in 1-2 paragraphs, you will need to be brief and focus on the main events in the movie. The Joy Luck Club (1993) was based on Amy Tan's 1989 novel and deals with issues of culture, assimilation and generation conflicts between a
She married a Chinese-American and had several sons and a daughter. Of the four women, she had lived the longest time in America. As a result, she was the most assimilated of the four women. She also had the help of her husband, who had been struggling with assimilation for quite some time. Lindo is on a quest to reconnect with her lost Chinese identity. On a visit to mainland
The reader is poignantly aware of the potential for greater communication and understanding, but only in the reader's mind is the dialogicity between positions uncovered and experienced." (Soulis, 1994, p.6) This potential is never perfectly realized in the narrative of the book, as outwardly experienced, but some internal healing and unity between mother and daughter is clearly achieved at the very end. Although they cannot verbally unite, June sees
Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan Tan's debut novel is arguably one of the most famous works of Asian-American writing. It is one of the few works with an explicitly Asian theme to find mainstream popularity. The novel remained on the New York Times best-seller list for nine months and was later adapted into a hit movie. To date, no other Asian-American novel has matched the critical and popular success of
Some passages from Buddha and Confucius were read by children to start the play. The mothers and other Chinese family members (immigrants) were seated in the first three rows, and the women were all given corsages as they came into the auditorium in the Chinese community center. They did not know in advance what the play was about, only that their daughters were involved. The plot of the play
She had come here in 1949 after losing everything in China: her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, win baby girls" (141) America was a place of infinite opportunity for her children, thus she would drive her daughter to compete. She cannot see that there is no way that Jing can compete with the stuck-up Waverly, and by forcing her daughter to do
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