Summary Of The Joy Luck Club

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.

To begin with, The Joy Luck Club centers its content around the lives of eight women of Chinese heritage each with their own stories to tell; yet, all striving to satisfy their aspirations in America. A concisive cross is common between the mothers’ hopes compared to those of the American born daughters. Immigrating to America for various reasons, the four mothers all had one goal in mind, to not only construct themselves a better life, but also ensure the finest future for their daughters. For the mothers in the Joy Luck Club, the American dream was to instill Chinese history, heritage, and habit in their daughters while providing American opportunities of growth, gratification, and gallantry. Carrying heavy pasts, the four original American Joy Luck Club members arrived in The United States to start anew, “America was where

From the film The Joy Luck Club, Chinese girls were supposed to act obedient and respectful to their parents and elders. This included the girls having to abide by each and every Chinese tradition that their parents instilled in them. Girls were also expected to be quiet and considerate to their parents and elders. They were only supposed to speak when spoken to at all times. Acting out against anything their parents enforced upon them was completely unacceptable.

Waverly was going to tell Lindo of her and Rich’s engagement, but whenever she mentioned him, Lindo cut her off and began to talk about something else. Waverly was convinced that her mother did not have any good intentions, and that she never saw good in people. Due to this, she was afraid of what her mother will say when she would meet Rich. According to Waverly, she and Rich shared a “pure love”, which she was afraid her mother would poison. Waverly planned to go to Auntie Suyuan’s house with Rich for dinner, knowing that her mother would then invite the two over for dinner to her house, and this would give her mother a chance to get to know and warm up to Rich. However, when they went for dinner, Rich did everything incorrectly- he didn’t understand Chinese customs and made several mistakes that were seen as

The Joy Luck Club revolves around the idea of family; specifically focusing on mother-daughter relationships. Each mother-daughter pair faces their own struggles such as overly high expectations, miscommunication, and the passing on of undesirable traits. In the first story of this novel Suyuan Woo, the mother of Jing-mei Woo, wants her daughter to become a piano prodigy. She ends up putting such high expectations on Jing-mei that she refuses to practice correctly and become good. Since her mother set such high expectations for her daughter, her daughter begins to resent her. These expectations caused Jing-mei to feel as if she was never good enough for her mother and as a result, their relationship is weakened. Different from Suyuan and Jing-mei are Lindo and Waverly. All of Waverly’s life she feels as if her mother is always against her and is constantly pointing out the negatives in everything. She blames her mother for the failure of her first marriage because she pointed out everything wrong with her husband. Waverly says,

The result of this education was a disaster due to the differences in values between the two cultures. Ying-Ying realized that her marriage was a mistake when her husband left her for another woman. Her love for him turned to hate and she killed her unborn baby. She felt great remorse for this and considered herself a murderer. She later remarried a gentleman by the name of St. Clair. With St. Clair she had a daughter. After her second son, which was her third child, died at birth, Ying-Ying had a mental breakdown. She saw his death as a punishment for the murdering her first son.

This section of the book starts off with Jing-mei discussing the fact that since her mother passed away she will now be taking over her seat in the joy luck club. After this information is shared, there is background information for the club these women are a part of. Expositional elements are shared in this section as well.

Characterization is a widely-used literary tool in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. Specifically, each mother and daughter is a round character that undergoes change throughout the novel. Characterization is important in the novel because it directly supports the central theme of the mother-daughter relationship, which was relevant in Tan’s life. Tan grew up with an immigrant mother, and Tan expresses the difficulties in communication and culture in the stories in her book. All mothers in the book are immigrants to America, and all daughters grew up living the American lifestyle, creating conflict between the mothers and daughters due to miscommunication. Characterization of the mothers and daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Club creates and

Throughout The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan inserts various conflicts betweens mothers and daughters. Most of these relationships, already very fragile, become distanced through heritage, history and expectations. These differences cause reoccurring clashes between two specific mother-daughter bonds. The first relationship exists between Waverly Jong and her mother, Lindo. Lindo tries to instill Chinese qualities in her daughter while Waverly refuses to recognize her heritage and concentrates on American culture. The second bond is that of Jing-Mei Woo and her mother, Suyuan. In the beginning of the book Jing-Mei speaks of confusion in her recently deceased mother's actions. The language and cultural barrier presented between Jing-Mei and Suyuan

Another issue that the novel portrayed was the limit to marrying other races. Intermarriage was discouraged by the Chinese people and it was banned back then but today’s view of it has changed dramatically. The author of The Joy Luck Club, would be satisfied about the issue now. Intermarriage is a growing phenomenon among the Chinese in the United States. Reasons are, more Chinese are coming to this country resulting in a doubling of the population over the past decade. Also, mixed marriages are no longer illegal. The Chinese are intermingling and social barriers against them have been lowered(Lee Sung1). The generations of the Chinese slowly came to accept the concept. In this case, the ideas that involves marriage between spouses of different

The title of the book relates to the story because the Joy Luck Club is the name of the gathering of Chinese-Americans that Suyuan Woo started. As a child, Ying-Ying was a restless rebel who yearned for freedom; however, when she becomes an adult she becomes passive. She lets her American husband make all the decisions. Lindo Jong is a bitter strong-willed woman who fears she has assimilated too much. By her mother, An-Mei was taught to conceal her pain, and even though

The Joy Luck Club was created by the famous American Chinese writer Amy Tan, and for several years it has been concerned by domestic and foreign researchers. In this novel, Mother-Daughter relationship as a primary clue runs through the whole story. When mothers who have been influenced by Chinese traditional collective culture, and daughters who have grown up in the typical Western individual culture lived in the same house, there must be a mass of conflicts and contradictions. The key point of this paper is to probe into the main contradictions between Chinese mothers and American daughters from the perspective of Hofstede's cultural dimension theory and reveal the value orientations of people in different living environment are divergent.

It has been said that America has no single tradition but rather is a melting pot of people from various backgrounds and ethnicities. During the 20th century a new wave of immigration to the United States took place bringing with it a new classification of American. However due to the intimidating cultural and social standards of the United States assimilation was inevitable. In reading Amy Tan's thought provoking novel "The Joy Luck Club," I am reminded of what has been termed for many decades as the "American Dream." Based on the foundations of the Declaration of Independence, this dream entails the idea that we are all, regardless of race or creed, entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Every human has the right and

The Joy Luck Club is a perfect example in which cultural diversity and language difference come to life through the author’s stellar writing style and voice throughout the text; Communication, especially between mother

The novel The Joy Luck Club does not have one character that is a lot more important than the others, but the character that shares the most stories is Jing-mei Woo. Jing-mei’s stories open and close the book, and she has a story in each of the four sections of the novel. Jing-mei’s mother has passed away and she is struggling because she feels as if she never really got to know her. Suyuan (Jing-mei’s mother) desperately wanted Jing-mei to be a genius at something and had very high expectations, which Jing-mei felt she could never live up to, so she didn’t try. Instead, Jing-mei aimed to fail so her mother would lower her expectations. This behavior led to a gap in Jing-mei’s relationship with her mother, they were very different and couldn’t