Abby Smith

13 December 2010
TITLE

By the end of the 20th century, over 2.3 million Chinese had immigrated to the United

States. They came with economic aspirations. They came as allies during World War II, and

some as war brides at the war’s end. They came to flee the Japanese invasion of their country, to

escape Communism, and, near the end of the century, they came for political freedom. They

came with hopes and dreams, yet with few belongings. Confronted with and confused by a

country which was not always welcoming, they would cling to memories of their homeland, and

to customs of their Chinese culture. The Joy Luck Club , by Amy Tan, tells the story of four

daughters, each struggling with the demands and expectations of her immigrant mother to

maintain traditional Chinese lifestyles. However, each has personal desires to more completely

assimilate into modern American culture and to form her own identity as a Chinese-American

young woman. Today there are over 3.1 million Chinese-Americans living in this country. And

as America has really been born from immigrant roots, these struggles have crossed time, place

and generations. In The Joy Luck Club, Tan skillfully conveys the communication and cultural

challenges confronted universally by most immigrants, and highlights the complex relationships

of immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters.

In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan reveals the soul of each mother through a series of

flashbacks. Each individual is, to some extent a product of her environment. For each daughter,

and the reader, the flashbacks provide insight, not just into Chinese heritage, but also into the

experiences which have uniquely defined each mother, and which they brought with them as

immigrants into America. The flashbacks additionally allow each mother to share with her

daughter some life- lessons learned during childhood. Rose’s mother, An-mei Hsu, remembers

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watching her own mother scar her flesh, and add it into a a healing soup intended for An-mei’s

grandmother Popo. This An-mei’s mother did, despite being banished from the family by her

own mother and having her daughter An-mei, taken away from her. This she did, even though

her own daughter had been physically and emotionally scarred by a large pot of boiling soup

which poured over her during an argument about her custody. This she did out of respect for her

mother. “This is how a daughter honors her mother.... You must peel off your skin and that of

your mother, and her mother before her” (Tan 48). As An-mei watched, even as a child she

sensed that such sacrifice and strength was part of her heritage. She reflects, “Even though I was

young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.” (Tan 48) The flashback

provides evidence of how tradition and values are passed down. Unfortunately, it is these values

that often conflict between generations. Life is all about “the struggle”, and An-mei tries to teach

her daughter Rose to persevere through difficulties in her own personal life. So An-mei is

troubled that her daughter Rose visits a psychiatrist and does not confront her husband when he

asks for a divorce. But in the end, Rose is able to reflect upon and accept the wisdom of her

mother, An-mei: “You must think for yourself what you must do. If someone tells you, then you

are not trying.” (Tan 130) Rose, like her mother, learned to recognize the beauty of the Chinese

way in which choices are fewer, tradition directs behavior and decisions, and the advice of your

mother and family is invaluable. Rose refused to leave her husband, saying “You can’t just pull

me out of your life and throw me away...The power of my words was that strong.” (Tan 196***).

In another flashback, Joy Luck club mother Lindo Jong recalls the day “she sacrificed [her] life

to keep [her] parent’s promise.” (Tan 49). On that day, when she was only 2 years old, Lindo

Jong was “betrothed” to a then 1-year old baby. “But even if I had known I was getting such a

bad husband, I had no choice, now or later.” (Tan 51) So Lindo Jong learned quickly about “old-

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fashioned customs”. Yet she was able to summon up the strength within her, the same strength

that it took her mother to give her to the Huang family at age 12 , and as she walked down the

aisle she knew, "I was no longer scared. I could see what was inside me." (Tan 59) “I would

always remember my parent’s wishes, but I would never forget myself.” (Tan 58) Lindo Jong’s

daughter Waverly, like her mother, “would never forget [herself]” and is intensely independent,

stubborn, and very clever. Said to be a “child prodigy” of a chess player, Waverly flashes back

to the time when she grew tired of her mother’s constant bragging, and angrily challenged her

mother, “...then why don’t you learn to play chess?” (Tan 99. She very soon found herself facing

her fiercest opponent ever: her own mother. As Lindo Jong’s pieces “advanced against the

plane”, she said only, “Strongest wind cannot be seen.” (Tan 100). Just as Lindo Jong had used

her breath like the wind to extinguish her own red wedding candle, she had also quietly been

absorbing the game of chess. Lindo Jong wanted her daughter to be strong and use the art of

“invisible strength”, to know herself well, and to keep her promises. Although Lindo Jong may

not think her Americanized daughter has a sense of commitment and respect for her mother,

when Waverly wishes to tell her mother about her (second) marriage to Rich, she emotionally

reveals, “You don't know, you don't know the power you have over me. One word from you, one

look, and I'm four years old again...” (Tan ****** ) These flashbacks remind the mothers of old

times, both good and bad, that reflect values that the mothers hope to instill in their daughters.

Each one of the flashbacks conveys a different aspect of the mother-daughter relationship and the

cultural challenges that come with them.

In The Joy Luck Club, with the communication barriers between and the very different

cultures in which the mothers and daughters have developed ever present, the stage has been set

for inevitable conflict and misunderstanding between mothers and daughters. As June faces her

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Joy Luck “Aunties” in the beginning of the novel, she has a revelation: “In me they see their own

daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to

America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think

they are stupid when they explain thinks in fractured English...who will bear grandchildren

without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation.” (Tan 40) . Although the

girls know some Chinese, it is often the juvenile words from their youth. When Lindo Jong

contemplates her daughter Waverly’s return to China, she worries, “How can she talk to people

in China with these words? Pee-Pee, choo-choo train...” (Tan 254) And, while the mothers speak

some English, they almost intentionally and stubbornly refuse to learn more, as if knowing

English would somehow detract from their Chinese identity. When Rose tells her mother An-

mei that she is speaking with a psychiatrist, her mother repeats twice, “psyche-atricks”, as if to

show her disdain for some outsider who may be playing “tricks” with her daughter’s mind. An-

mei expresses her disapproval,” A mother is best...psyche-atricks will only make you hulihudu,

make you see heimongmong.” (Tan 188) What became apparent to even Waverly is that

hulihudu and heimongmong have no English translation, because “they refer to a sensation that

only Chinese people have” (Tan 188). So even if a person is skilled in English, it is sometimes

simply impossible to convey the true meaning of each Chinese phrase. This is an example of

communication conflicts clashing with cultural conflicts that contribute to poor mother-daughter

relationships. Lena St. Clair’s mother, Ying-Ying, is not able to communicate clearly in English

at all. She uses a combination of stories, and gestures, and English with frustrating silences in

between. Evenso, Ying-Ying urgently wants to warn her daughter of her troubled marriage. “I

have always known a thing before it happens.” (Tan 243). She first intentionally crashes a vase

to the floor when she hears her daughter and son-in-law exchanging “meaningless words”, and

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then she tells her story to her daughter. Ying-Ying had been born in the year of a tiger, but

throughout her life she became an “unseen spirit” and became passive. She waited for 10 years

after her first husband left her, she purposely aborted their unborn son, and then she married a

man she did not truly love. She will recapture her spirit, and give it to her daughter, from one

tiger to another, so that Lena can overcome her passivity and escape her controlling husband and

unhappy marriage. When faced with conflicts, the mothers find ways of communicating which

help highlight differences in culture.

To introduce each section of the novel, Tan includes a short parable which reveals some

Chinese wisdom relevant to the events and characters revealed next. In the third parable,

American Translation , a mother visits her daughter’s new condo, and becomes distressed when

she sees a mirror near the bottom of her daughter’s bed. The mother is superstitious, and

concerned that the mirror will avert all happiness away from the couple. Unable to tolerate such

thoughts, the mother places a second mirror at the head of the bed, which will “multiply peach-

blossom luck” (Tan **) and bring a granddaughter the following spring. The Joy Luck mothers

grew up in China in a time when superstitions were passed from generation to generation.

Perhaps they were intended to direct behavior. Maybe they were intended to scare people into

good behavior. Lena St. Clair knew from an early age that her mother made up stories in an

attempt to keep her safe, “ to help [her] avoid some unknown danger.” (Tan **) Her mother had

predicted that Lena would marry a bad man, based only on all the grains of rice she had left in

her bowl! So Lena has come to believe that her mother has some ability to predict the evils

which will impact their family. It annoys Lena that her mother only see the flaws in her life and

new home, and Lena worries knowingly that her mother will detect the strain in her marriage to

Harold. Like all the other daughters , Lena has begun to have more respect for the wisdom and

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intuition of her own mother. She now sees the likeness of her mother in her, much like the girl

in the parable saw that the image of her “daughter “in the mirror was herself. The parables act as

more than just introductions for each section; they also reveal the lessons learned by immigrants,

learned by mothers and daughters, and the hope for restoring relationships. As a prelude to the

first section, Feathers from a Thousand Li Away,T an tells a story of a Chinese woman who

purchased a swan which previously been a duck. She brings this beautiful , much too beautiful to

eat, swan, “a creature that became more than what was hoped for” (**** ) with her to America.

She imagines that she will give it to her future American daughter, as a sign of her limitless

potential. However when she arrives, the immigration officials take the swan away from, leaving

her with only one feather as a memory. The mother will wait until the day she can explain to her

daughter the importance of the feather and her story in “perfect American English” (Tan 17) .

The parable suggests hope, anticipation of the “American Drean” . Ironically, this same parable

is relevant, not just to each of the four mother daughter pairs in this novel, but also to many

migrants who have and will cross onto American soil. The tale foretells of daughters who speak

primarily English, of mothers who speak very little English, and of the resulting inability of the

mothers to communicate well with their daughters. June reveals, “My mother [Suyuan] believed

you could be anything you wanted to be in America.” Through an intense search for June’s

“right kind of prodigy” (Tan 132), through disappointment, disobedience, and failure, what Jing-

Mei really wanted to be in the end was “Chinese.” This Chinese identity is her feather, as a gift

from the Joy Luck Club on behalf of mother Suyuan Woo. “Ít is my family. It is in our blood”

(Tan 288). Thus, these parables help the reader understand the complexity of all, and

particularly immigrant, mother-daughter relationships.

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 In The Joy Luck Club, the mothers , “ wanted [their] children to have the best

combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could [they] know these two

things do not mix? “(Tan 254) . This challenge to blend as Americans yet maintain cultural

roots, has been present since the beginning of our country. Yet as decades turn to centuries, and

one generation replaces another, it is important to remind ourselves of our heritage, to strive for

effective communication, to resolve any conflicts, and to learn lessons from history.