Cultural Identity in Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Have you or someone you know ever tried to hide their cultural background? Or have you noticed change in yourself or others after being introduced to something new? Most of the time change can affect the way you think, whether it’s good or bad. Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, shows the story of Chinese immigrant mothers and their American raised daughters, both raised in different cultural groups and circumstances. Throughout the story both the mother and daughters try to find their true identity and focus on how America has changed them. In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan demonstrates how America can have an identity and cultural effect on immigrants by showing how characters' lives are impacted by their Chinese background. 

Throughout the story the daughters can be seen trying to escape their Chinese identity. All four daughters had been raised in Chinese households, but they identify themselves with American culture and some of them would give anything to be white. This is seen on page 106 where Lena describes how her mother gave her her eyes that had “no eyelids”, because of this, she would “push [her] eyes in on the sides to make them rounder. Or [she’d] open them very wide until [she] could see the white parts.”(Tan, 106) This shows how Lena was ashamed of how she looked Chinese when you looked really close at her and how she tried to make herself look more European, referring back to the daughters trying to identify themselves as American. Another example of the daughters wanting to be what they weren’t is in Jing-Mei’s childhood. When she was fifteen, Jing-Mei would “vigorously” deny that she had any Chinese below her skin and that she was as Chinese as her Caucasion friends (Tan 306). Similar to Lena, Jing-Mei refused to believe she was Chinese, this was probably caused by the influence of all the Caucasion people around her, this is known as peer influence or pressure. Peer influence affected the way the daughters, and the mothers, thought of themselves and everything around them. In this case, they are influenced to feed into stereotypes and recognize one thing as American and one thing as Chinese, with them believing it cannot be both. 

These stereotypes could highly influence the way a person thinks and what they value. Almost everyone feels forced into or out of a stereotype while some affect people more than others. Most stereotypes are formed when your brain makes quick judgments of an individual’s appearance, it determines whether that person is safe or if your safety is at risk. The way we come to acknowledge them can be from something as small as a short sentence or “like reading an article containing a negative stereotype or just remembering a painful instance of being judged unfairly — [this] can have a sizable impact.” (MacBride 2015) To add to this, researcher and graduate student, Peter Belmi stated that “Most people reject overt racism today, but prejudice can exert its negative effects in more subtle ways,... Threats to social identity can really harm people’s prospects for success, particularly for individuals who are already socially disadvantaged.” (MacBride 2015) This explains how negative stereotypes can harm people's thoughts and their emotion towards success or anything in general. Going back to Joy Luck Club, the daughters were defiant of their mothers and culture because they were afraid of being judged by society or the people around them. They focused less on what was standing right in front of them and more on what surrounded them because being judged by one person isn’t as bad as being judged by millions. The stereotypes that America had on chinese immigrants, specifically the woman, affected the way they saw themselves. It also wasn’t just America that created standards, China also created certain beliefs that Chinese people believed they should live by. For example, in an article about 10 cultural differences between China and America, it states, “Chinese society is all about the group, while Americans celebrate the individual.”(TMA World 2019) This shows how China works as a group and whatever the group believes, you should believe too. This can create the feeling of having to agree to everything, but once you are given a choice, it is hard to find what you want to identify with. Lindo explains how she was spotted as a tourist in China, and she notes how America has changed her. Believing she could switch from her true-self to her public self, Lindo finds out she is wrong. She also explains how she never really agreed with the Chinese custom and this shows that just because she is Chinese doesn’t mean she has to agree. Lindo values autonomy and personal happiness, all things she associates with American culture.

In conclusion, it is demonstrated throughout Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club that America can have an effect on immigrants and their identity or cultural background. Once the daughters grow older they become aware of how they changed and try reverting back into Chinese culture, thus, causing them to stop and rethink who they are. Identity is something that is always being questioned, and what causes this questioning is usually change. So maybe take a minute right now to recognize recent change in your life, or even past change, and try to recognize how that change has affected you or people you know. Think about who you are and how you would truly like to identify yourself.