The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan Book Analysis

📌Category: Books
📌Words: 820
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 10 April 2022

A strong relationship is something that many of us strive to have but sometimes are unable to achieve. In the novel The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, we witness how four mothers come to live in San Francisco, California after making a long journey overseas to give their daughters what they did not have growing up. We also see the struggles that each one of the four daughters face growing up to understand their mother’s stories. Later on in the novel, we witness how the Americanized daughters are disconnected from their Chinese mothers since they are unable to understand the pain they endured. In the first introduction paragraph, “Feathers From a Thousand Li Away”, we see how a mother raises her daughter to be Americanized but ends up disconnecting the daughter from herself. One mother-daughter relationship that could be compared to the first introduction story is the relationship between Suyuan Woo and Jing-Mei Woo.

In the introduction story, “Feathers From a Thousand Li Away”, a woman in Shanghai bought a swan that “was once a duck that stretched its neck in hopes of becoming a goose” (3). This line shows that even though the duck was not a swan or a goose, it kept one stretching its neck again and again. Even though the duck wanted to become a goose and not a swan, it became something more than it hoped for. Some time later, the woman and the swan sailed to America and told the swan that in America she will have a daughter who will not go through the pain that the woman went through. The woman explains to the goose how in her culture the worth of a girl is determined by the loudness of her husband’s belch. The woman tells the swan that her daughter will speak perfect American-English so nobody is able to look down at her. She even says that her daughter will be too full to have enough room in her body to swallow sorrow. Lastly, she ends the conversation between her and the swan by saying that her daughter “will know my meaning, because I will give her this swan” (3). The swan that the woman is planning on giving to her daughter represents something more than what was hoped. By giving her daughter the swan, she tells her daughter that the daughter’s worth is more than what the woman had hoped for. After traveling to a new country, the immigration officers pull her swan away and leave only a feather as a memory. Later when the woman became old, her daughter was raised to speak only English and drink more Coca-Cola than sorrow. The daughter grew up to be Americanized and is unable to relate to her mother. The woman waited to give her daughter the feather and tell her about the swan in perfect American English. Since the mother only knows her native language and the daughter only knows English, there is a cultural difference that creates a wall between the mother and daughter. Just like the wall between Suyuan and Jing-Mei after Jing-Mei is Americanized causing her to not be able to understand her mother’s story.

In chapter 1, The Joy Luck Club, from the novel, the story of Suyuan’s life is explained by Jing-Mei and the relationship between Suyuan and Jing-Mei is showcased. Just how the woman and her daughter from the introduction story have a language barrier, Jing-Mei and Suyuan also have a barrier between them. Before Suyuan died from a cerebral aneurysm, she told Jing-Mei the story of her life. She explained how she carried her two daughters in a wheelbarrow with a few clothes during the war in China. She told Jing-Mei that “Your father is not my first husband. You are not those babies” (14). This quote explains how Jing-Mei does not know the pain that her mother went through or that her mother had twin girls from her first marriage. Just as in the introduction story the mother waited to tell her daughter in perfect American-English about the swan’s feather, Suyuan waited to tell her daughter about her two babies. After Suyuan died, Jing-Mei was chosen to take the place of her mother to play MahJong with the three other mothers. While playing the game, Jing-Mei recalls her relationship with her mother by saying “I talked to her in English, she answered back in Chinese” (23). This quote proves that their relationship was not very strong because they would talk to each other in different languages creating a wall between them. When the moms ask Jing-Mei to tell her two older sisters everything about their mother, Jing-Mei responded by saying that she didn’t know anything about her mother because Jing-Mei and Suyuan communicated through different languages causing miscommunication between the two of them, Hearing this scared the other mothers because the begin to fear that just like Jing-Mei, their daughter don’t know anything about their mothers either. Just as it was mentioned in the introduction story, the daughters are raised to become Americanized by their mothers who don’t speak the language that they taught their daughters. Since Jing-Mei was raised to speak perfect American-English like the daughter from the introduction story, Suyuan is unable to communicate with her daughter causing them to be unable to achieve a strong relationship.

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