The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan Book Review

Adolescence is a journey that consists of learning, growing, and developing skills, components that raise preparedness for future scenarios. Throughout the process of transitioning from adolescence to adulthood, some may perceive it as a challenge in determining the purpose they hold in society. Navigating this complex path can cause some people to seem expended and apprehensive concerning what their future will entail. This concern is commonly dismissed when a pivotal moment occurs in one’s life, supplying them with insight into what their contribution to the world will be and their position. This shift in thought causes the psychological development of one’s mindset, resulting in growth that drives maturity, which can be noted through a more complex understanding of intricate circumstances. 

As a child, it is nearly impossible to comprehend the rationality of aggregate judgments one confronts in life. The brain of a child is not developed enough to process the information in a manner where the outcomes of each situation can be carefully considered. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan follows the stories of four immigrant Chinese women and their daughters navigating the complexity of life. An-mei is a young girl whose mother abandoned her to marry a man and was left living with her grandmother. The family was appalled about her choice to surrender her daughter for a man and exiled her from being a part of the family. An-mei in her adolescent years was not able to decipher what she had done to deserve such an upbringing and loss of a maternal figure. The night her mother forsook, a fight erupted at the dinner table resulting in An-mei getting drenched in soup, wounding her face enduringly. She expressed the pain as “so terrible that a little child should never remember it” centering on how she repressed her recollection of the night. This scar not only symbolizes the physical pain she underwent, but also the emotional scar that will be lifelong and never heal. Her mother’s parting was so traumatic that after the scar closed “you could no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain” informing how the injury still resides. Due to this, her family informed her upon her mother’s arrival, if she was ever to return, to treat her like a ghost and ignore her. When her mother was notified that PoPo, An-mei’s grandmother, was ill she returned home to care for her dying mother. An-mei had understood what her mother had arranged was ill-considered, but through personal growth reconnected with her. She was the only one to treat her mother with respect, a moment of maturity because for years her mother had been disrespecting her, not supporting her as a mother should. This abandonment left her with a piece of emotional distress but shaped her to treat everyone with respect, contributing to her journey of life.  

The responsibility of a parent is to support their child and advise them, no matter the circumstance and what age they are. The aforementioned concept of parental responsibility can be regarded with An-mei encouraging her daughter, Rose, to salvage her marriage after her husband requested a divorce. Rose had married a doctor that no one could picture her living a happy life with and felt defeated when he no longer desired to maintain the marriage. An-mei having rekindled her relationship with her mother, something she never presumed possible, wanted her daughter to break away from the Chinese tradition of pleasing others and repair the damage between the two parties. She notes this cultural tradition as being “taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people’s misery, to eat my own bitterness.” Rose as a female in this era was anticipated to gratify the man of the relationship and overlook any predicaments, to contribute to her happiness. This mindset is not healthy, causing women to ignore any emotions of dissatisfaction that they had and bury them. An-mei being raised with traditional Chinese values was not able to convey the opposite to her daughter venting, “I taught my daughter the opposite, she still came out the same way” due to the societal pressure surrounding her. At this moment she has let down Rose with her parenting, as her mother let her down in the past. An-mei was not raised to go against her values and teachings, in turn not being able to instill the best independence skills in her daughter. She is disappointed she made errors in her child’s upbringing because she wants to be the best mother she can be, shielding them from the trauma in her past. 

Being an adult does not mean you are unsusceptible to trauma, it can occur at any period in life, especially when it is least predictable. Throughout the novel, An-mei has had traumatic experiences, with her first being the abandonment of her mother following the death of her son. An-mei had taken her children to the beach and instructed her daughter, Rose, to watch her four brothers. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, who were all older, but Bing was only four years old and needed to be watched more carefully. The older brothers did not want to play in the sand with Bing, piquing his curiosity to wander to the water. Rose warned him “don’t get too close to the water” and as something grabbed his attention he tripped and fell in the ocean, and was no longer seen again. Search boats were called and hours of search and rescue were completed, but they were not able to locate his body, prompting the family to go home in mourning. An-mei, grief-stricken, having faith in the lord, prayed at the ocean, “‘So maybe you hid him from us to teach us a lesson, to be more careful with your gifts in the future. I have learned this. I have put it in my memory. And now I have come to take Bing back.” The faith she has in God stemmed from being reunited with her mother in her childhood after being separated for five years, but in this case, she will not reunite with her son. This trauma is an addition to the emotional scar that An-mei carries on her face from her childhood. The wound occurred when her mother left and was reopened when she realized she would no longer be able to see her son, which caused her to lose faith. Losing her son along her quest for life has resulted in a deterioration of her connection to religion and addition to her scar.  

A single moment in An-mei’s life transformed how she responded to traumatic situations, altering her character’s journey in the novel as she aged. As a child, she was left with a permanent scar on her face due to her mother’s exit, and as she got older the scar kept being reestablished with the failure of her parenting and the death of her son. The actions she completed could be traced back to her childhood and the way she was brought up. Being rejoined with her mother at a young age caused her to want and raise her children correctly, as she had not been; she had failures as a parent just as her mother did. An-mei noting these failures contributes to her growth as a character identifying her flaws and striving to repair them.