The Joy Luck Club - 2008 Words

Nicholas Petrignani The Joy Luck Club Amy Tans novel The Joy Luck Club is a story of a monthly mah-jong gathering whose members consists of four Chinese mothers with American-born daughters. The novel is narrated by the four mothers and their daughters. At these meetings, the mothers share their concern of the growing rift between their daughters and Chinese customs. Each mother shares her story of her life in China and each daughter tells her story about her life in America. In The Joy Luck Club, the consistent conflict is formulated from the cultural and ideological clash between the mothers and daughters. Tensions arise out of the struggle to adapt to the American way of life when old customs are expected to be honored.†¦show more content†¦The Joy Luck Club mothers can feel their daughter’s impression on them when they see their daughters growing impatient every time they speak Chinese; they think their daughters perceive them as being stupid because of their incapability of speaking fluent English. The language barrier that existed between them was such that both mother and daughter imperfectly translated each other words and meanings. The mothers attempted to communicate by taking classes, hand gestures and sometimes even asking their daughter to translate on their behalf. Lena St. Clairs mother has trouble expressing herself in English. She married an English speaking man, but he expected her to learn English, while he himself put no effort in learning Chinese. In her desperate attempt, she would use hand gestures and expressed her emotions through exerting them. Most of the time the husband would not understand her and would assume what she would say but the daughter was capable of translating but could not speak the language. Because of this, Lena defines her mother as a ``displaced person`` who has difficulties expressing herself in English. In this dilemma the mothers were not capable of teaching their daughters why ``Chinese thinking is best``. Stress and frustration would accumulate from the misunderstanding and failure of understanding one another. The mother always expected the daughter to know what she was trying to get across but the mothers could not putShow MoreRelatedSummary Of The Joy Luck Club 853 Words   |  4 PagesExam Projec t Process Check #1 Book: The Joy Luck Club Author: Amy Tan By: Bala Sundaram Themes: A) The Joy luck Club presents a couple of themes but one of which, relates to an issue that is affecting many immigrant families who bring up their kids in foreign countries. In forwards, the difficulty in speaking and translating another language.The mothers and daughters in the book have difficulty in communicating their ideas and feelings with one another.The problems associated with communicatingRead MoreJoy Luck Club Essay1722 Words   |  7 PagesIn the novel, Joy Luck Club, we see Waverly Jong and June Woo’s competitiveness when Waverly becomes a child chess prodigy and June struggles to master the piano. This rivalry reflects how success and worth are depicted in this novel. A mother’s success would be encouraging or coercing their child to master a particular hobby and to improve constantly. A daughter’s worth would be determined by the daughter’s talents, and whether or not the daughter brings a good reputation for the family. We canRead MoreT he Joy Luck Club Characterization1301 Words   |  6 Pages 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 areRead MoreAnalysis Of The Book The Joy Luck Club 937 Words   |  4 Pagesup together. Towards the end of the novel, a gathered opinion can be made on the three characters true to all the viewpoints. The Joy Luck Club is a movie, based off a novel written by Amy Tan, displaying the struggles of a group of Chinese women and their daughters. The women grew like a family when they moved from China to San Francisco. The woman in the joy luck club all experienced rape, domestic violence or being abandoned by their family early in adulthood. Christina, Ida and Suyuan all liveRead MoreThe Joy Luck Club Is The Power Of Storytelling1054 Words   |  5 PagesA recurring theme in The Joy Luck Club is the power of storytelling. Throughout the book, stories are used as a way to socialize, teach lessons and warn about dangers. The article â€Å"The Psychological Power of Storytelling† by Pamela B. Rutledge explains how stories are a form of communication. Rutledge says, â€Å"Stories have always been a primal form of communication.† From cavemen drawing pictures of stories on walls, to bedtime stories being read to children, sharing experiences through storiesRead MoreAnalysis Of The Book The Joy Luck Club 1700 Words   |  7 PagesChurchill English 2 Honors, Period 0 6 September 2015 Reconciliation Swan feathers. Hopes and dreams. Broken relationships and healing. Though these concepts might initially appear incongruous, they are all depicted in the book The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan and The Joy Luck Club film directed by Wayne Wang. Both modes of interpretation show how the mothers help their daughters solve their problems by explaining the formers’ pasts. However, while the book leaves each of the daughters’ stories open endedRead MoreThe Joy Luck Club : Breaking Barriers1075 Words   |  5 PagesGrace Pating Mr. Devine English 203H 8 September 2015 The Joy Luck Club: Breaking Barriers When people struggle to communicate with one another or disagree, the usual response is to ask questions and make an effort to fix the issue. Unfortunately, owning up to responsibility can be much more difficult when the argument is with a close friend or family member. Coming from two time periods, this is a prevalent issue for the women of the Woo family, especially since both individuals are intolerablyRead MoreThe Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan841 Words   |  3 PagesIn the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, tells stories of four Chinese mothers and four Chinese-American daughters and their mother-daughter relationship. The four mothers met in a San Francisco church in 1949. Suyuan Woo, founder of the Joy Luck Club, convinced the other mothers An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Yingying St. Clair to join the club. The club would meet every week at one of the mother’s house where they eat food, play mahjong, and brag about their daughters. The Chinese-American daughters tellRead MoreThe Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan963 Words   |  4 PagesThe novel The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan shows the past and present experiences of several women including An-mei Hsu, the mother of Rose Hsu Jordan. Beginning at a young age, An-mei has to endure many situations. Her grandmother tells her that her mother is a ghost but she comes back to take care of her grandmother when she is ill. Due to the absence of her mother during her childhood years, she tries to be there for Rose as much as possible but is pushed away. An-mei believes she has nengkin, theRead MoreThe Joy Luck Club And Bartleby The Scrivener1376 Words   |  6 Pagesare to my life. Likewise, I can readily appreciate a story and its contents when I can mature as a reader alongside the development of the story’s main characters, the protagonist especially. For this reason, I was enthralled with Amy Tan’s ‘The Joy Luck Club’ and Herman Melville’s ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener,’ as I resonate d well with its main characters; just as the characters gradually developed in their respective stories, I found that I, too, developed by applying the story s main motifs to my life