Resolution and Reconciliation in “The Joy Luck Club”
Amy Tan ‘sThe Joy Luck Club, published in 1989, is a challenge to the novel as a narrative paradigm. The book is a aggregation of first-person soliloquies of four mother-daughter braces which delves into the generational divide. In it, the struggles between female parent and girl and the differences between traditional Chinese values and American values come to life in graphic sketchs. However, The Joy Luck Club is non basically a treatment of the coevals spread. Alternatively, the book demonstrates how the two coevalss come to declaration and rapprochement through the mother-daughter braces ‘ dialogue of their individualities as Chinese Americans. By analyzing the narratives of two of these female parent girl braces, female parents Suyuan Woo and Lindo Jong with girls Jing-mei Woo and Waverly Jong, we will see highlighted generational differences and misinterpretations, and the evidences upon which rapprochement is eventually achieved.
The separate narrative subdivisions are divided into four parts: the female parents stating two narratives of their “unspeakable calamities left in China” ( Tan, 20 ) , and the girls tell one about turning up and one about a current family/marriage state of affairs. The construction presents a double feeling, dramatising the critical passage in cultural values. The female parents grow up in pre-1949 China, where the society deprived adult females of their address and shackled them with Confucian moralss. They had to act mutely and follow all the regulations. In the contrast, as American-born and English-speaking, the girls tend to believe and move in the American manner as they were enormously impacted by the mainstream American civilization. They are alienated to Chinese civilization which is merely a composite gathered from narratives, fables, books and the films to them. Due to the generational differences, the confrontation appears when the female parents try to utilize their past experience to learn their girls, but the girls reject the waning influence of the old civilization as they get more and more aware of their American individuality. In the eyes of the girls, female parents are “the beginning of authorization for her and the most individual powerful influence from China” ( Wang, 30 ) .
In the mother-daughter relationship of Lindo and Waverly, it is generational differences which lead to the misinterpretations, but the rapprochement is reached when Waverly realizes her female parent – a linguistically and culturally hapless talker – has ever had her ain best involvements at bosom. From Waverly’s position, Lindo ever keeps in the dominant topographic point and plays the function of authorization in their relationship ; therefore, Waverly ever sees her female parent as an unbeatable opposition in life since childhood. Waverly showed extraordinary endowment in cheat when she was a kid: she won title after title. However, she was really uncomfortable with Lindo’s changeless crow in public. She intended to assail Lindo by giving up cheat, but she even forgot she was meant to contend for her independency in the conflict. When Waverly returned to cheat, she found her prodigy had all gone, and what had sustained her was her female parent ‘s love and support. Now as a female parent herself, Waverly eventually understands Lindo ‘s mute love. Furthermore, Waverly anticipates Lindo will non wish her white fellow, Rich, but surprisingly, Lindo does non knock at Rich’s culturally nescient behaviour on tabular array. That makes Waverly puzzled, because her female parent is ever happening mistake with her. When she talks to her female parent openly about Rich, she realizes that Lindo’s unfavorable judgment merely comes out of her deep concern for Waverly’s wellbeing, and her desire for her girl to harvest the felicity of matrimony which she was deprived for so many old ages in China.
The relationship has been examined in another different position from the side of Lindo. She inquiries the feasibleness of the assorted cultural individuality in the chapter “Double Face” :
It ‘s my mistake she is this manner. I wanted my kids to hold the best combination: American fortunes and Chinese character. How could I know these two things do non blend? I taught her how American fortunes work…She learned these things, but I could n’t learn her about Chinese character. How to obey parents and listen to your female parent ‘s head. How non to demo your ain ideas, to set your feelings behind your face so you can take advantage of concealed chances… Why Chinese thought is best.
(The Joy Luck Club, 289 )
From the above quotation mark, we can see Lindo frights that her girl is dominated by American individuality, and she blames herself for Waverley’s lopsided dichotomy. However, Lindo’s fright is non justified by Waverley’s narrative. Waverley claims she learnt some unseeable strengths from her female parent at the age of six, for illustration, how to non demo her ideas, and she has non merely benefited from them at cheat games but besides brought them to her maturity. Therefore, Lindo is unduly panic because her girl has done a good occupation with integrating her Chinese thought into her American life. Furthermore, Lindo herself – along with other female parent figures – are analyzing at their individuality every bit good, looking for a manner to unite their Chinese background with the American cultural facets.
The Woo’s narrative is an exclusion to the soliloquy form, as the girl, Jing-mei examines the mother-daughter spread from both sides. The female parent figure, Suyuan, who is the laminitis of the Joy Luck Club, does non take narrative in the book. Alternatively, her girl, Jing-mei, narrates four narratives including the first and last subdivision which add extra continuity to the book. In the beginning, Jing-mei’s narrative shows that she hardly knew her female parent. Harmonizing to her feeling of her mother’s experience in China: “I ne’er thought my mother’s Kweilin narrative was anything but a Chinese faery tale” ( Tan, 12 ) . Similar to Waverley’s narrative, a clang between the mother’s strong outlooks versus the daughter’s interior sense of futility was formed during Jing-mei’s childhood. Partially due to Suyuan’s loss of two kids in China, she strongly believed that Jing-mei must hold some interior endowments and expected her to be a prodigy. She forced Jing-mei to take piano lessons, but Jing-mei intentionally fell short of Suyuan ‘s outlooks because she felt being twisted into what she was non. In an aggressive confrontation with her female parent, Jing-mei shouted out: “You want me to be some one that I’m non! … I wish I’d ne’er been born! … I wish I were dead, like them! ” ( Tan, 142 ) . Apparently, the struggle takes topographic point where the stiff East meets the broad West: Suyuan idea she had the right and duty to research Jing-mei’s prodigy as her female parent, while Jing-mei held the American value of individuality, sing herself as a individual solid single offprint from her female parent. The rapprochement happens after many old ages, at Jing-mei’s 30Thursdaybirthday. She received the piano from her female parent as a birthday gift, which shows that Suyuan understands why she refused to play: Jing-mei regarded it as something for her female parent ‘s benefit. Now with the ownership of the piano, Jing-mei is able to seek once more out of her ain will. Jing-mei is comforted that Suyuan ‘s religion in her ability to make what she wanted, even after she failed so many times. She comes to understand that her struggles with her female parent did non originate from any barbarous outlooks on Suyuan ‘s portion but from Suyuan ‘s love and religion in her. Notably, in the last subdivision of the book, Jing-mei becomes the representative of the second-generation girls who goes furthest in contemplating the nature of a dual individuality. She is encouraged by the members of the Joy Luck Club to finish her mother’s unfilled wish – reunite with her duplicate half sisters in China. She is worried for being non Chinese and she thinks she knows so small about her female parent that she can barely depict that to her sister. But when she finally has her return trip to china, she merrily perceives that the American civilization she has embraced for so long does non preempt a Chinese consciousness every bit good. Harmonizing to Rocio G. Davis, seeing her sisters and murmuring “mama” together – the word means female parent in both English and Chinese – makes her recognize that her interior Chinese individuality, and uses that as a span to her female parent ( Davis, 22 ) .
Although I am non American-born, I went to international school where I was enormously influenced by American instruction. I saw myself in the narratives of Waverly and Jing-mei who struggled between the two civilizations. I was forced by my parents to take categories on Math and Classical Chinese Literature after school, because they thought these are what American instruction deficiencies of. However, it turned topain and bitterness for me: I saw them as the excess work because none of my schoolmate took these categories, and I felt I was populating in the stereotype of Chinese – “why I have to be a Chinese expert and a Math mastermind? I am merely what I am.” I was confused and distracted, because my parents ne’er asked my will but merely told me what to make, while the instructors in international school encouraged me to come up with “my ain idea” everyday. At that clip, the Chinese values merely represented as limitations to me and I was more fascinated by the autonomy of American values. As I grew up, went to college and progressively perceived the Chinese and American values, I achieved rapprochement with myself with seeing difference as diverseness. I realized that they are non two extremes that incompatible with each other ; nevertheless, they can coexist in my individuality. Merely as the American civilization is non entirely about independency and autonomy, the Chinese civilization is non entirely about obeisance and temperateness. The thing I should make is non merely absorbing a good trade of American civilization, but happening a manner to unite facets of both into my ain alone personality.
The Joy Luck Clubarticulates the renewed relationships between the first and 2nd coevals of Chinese American adult females. The misinterpretation between the two coevalss arose because of cultural and linguistic communication barrier, but finally rapprochement and declaration are reached when the girls realize that the female parents have ever had the girls ‘ ain best involvements at bosom. To a deeper extent, the coevals togetherness depends on cultural integrity. The felicity of the household unit comes after a series of cultural lost and found, and the avowal of their Chinese-American individuality has been examined as the major healing factor.
Plants Cited
Tan, Amy.The Joy Luck Club. New York: Putnam ‘s, 1989. Print.
Wang, Veronica. “ Reality and Fantasy: The Chinese-American Woman ‘s Quest for
Identity. ”Melus12.3 ( 1985 ) : 23-31.
Davis, Rocio G. “ Identity in Community in Ethnic Short Story Cycles: Amy Tan ‘s The
Joy Luck Club, Louise Erdrich ‘s Love Medicine, Gloria Naylor ‘s The Women of
Brewster Place. ”Ethnicity and the American Short Story( 1997 ) : 3-23.
