Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club is a dynamic novel which focuses on the relationship of four pairs mothers and daughters and the culture clash involved with them. The novel is split into four sections and each chapter focuses on the story of one of the mothers or daughters. As the mothers and daughters learn from each other’s stories, miscommunications in the past are clarified. Bestselling author Amy Tan reveals a variety of compelling themes in her popular American novel The Joy Luck Club.

Amy Tan was born on February19, 1952, in Oakland, California as An-mei Ruth “Amy” Tan. Her mother, Daisy Tan, was a superstitious women and often insisted on moving in order to escape evil spirits. By the end of high school Tan had been in eleven school districts

In other words, here is an indestructible bond woven between each generation of mothers and daughter. The novel opens with June who talks about the history of her mother, Suyuan Woo, who has recently passed away. Suyuan Woo originally began the Joy Luck Club in China in order to escape the jarring realities of the Sino-Japanese War occurring at the time. Their relationship was problematic because June could not speak Chinese and Suyuan could only speak broken English. The lack of communication caused misunderstandings because June always felt like she was a failure and hated being pushed to do so well but her mother could not explain why she pushed June so hard. Despite all this June states, "I had always assumed we had an unspoken understanding about these things; she really did not mean I was a failure, and I really meant I would try to respect her opinions more" (27). Lindo Jong tries to teach her daughter the technique of “invisible strength”, hiding one’s strength until the time is right, in order to strengthen Waverley’s chess skills. However, Waverly finds her mother’s lessons to controlling and ends up being ashamed of her. Her mother’s harsh judgements during her youth greatly impacted her and followed her into adulthood so Waverly became of her mother cautious even about her engagement. As a child An-mei was taught to be stoic and conceal her pain but later on learns so speak up for herself. She is afraid she passed on her passiveness to her daughter Rose and pressure her is speak her mind including in the affairs regarding Rose’s husband. Rose always let her husband make the decisions and An-mei believes this is what caused the divorce between the pair. Ying-ying was an independent young woman but grew to became passive as she grew older notices she passes on this compliance to her daughter Lena. Due to her passiveness, Ying-ying’s husband Clifford often mistranslated her