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Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club And Saving Fish From Drowning

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Amy Tan is an Chinese-American novelist who is known for writing the daughter-mother relationship and the life of an Chinese-American. The themes in her novels shows a bond between mothers and daughters, love, forgiveness, and the differences between generation. Family, mother-daughter relationships, and divorce are her main topics. All of her novels also have a huge aspect of Chinese history and culture. This appears in many of her successful books like “The Kitchen God’s Wife”, “The Joy Luck Club”, and “Saving Fish from Drowning”. In Amy Tan’s short story, “Two Kinds”, Tan uses the literary devices of characterization, symbolism and theme, to show the readers the relationship between an Chinese-American mother and an American daughter. “Two Kinds”, a short story by Amy Tan, is about the relationship between a Chinese-American mother and an American daughter. Jing-Mei mother, Suyuan, comes to America after …show more content…

Another one is when Suyuan had given Mei the piano. “Through the process, Jing-Mei’s mother demands that she “try on” a variety of identities: from “Chinese Shirley Temple, to child genius and now to a piano virtuoso” (Stein). Now, Suyuan wants Mei to become a young successful pianist. “Three days after watching the Ed Sullivan Show my mother told me what my schedule would be for piano lessons and piano practice” (Tan 2). Because her mother watched the Ed Sullivan Show, she was so inspired that she thought Mei could do it. So, when the piano was given to Mei, it symbolized a sign of regret because Mei mother is pushing her to do something that she wishes not to do. “A few years ago, she offered to give me the piano, for my thirtieth birthday. I had not played in all those years, I saw the offer as a sign of forgiveness, a tremendous burden removed” (5). But in the end, it showed the sign of forgiveness, love, and support her mother has for

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1615 Words | 7 Pages

In the story “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, Jing-mei’s mother thinks America is the Land of Opportunity. She has high hopes that her daughter will become a prodigy. She is not yet sure what her daughter's talents is, but she tries multiple careers to lead her down a successful path. First, Mrs.Woo tries to form her into an actress, but that doesn't work, so she tries to intellectually challenge her by taking small test excerpts from popular magazines she stole from her housecleaning job, but that idea also fails. She finally decides that she will trade housecleaning services for Jing-Mei’s piano lessons from Mr. Chong, an elderly piano teacher who is deaf and eyes are too weak to tell when Jing-Mei is playing the wrong notes.

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933 Words | 4 Pages

Two protagonists of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Lindo and Waverly Jong live the lives of a usual Chinese mother, and American daughter. They live through struggles, and although both go through journeys, there are key distinctions in which the Jong family does not complete the Hero’s Journey. The Jong family does not complete the Hero’s Journey, primarily due to their lack of sacrifice for the purpose

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1409 Words | 6 Pages

For instance, her famous novel ‘The Joy Luck Club’ depicts the Chinese mother and her American daughter relationship where they go through various circumstances trying to understand each other including the evolvement that comes in their relationships as the daughters know more about their mother’s life stories. Secondly, Tan considers the theme of identity in terms of Chinese immigrants and their life experiences as an immigrant in the United States. She reveals how the children born to the immigrants strive in an environment which is a mixture of American and Chinese influence. Moreover, Tan is found to have explored identity issues through her fictive creations and tackled the issue of authorial identity (Becnel, 2010). Similarly, romantic love is another subject included in the literary artworks of Amy Tan which considers the relationships and romance an important aspect of human’s life.

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630 Words | 3 Pages

Teaching life lessons through experience is a strategy used by both mothers. In “Fish Cheeks,” Amy’s mother lectures her about the Chinese dinner with the minister and his son. She says, “Your only shame is to have shame” (Tan, 176). The mother wants Amy to be proud of her family’s customs instead of embarrassed. The story “The Rights to the Streets of Memphis”

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338 Words | 2 Pages

The book Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson (1999) concluded with a beautiful summary and helpful seven points that encourage and exemplify the proper nurturing for our boys. This book has been very eye opening to me as a sister, girlfriend, and future mother. One thing that stuck out to me throughout his passage specifically and throughout the book was the substantial amount of generalization for the genders. In the passage, the authors state, "As therapists, to engage a boy in conversation, we often need to communicate differently with him than we would with a girl. With girls we can ask, 'How are you feeling? '"

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422 Words | 2 Pages

The tone and diction of each passage lets the reader decipher the sort of relationship the mothers and their daughters share. Within the story by Amy Tan, we read the excerpt “Jing- Mei Woo: Two Kinds”. Tan reminisces her childhood and remembers how controlling and possessive her mother would be. Reading from the excerpt, the fights between Tan and her mom seem to have been a regular thing.

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871 Words | 4 Pages

For example, when Jing-Mei was a kid she used to always be mad at her mom for trying to change who she is. Jing-Mei’s mother moved from China many years ago after losing her husband and kids. One day when Jing-Mei was mad at her mother, Jing Mei said that she wants to be like the kids who died in China. Many years after Jing-Mei’s mother died, Jing Mei finds two piano songs that her mother gave her. Jing-Mei then realized,”I realize they were two halves of the same song”(6) For instance, the names of the songs that Jing-Mei’s mother gave her are “Pleading Child” and “Perfectly Contented”.

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724 Words | 3 Pages

She deliberately sets herself up for failure, but this is justified in her own way since she is being forced to play the piano against her will, something she does not appreciate. Jing- Mei could have lived up to her mother's expectations of being decent pianist, but she never wanted to. This is what will create massive tension in the near future between the mother and Jing-

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484 Words | 2 Pages

The connection between a mother and her daughter is special. A bond is created from birth that is unbreakable. Because this bond is so important, it is approached in many different ways. In the excerpt from Amy Chua’s memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, she talks about her daughter growing up playing the violin. In the excerpt from Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club, she talks about herself as a young woman growing up with a very strict mother figure who wanted her to play the piano.

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1263 Words | 6 Pages

In her novel, The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan focuses on the fact that the bond between a mother and daughter can overcome any ethnic barrier. Despite there being many disagreements and arguments about the ways to live their lives, Tan defies this issue by creating a bond that is unbreakable even though the experienced different upbringings. Certain disagreements keep the novel interesting and create a conflict depicting the problems stemming from this barrier. Through her use of similes, metaphors, and flashbacks, Tan shows how the bond between a mother and daughter can withstand even the strongest cultural differences.

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501 Words | 3 Pages

The mother in "Two Kinds" was a Chinese immigrant who had come to America in 1949 after she lost her entire family. The mother never looked back at this painful time because she believed in her life in America. A couple years later she remarried and had Amy with her second husband. 4. Between Auntie Lindo and Amy Tan's mother, there was a strong rivalry over their children, and who was "more" of a prodigy.

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1177 Words | 5 Pages

Mother knows best. And yet so many daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club feel slighted by what the matriarchal figures in their lives have in mind for them, or rather, what they believe their mothers have in mind for them. A perfect storm of expectation, true and false, about love, about success, about being Chinese. The souring of mother-daughter relationships in The Joy Luck Club stem from unrealistic or ill conceived expectations that both parties hold for the other.

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862 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout the story, Jing-mei’s feeling toward her mother change in critical ways. As a young child, Jing-mei wants constant attention from her mother, going so far as agreeing to become a child prodigy. In the story, Jing-mei commented, “In fact, in the beginning, I was just as excited as my mother, maybe even more so” (Tan 221). This was before her mother becomes highly adamant about wanting her child to become a prodigy. As time went on, she wanted Jing-mei to become the epitome of a child star.

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737 Words | 3 Pages

Amy Tan is a Chinese-American author who was born on February 19, 1952, in Oakland, California. In Tan’s early life she had many struggles because her parents desired for her “to hold onto Chinese traditions and her own longings to become more Americanized” (Encyclopedia). While she wanted to become a writer when she was still young, her parents wanted her to become a neurosurgeon. When she got older and went to college she majored in English then started her career in the 1970’s. She was a technical writer and then started writing fiction stories.

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2019 Words | 9 Pages

She then uses these “new thoughts” and ideas to state that she “won’t let her [mother] change” her into the person she seeks her daughter to be. When Jing-Mei experiences a realization that she is her own person and not simply another part of her mother, she can embrace the comfort of knowing that she will not change for anyone, and is simply extraordinary for having her own thoughts and feelings. This reflects how Amy Tan can understand her thoughts and feelings about the hardships in her relationship with her mother as a way to connect more closely to her characters and make them more realistic in her writing (“How Amy Tan’s family stories made her a

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