Examples Of Trauma In The Joy Luck Club

Response to Trauma in Joy Luck Club

Imagine growing up in a completely different country than your parents (across the world, to be exact). Being surrounded by opposite situations that they were in would put you in separate places from your family. You would lose your native tongue, and only be around it at home. Your parents would celebrate holidays that aren’t being celebrated around you, and you would feel out of place. In The Joy Luck Club, the lives and stories of 4 first generation Chinese immigrant families are looked into and told. And their lives are exactly as described above. In The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, the families' responses to past and present generational trauma are conveyed through concise imagery and powerful internal

Waverly Jong grew up with her family in San Francisco’s Chinatown. She never had a strength that made her stand out, but when she discovered chess, it became her special talent. Although she enjoyed it for a great amount of time, she started liking it less and less as the pressure grew more and more. Her parents placed her under more stress and viewed her just as a chess-playing prodigy. Waverly reflects “I no longer played in the alley of Waverly Place. I never visited the playground where the pigeons and the old men gathered. I went to school, and then directly home to learn new chess secrets, cleverly concealed advantages, more escape routes” (98). This imagery conveys the longing Waverly feels for her old life, and the negative emotion she has associated with chess. The examples of her past (playing in the alley, going to the playground, etc) display the yearning she feels for her pre-chess life, which was free of stress and pressure..Chess also forced her to grow up a lot faster, and Waverly wants to feel like a child again, with no

An-mei Hsu was a young girl in China when her mother left her to go work as a concubine for a rich man. This caused An-mei to grow up with her grandmother as her main parenting figure, which resulted in her following Popo’s beliefs and customs. Popo told An-mei cynical sides of stories about her mother, and was the leading factor of her developing dislike for her mom. But when she enters back into An-mei’s life, a traumatic accident happens and causes her to be associated with even more negative memories. “This was the kind of pain so terrible that a little child should never remember it. But it is still in my skin’s memory. I cried out loud only a little, because soon my flesh began to burst inside and out and cut off my breathing air… And then Popo said something that was worse than the burning on my neck. ‘Even your mother has used up her tears and left. If you do not get well soon, she will forget you’” (47). This quote demonstrates the manipulation of Popo’s words, and how in the trauma-related stress An-mei believes them. The pain of the injury itself was enough to be engraved into An-mei’s skin and mind, so her mother just being present during the event was enough to have another bad memory associated with her. With Popo pointing this out and using her power to turn her granddaughter against her daughter, An-mei’s dislike