ipl-logo

Finding And Losing Identity In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

1945 Words8 Pages

Finding and Losing Identity in The Joy Luck Club

“A thing that happens to migrants is that they lose many of the traditional things which root identity, which root the self,” according to the acclaimed author Salman Rushdie. To that end, a person’s identity is tied to the culture and the traditions from which they originate. For migrants, when they leave their homes and enter a new culture, they must uproot their identity and restructure it to fit the expectations of their new home. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, the mothers of the novel must undergo one such upheaval when they immigrate to America, the effects of which reach through generational lines to damage both the mothers’ and their daughters’ identities. Tan develops the motif of …show more content…

Symbolically, she did not fit into American conventions, like the beauty standards for “American women” represented by the dresses, or into American culture as a whole. To join American society, Suyuan had to give up parts of her Chinese identity, from her physical appearance, like her “brown-checked Chinese dress”, to her spiritual beliefs. Because of the pressure to fit in, Suyuan “could not refuse” this Americanization of her identity. Furthermore, Ying-ying loses her identity in America: Lena recalls that when her mother immigrated, her father proudly named her in her immigration papers: Betty St. Clair, crossing out her given name of Gu Ying-ying. And then he put down the wrong birthyear, 1916 instead of 1914. So, with the sweep of a pen, my mother lost her name and became a Dragon instead of a Tiger. (Tan …show more content…

However, when she enters China, the Chinese heritage that she has always felt to be skin-deep suddenly morphs into an undeniable part of her identity. Her feeling that she has transformed, that her “blood” and “bones” are changing, shows that her mental self is reconstructing itself to include that new aspect of her identity. Overall, an understanding of cultural heritage is essential to the construction of a cultural identity. In Jing-mei’s case, she must connect to her roots in China to both begin and complete the process of identifying herself as

Show More
Related
824 Words | 4 Pages

Kai Foote Martinez Sophomore Honors English 25 January 2023 The Sacrifices That Come with Love in The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan ’s novel The Joy Luck Club is about the hardships of relationships with different cultural beliefs and expectations and how they influence people. There are numerous examples of the hardships and sacrifices that mothers make for their children; these sacrifices teach and influence all the daughters to help them have a better understanding of the world and their expectations.

Read More
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.

Read More
504 Words | 3 Pages

Devlin Nguyen Period 4 English 3 Postcolonialism Analysis Joy Luck Club through Postcolonial Lens Amy Tan’s book The Joy Luck Club describes stories that show the complexities of mother-daughter relationships that live in different cultures in their childhood. Lindo Jong, one of the mothers in the novel, immigrates to America to start a new life and struggles to understand and connect with her daughter, Waverly, who lived in America her whole life. In the novel, Waverly and Lindo experiences unhomeliness due to the difference in culture and lifestyle, causing a delay in understanding between Lindo and Waverly.

Read More
1329 Words | 6 Pages

Although it is often perceived as a controversial subject, immigration has admittedly shaped the United States both culturally and socially, hence the country’s nickname of “melting pot”. The personas of 1st generation immigrants who traveled here themselves, in addition to those of their 2nd generation children, have clashed with Western culture for hundreds of years. In The Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan, four Chinese immigrant families are members of their own club, and share their mother (1st generation) and daughter (2nd generation) experiences along the way. The fictional lives of these characters are inspired by the lives of immigrants that take up 14% of the U.S. population today. Both similarities and differences can be observed

Read More
1028 Words | 5 Pages

Living as a Chinese-American, the narrator had to take on American attributes in order to be accepted -- for example, while normal Chinese women spoke with strong and assertive voices, the narrator adopted a whisper in order to appear “American-feminine. ”(1) As a result, however, her shy demeanor caused her to be an unpopular outcast. She saw herself in another Chinese-American girl at her school, as they had certain, negative similarities. “I hated the younger sister, the quiet one.

Read More
1271 Words | 6 Pages

Throughout the novel The Joy Luck Club, Jing-Mei Woo struggles with her sense of identity and belonging in a community as she is often embarrassed of her heritage, and prefers to live her life in the shadows. However, at the end of the book, Jin-mei finds peace when she seeks her roots and sisters in China. She finally finds her inner Chinese that she described is “in your blood waiting to be let go” (Tan 306). This shows that although immigrants of the time period often struggled with self identity, deep down they wanted to find acceptance in their

Read More
703 Words | 3 Pages

Different experiences for different people can cause them to have different perspectives. This will cause some people to not like some things where other people will like them. This is all caused by different experiences people have. In Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club she shows how people's different perspectives can cause conflict between people.

Read More
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.

Read More
760 Words | 4 Pages

Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club is an amazing representation of what Chinese immigrants and their families face. The broad spectrum of the mothers’ and daughters’ stories all connect back to a couple of constantly recurring patterns. These patterns are used to show that how the mothers and daughters were so differently raised affected their relationships with each other, for better and for worse. To begin with, the ever-present pattern of disconnect between the two groups of women is used to show how drastically differently they were raised.

Read More
1023 Words | 5 Pages

In Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club, the different stories show how the different characters develop and progress. Rose Hsu Jordan begins “Half and Half” as someone who clearly lacks of conviction as she allows everyone but her to make decisions. Throughout “Without Wood”, however, Rose Hsu Jordan begins to learn, with the help of her mother, how to speak up.

Read More
1034 Words | 5 Pages

Suyuan’s American Dream starts in her heart when she decides to escape from the chaotic China and find a better life by immigrating to America. However, she loses her two babies on the way to Chungking. American Dream means different things for different people. Suyuan has fulfilled her American Dream in a certain degree by trying to provide her daughters with successful, blissful and better lives. First of all, Suyuan left Kweilin for Chungking in order to find her husband and avoid the Japanese.

Read More
737 Words | 3 Pages

Jing did not feel as if she was Chinese, since she lived in California; she felt more American. Once the train entered China she felt as if she was becoming Chinese. “The minute our train leaves the Hong Kong border… And I think, my mother was right, I am becoming Chinese” (241). Jing is excited to visit her relatives there

Read More
1225 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout the entire novel, the mothers and daughters face inner struggles, family conflict, and societal collision. The divergence of cultures produces tension and miscommunication, which effectively causes the collision of American morals, beliefs, and priorities with Chinese culture which

Read More
1558 Words | 7 Pages

People may think that movies aren't as different as their book counterpart. While that may be true, there are many aspects between the book and the movie that aren't as similar. The book The Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan share many similarities and differences with the movie by the same name. The book and the movie possess similar qualities; nevertheless there are many parts where the movie diverged from the book. However, although there are many differences, both movie and book place an emphasis on the same themes.

Read More
1309 Words | 6 Pages

Jing-Mei was immersed in American culture as she attended school every day, as opposed to her parents who were both born and raised in China. As a young adult who experienced two cultures, the barrier (including language and culture) between Jing-Mei and her parents contributed to “vigorous [denial] that [she] had any Chinese whatsoever below [her] skin” (Tan 147). Still, her mother was convinced that Jing-Mei would eventually come to “feel and think Chinese” (Tan 147). Although she disagreed with what her mother said, Jing-Mei knew deep inside that she was right, frequently realizing the tendencies she had that were so alike to her mother. She listed that “haggling with store owners, pecking her mouth with a toothpick in public, being color-blind to the fact that lemon yellow and pale pink are not good combinations for winter clothes” were some of the things that her mother did that the naive fifteen-year-old Jing-Mei identified with being Chinese.

Read More

More about Finding And Losing Identity In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

Related Topics

Open Document