For The Joy Luck Mothers, By Amy Tan

For The Joy Luck mothers, storytelling is a medium of self-understanding. The novel has been praised for representing an ethnic experience that could “belong to any immigrant group.” What do you think?

The idea of belonging is something every individual tries to identify with. From finding a clique at school to assimilating into American culture, everyone has been faced with the challenge of fitting in. Amy Tan meticulously crafted her story, “The Joy Luck Club”, so that the different stories that exemplify assimilation into America had underlying deeper meanings while also being enjoyable to read. By doing so, taboo topics become interesting which makes the reader ponder on the experiences immigrants have to go through. The book has four

Amy Tan’s use of multiple viewpoints and enjoyable storytelling demonstrates the challenges of assimilation into America which I believe allows readers from any immigrant group to identify with the book.

Assimilation into America is something that my family has experienced. My parents are immigrants from Vietnam. They came here to escape the rising communist regime that was spreading throughout Asia. This regime was suffocating to those who lived in Vietnam. To give a little insight to what Communism is and what living in it is like, communism is a politial theory formally by Karl Marx that advocates for everything being publicly owned and everyone working in accordance with their abilities. In a literal sense, peoples belongings and property would be under the government therefore the things people worked so hard for would be given up. Most communist regimes in history have been military heavy and suppressive on freedom. This was creeping into the lives of every Vietnamese citizen. Therefore, both of my parents fleed and went through the immigration system. After getting sponsors and risking their lives, they were faced with what could be their biggest challenge of all:

The need to fit in even to the point of changing your appearance is common which furthered the idea of abandoning all traces of your heritage to assimilate. This is not only common for Asian Americans, but for all ethnic groups which is what makes the book so profound. The United States is known for being a melting pot of culture. Immigrant groups for all sorts of countries come to America for a fresh start. The New York Times highlights this when “the United States barred or curtailed the arrival of Chinese, Italian, Irish, Jewish and, most recently, Muslim immigrants was brought up in an article” (Lalami, Laila 2017). Therefore, all sorts of ethnic groups experienced these struggles to assimilate. Every group had to learn English, every group has to find a job and provide while assimilating, and every group had to juggle their own culture while learning a new