Joy Luck Club Cultural Analysis

In my opinion, I think that the novel argue that certain cultural concepts like “ Joy Luck” can not be translated for many reasons. First, the daughters are not the one who created the club so they cannot understand how much it means to their mothers. By the fact that Jing-mei has to take over her mother’s place in the Joy Luck Club while she does not understand the full meaning can be a lot of responsibilities and really stressful. To her, this is something she can’t avoided and she knows that it is something that her mother’s treasured but because she is being forced to take over her mom’s place, she does not have any interested in it. An example of how a certain cultural concepts can not be translated is when Jing-mei’s mother was still

Her mother misunderstood her and told the aunties that she’s going back to college soon while what she really meant was she did not want to go back. During the club meeting, they congratulated on how lucky they are to survive the war but Jing-mei was born in America, she was not there when all those things were happening, even when her mother told her the stories many times she never really understood it. At the end of chapter one when the aunties freak out when they asked Jing-mei to go to China and meet up with her two sisters and tell everything about her mother and Jing-mei said she does not know anything about her mother. According to Jing-mei, “ In me, they see their own daughters just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fracture English.” (pg 17). This is something I can relate to even though I was born in Vietnam but coming to the US at such a young age made me forget my culture and why my family does something on a specific