Joy Luck Club Essay: Lindo Jong's Invisible Strength

647 Words3 Pages

Olalekan Adeyeri
Ms.Diamond
English 10
09 October 2015
Joy Luck Club Essay: Lindo Jong’s power of invisible strength
Slavery! Sacrifice! Death! Decisiveness! Aren’t words being used to describe a blockbuster war film, instead they describe just some of the experiences underwent by the Jong family. In the book Joy Luck Club, the Jongs are one of the multiple families such as the Woos, Hsus, and the St. Clairs, who’ve migrated from China. The Joy Luck Club chronicles the family’s struggles assimilating into the United States, with their ordeals in China looming over them. The Jong family consists of Lindo the mother, Tin the father, Waverly the daughter, and Vincent and Winston the two sons. Lindo’s experiences in an arranged marriage deeply transformed her thought process, and eventually influenced the way her daughter thinks too. Lindo Jong’s faith was already determined, at the age of two. A matchmaker visited the Jong …show more content…

She credits her success to her mother’s lesson of the power of invisible strength. She recounts how “my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect from others, and eventually, though neither of us knew it at the time, chess games.” (p. 89) Waverly goes on to have a lucrative career as an attorney, while her mother 's power over her gradually wanes reminiscent of the Taitai’s power over Lindo. Waverly Jong exercises her own free will, and has a white fiance. It’s assumable that marrying outside of the culture isn’t normal, as no other character in the book did that. Waverly is unsure if her mother, Lindo will be accepting of her white husband. But Lindo isn’t only accepting, she’s enthusiastic about Waverly marrying Rich. A possible reason for Lindo’s enthusiasm could be because leaving an arranged marriage wasn’t the norm either, and Waverly’s choice displays how much shes taught her