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Mothers-Daughters In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

785 Words4 Pages

Mothers are the most influential people in the life of daughters. Mothers would do everything for their daughters, making a relationship build on love and devotion. However, this bond between mothers and daughters can be very complex and mostly needs time to be fully understood. In the story “The Joy Luck Club”, there are four conflicts between mothers-daughters, but the protagonist and most important character of the story Jing-Mei and her Chinese mum Suyuan create the most complicated relationship of the novel as Suyuan dies and this event radically influences the life of Jing-Mei, teaching her something that cannot be taught anywhere. The relationship between mothers and daughters can have many ups and downs, even so it would always be built on love, sacrifice but sometimes it is also taken for granted sometimes as shown by the characters Jing-Mei and Suyuan in “The Joy Luck Club” .
“The Joy Luck Club” is a famous novel written by Amy Tan which illustrates a great example of a mother and daughter …show more content…

In this novel, the greatest desire of Suyuan is to do anything to help and provide her daughter the best future possible which can be seen when she moves to America, leaving her two daughters behind. Suyuan is a very motivated character who does not want to make Jing-Mei experience the same things she had to go through. She wants to provide her with a better life which includes things such as joy, happiness and pleasure which is illustrated in this quote “In America I will have a daughter just like me. But over there nobody will say her worth is measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch. Over there nobody will look down on her, because I will make her speak only perfect American English” (Tan 2). Mothers are willing to make tough decisions in order to improve their children’s life as Suyuan leaves two daughters

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Mother and daughter relationships aren’t always perfect. Most of the time, they see things from different perspectives. This could be caused from bad communication or being brought up differently. Amy Tan shows this through Jing-Mei and Suyuan in The Joy Luck Club. Tan is trying to prove that even though a parents and child's relationship isn’t always perfect they can still learn from each other.

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In Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club, many cultural differences exist between the characters, creating complications in their relationships. An example of a cultural difference is between An-mei’s Chinese values and traditions and those of Christianity. The collision of these Chinese and Christian faiths profoundly influences An-Mei's character by causing her to doubt both faiths and resulting in her daughter Rose's inability to control her own choices. An-mei’s exposure to Chinese culture and the Christian faith results in an intermixing of both ideals which eventually leads to a cultural collision. An-mei is exposed to the traditional Chinese values of filial piety, wisdom, deference, and honesty through her grandmother.

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Mothers are our best friends and worst enemies. We talk to them about everything going on in our lives and share many good memories with them, but they are also the ones that push us the hardest and put high expectations on us. Although it seems annoying at times, they do it for our own good. There are many examples of mother’s sacrifices in The Joy Luck Club. In the book, The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan uses storytelling to develop the thematic idea that mothers will go great lengths and sacrifice a lot for the betterment of their children.

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Thesis Statement about theme of literary work- In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, expressions of love and hatred are shown in multiple mother-daughter relationships resulting in negative impacts such as pain, bitterness, and regret because of their differing opinions. Support Point #1- Suyuan Woo guiltily leaves her twin daughters on the ground in China as she walks away in tears.

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In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, mother and daughter relationships are put to the test. Four women meet to play a game of Chinese mahjong, keeping a tradition alive. Suyuan Woo, founder of the club, had a daughter named Jing Mei June Woo. Suyuan had two daughters which she expected both to succeed to her standards.

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“I knew it was my mother even though I had not seen her in all my memory”(Tan, 1988, p.44). This quote from The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan shows how An-mei’s mother emotionally distanced herself from her and was not a large part of her life. However, the families such as this one in the stories are defined by blood. That is where this starts, as An-mei picked up a lot of characteristics from her apathetic mother, which is why their relationship is the way it is. Within Amy Tan’s cherished story of the Joy luck club which goes into the life stories of each member of the club, the central theme is family and it focuses specifically on the bond between mothers and daughters.

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China to San Francisco, mothers to daughters, mistakes to opportunities. Suyuan Woo, Jing-mei Woo, An-mei Hsu, Rose Hsu Jordan, Lindo Jong, Waverly Jong, Ying-Ying St.Clair, and Lena St. Clair. The Joy Luck Club. In the novel, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, four mothers, and daughters tell their individual stories and how they all came to be The Joy Luck Club together. One specific family, the St. Clairs struggled with the danger of silence.

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‘“Not know your own mother?” cries Auntie An-mei with disbelief. “How can you say? Your mother is in your bones!”’(Tan 40). The Joy Luck Club has recurring messages throughout the book, including: marriage and divorce, culture and beliefs, and mother and daughter relationships.

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Edward Scissorhands Movie Review EXAMPLE Edward Scissorhands is the wonderful and thrilling story of a naive, artificial man who lives alone at the top of mountain until a well-meaning Avon saleslady shows up at his door, realizes he lives alone, and brings him home to her quirky, robotic neighborhood. Edward longs to belong to a family, and he gets his wish when the Boggs take him in. Almost immediately, Edward develops a connection to and feelings for the Boggs’ teenage daughter, Kim. Kim’s boyfriend, Jim, is not a fan of Edward, and Edward’s place in the Boggs family and in the town is jeopardized when Jim and Kim convince Edward to do something extraordinary. When the film was released in 1990, it became an instant classic.

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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.

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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.

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My mother and father would adore me. I would be beyond reproach. I would never feel they need to sulk for anything.” (Amy 143) This illustrates that Suyuan instills the concept of anyone can be anything if they work hard into Jing-mei, pushes her to success in different areas; however, after Jing-mei fails those prizes and contests, she feels inadequate because she thinks she never succeeded and never meet her mother’s expectation.

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Mother knows best. And yet so many daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club feel slighted by what the matriarchal figures in their lives have in mind for them, or rather, what they believe their mothers have in mind for them. A perfect storm of expectation, true and false, about love, about success, about being Chinese. The souring of mother-daughter relationships in The Joy Luck Club stem from unrealistic or ill conceived expectations that both parties hold for the other.

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In The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan, we are introduced to Suyuan and her daughter Jing-Mei “June” Woo. As with any relationship, there is conflict between Suyuan Woo and her daughter, as it seems that Jing-Mei doesn’t understand her mother’s Chinese culture and ambitions. In the Chinese culture, women are seen as inferior and often lack basic rights such as the right to marriage or financial holdings, thus deprived of their potential. This is why the rights in the U.S. are seen as privileges to Chinese women, among other minorities, and why Suyuan endeavored for her daughter to become a prodigy and excel in anything and everything. Yet as Jing-Mei was forced into this ideal, and the more her mother tried to enforce this idea, the further she begun to despise her mother for attempting to turn her into a “fraud”.

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937 Words | 4 Pages

As a whole, while the story was very depressing at times, it still has an underlying tone of family ideals, as the relationship between the mother and daughter still remained despite the arguments they had. In my opinion, I think the author’s message that she wished to convey was that despite any event that may occur, family members will always be there support you. This is shown in how, despite Jing Mei’s failures at becoming a prodigy, her mother still supported her and did not give up hope on helping her daughter becoming a successful person. As such, it strengthens the idea that “family will always be there for you”, no matter what hardships come their way. In addition, it helped to add a sense of togetherness in the short story, as it inadvertently revealed how much Jing’s mother actually loved her, despite her tough exterior.

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