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Power In The Joy Luck Club

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Power can be expressed in many ways and forms.The novel Joy Luck Club and its movie counterpart, share in the struggle of power between Chinese ideals and American ideals and how their balance creates and eventually fixes barriers between Ying Ying St. Claire and her daughter Lena St. Clair, and Lindo Jong and her daughter Waverly Jong.
Since the first look into the relationship between Lena St. Clair and her mother Ying Ying, their relationship clearly has a crack in it. Both Lena and Ying Ying view each other as broken at some point during the novel and this brokenness creates a rift in how they understand one another. The stories from Lena’s point of view are missing information about her mother. Lena struggles her whole life trying to cure her mother without ever knowing why. This …show more content…

As she starts to resent her mother, the negativity starts to affect her choices and her life-“After that I began to see terrible things. I saw these things with my chinese eyes, the part of me I got from my mother”(103). Ying Ying’s life in china is what keeps her apart from her daughter, and what aids her daughter into resenting her. After Ying Ying slowly succumbs to fatalism her daughter starts to fall onto the same path. The secrets between the two is what breeds the disconnection between them and only after they release the barrier guarding their secrets do they begin to understand each other. Ying Ying understands that her daughter does not understand how horrible her life was back in china-“All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me”(67). Their relationship shows how Ying Ying’s chinese background causes a rift in their communication and the successfulness.”She and I have shared the same body. There is a part of her mind that is part of mine. But when she was born, she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since. All her life, I have watched her as though from another shore.

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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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June, however, struggled to please her mother in all she did, and never felt as if she had any worth. Their relationship becomes distant due to miscommunications. Asian culture and expectations weigh heavily on Suyuan’s mind as she worries about the path her daughter takes, one that is untraditional and looked down upon. June finally understands her mother, after it is too late. Secrets and traditions can either tear apart or build up a relationship.

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This passage tells of the unsuccessful journey that Suyuan and her new husband go on a search for the babies. It demonstrates how attached a family is in Chinese

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Jing-Mei’s American upbringing hindered her ability to understand her mother’s perspective – which was based on Chinese heritage – resulting in strong differences of opinion that led to arguments. In addition, since Jing-Mei and her mother failed to communicate effectively about their different perspectives, they became frustrated and upset with each other. The relationship between Jing-Mei and her mother was harmed by their emotional distance from each other. The absence of verbal affection between them translated to increased resentment and disappointment. Positive emotional connection between a parent and child proves vital in maintaining a healthy relationship in the face of

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The conflict between parents and children is a universal experience that transcends cultural boundaries. In Amy Tan's "Two Kinds," the protagonist Jing-mei struggles with her mother's expectations and her own desire for independence. In Diane Mei Lin Mark's "Rice and Rose Bowl Blues," the narrator navigates the tensions between her traditional Chinese parents and her American upbringing. Through the use of imagery, connotative diction, and allusion, both authors convey the emotional complexity of parent-child relationships. In "Two Kinds," Tan uses imagery to illustrate Jing-mei's internal struggle.

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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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Regardless, her mother still is persistent on Jing Mei becoming a prodigy, despite her passionless performance and her family’s negative reaction. In return, Jing Mei becomes angry at her mother, and will do anything to change her mind. Screaming, “I wish I were dead! Like them.”, her mother freezes, disappointed in her daughter, and quits Jing Mei’s piano classes. On Page 28-29, Jing Mei’s perspective on the world becomes more apparent: “For unlike my mother, I didn’t believe I could be anything I wanted to be, I could only be me.”

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As seen by the mothers’ and daughters’ behavior towards each other in The Joy Luck Club, it is difficult to preserve one’s culture when one is exposed to a new environment or country. With a difference of two distinct generations between them, the four main pairs often come across cultural collisions. Other than facing the age gap, these mothers and daughters also have to deal with a language and communication barrier. Already, at the beginning of the story, Jing-Mei Woo is able to understand how the mothers of the “Joy Luck Club” are displeased with their daughter’s rejection of their Chinese culture. She speaks to herself, admitting that “they are frightened.

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Ying-Ying accepts her husband’s death and creates a different relationship with St. Clair, making him her new husband. Using the words: “I look at my daughter and now it is the first time I have seen it.” , to describe her newfound realization, continuing to alter their relationship further. This occurring in the 15th chapter as Lindo

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One dynamic that false expectation strains is the relationship between Suyuan and her daughter Jing-Mei. In a vignette told from the perspective of the latter, Suyuan has the notion that Jing-Mei should be able to perform something at the level of a prodigy. She begins

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On the other hand, being born into this country, Jing-mei is against wanting to live up to the expectations her mother sets on her. Two kinds reveal two different sides of the cultural spectrum, and their opposing view towards their values. Jing-mei 's mother felt like an outcast existing in a dominate population. Grasping the same idea, she held onto her hard time back in her home. Jing-mei is her last hope to prove that her homeland can be just as talented as Americans.

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“Communication is the key to a successful relationship, attentiveness, and consistency. Without it, there is no relationship,” (Bleau). The Joy Luck Club is a novel written by Amy Tan. Set in the twentieth century, this novel depicts the life of four Chinese immigrant women escaping their past and their American-grown daughters. The novel reveals the mothers’ hardship-filled past and motivations alongside with the daughters’ inner conflicts and struggles.

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Finally, In Amy Tan’s work, The Joy Luck Club, she explores Freud’s psychoanalytic personality theory to develop the different levels of personality in her characters. To begin, Amy Tan adopts the ID characteristics in Ying-Ying’s first husband. Operating on his own

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However, this determination sometimes appears to be obsessive to the point of running her daughter’s life for her. Regardless, she is only trying to help, as she encourages Jing Mei by asserting “‘You can be best anything.’” (1). Because of this, it suggests that although she is very harsh on her daughter at times, it is only to make sure that Jing Mei can use her full potential and not end up losing everything like her

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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.

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