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Significant Life Lessons In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

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One of the lessons contained in Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club, is a very significant life lesson that all individuals should learn to understand and apply. Even though not specifically taught by one of the characters in the novel, the overall theme and lesson of the book, that we should not judge others, plays a very important role in the story and shapes the relationships within the book to a great extent.

Each of the mother/daughter relationships within The Joy Luck Club involves miscommunication and misunderstanding because they are each judging each other without understanding what the other went through. For example, Jing Mei considers her mother forceful and overbearing because she forces her to play the piano although she doesn’t
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His struggle in school illustrates how influential family beliefs are to one's identity and perception. Additionally, in the novel "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan, family is a reoccurring thematic element, especially between mother and daughter figures. Waverly, a central daughter, says "I . . . looked in the mirror. . . . I was strong.

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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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I cannot finish”(3 Tan, 4). When the mom atoned Jing-Mei to take the better crab, the mom shows family relationships because she stopped her daughter from taking the bad crab because she doesn’t want her to have bad luck. She wants her to have a good life and be lucky which is how she is showing family relationships. Family relationships are not only shown in Joy Luck Club but in The Yellow Raft in Blue Water. Family relationships are shown when Ida stops Clara from taking her daughter, Christine.

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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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In Heather Lende’s book, Find the Good, she writes in a way that makes the story seem uniquely personal. She doesn’t shy away from talking about her true feelings in her own experiences, even when they aren’t a feeling that she particularly agrees with at the time that she wrote the book, like her feelings when her adopted daughter, Stoli, was unmarried and pregnant at the age of twenty one. Even though they were a happy couple at the time and seemed completely prepared to have their first child, Heather was very worried about it and even thought to herself that “I must have done a bad job” (Lende 33). However, Heather learns from reacting this way and strives to be the best mother that she can be after this.

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Incompatible Interracial relationships are difficult to maintain in the United States because of differences in cultural upbringing as well as racism and xenophobia. The book The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan focuses on four Chinese mothers who describe their past hardships and adjustment to the United States as well as their relationships with their American born daughters. The mothers try to save their children from experiencing the same things that they have been through. In the book, there are a few interracial couples such as Rose Hsu and Ted, Waverly Jong and Rich, and Ying Ying St.Clair and her husband Clifford. They all have trouble loving and understanding each other.

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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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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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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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In Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club, the different stories show how the different characters develop and progress. Rose Hsu Jordan begins “Half and Half” as someone who clearly lacks of conviction as she allows everyone but her to make decisions. Throughout “Without Wood”, however, Rose Hsu Jordan begins to learn, with the help of her mother, how to speak up.

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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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Bi, Zijian Thu. 3/5/2015 English 2B Ms. Freeland 2° WHEN THE DREAM COMES TRUE What is your American Dream? “The Joy Luck Club”, a novel by Amy Tan, talks about how four mother-daughter pairs have fulfilled their American Dreams. Suyuan and Jing-mei was one of the mother-daughter pair who wants to fulfill their dreams in America.

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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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People may think that movies aren't as different as their book counterpart. While that may be true, there are many aspects between the book and the movie that aren't as similar. The book The Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan share many similarities and differences with the movie by the same name. The book and the movie possess similar qualities; nevertheless there are many parts where the movie diverged from the book. However, although there are many differences, both movie and book place an emphasis on the same themes.

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