The barriers among Chinese and American cultures are exacerbated by imperfect translation of language, the mother's use storytelling to circumvent these barriers and communicate with their daughters. The stories they tell are often educational, warning against certain mistakes or giving advice based on achievements in the past. For instance, Ying-Ying’s decision to tell Lena about her past is motivated by her desire to warn Lena against the passivity and fatalism that Ying-ying suffered. Storytelling also engaged to communicate messages of love and pride, and to illumine one’s inner self for others.
Another use of storytelling involve historical legacy. By telling their daughters about their family histories, the mother's ensure that their lives are remembered and understood by future generations, so that the characters who acted in the story never go away completely. In telling their stories to their daughters, the mothers try to instill them with respect for their Chinese ancestors and their pasts. Suyuan hopes that by finding her long-lost daughters and telling them her story, she can assure them with her love, regardless of her apparent abandonment of them. When Jing-mei sets out to explain her
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In many ways, the original purpose of the Joy Luck Club was to create a place to exchange stories. Facing both pain and misery, Suyuan decided to take control of the plot of her life. The Joy Luck Club did not simply serve as a distraction; it also enabled transformation, of community, association, love and support, of circumstance. Stories work to encourage a certain sense of independence. They are a way of forging one’s own identity and gaining freedom. Waverly understands this, while Lindo believes that her daughter’s crooked nose means that she is disastrous, Waverly dismisses this passive interpretation and changes her identity and her fate by reinventing the story that is told about a crooked