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The Mother-Daughter Relationship In Adrienne Rich's The Joy Luck Club

1272 Words6 Pages

The cathexis between mother and daughter : essential, distorted, misused, is the greatest unwritten story, wrote the poet Adrienne Rich in her 1976 seminal book “Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution”. The mother-daughter relationship is undoubtedly one of the strongest and intimate bond in the world. It is that powerful connection that ties a child to her mother nine months more than any other relation. This bond is always the special one surrounded with layers of happiness that pay a way to all other relationships. There are several reasons for focusing on this beautiful relationship. First, the lifelong bond that is forged at birth between mothers and daughters is of utmost importance to all women, irrespective of their …show more content…

The novel 's episodes and events are directly taken from her own life, her parents and her grandparents lives. She skillfully dwells into the art of narrating personal relationships among her characters in the novel. The life of her mother and her mother’s mother is still fresh in her mind. Both the ladies had lived through unhappy experiences in their lives. Further, Tan’s grandmother herself had witnessed her own mother committing suicide. Tan’s mother too suffered from bouts of hysteria and depression living a traumatic life. She experienced a further misfortune when her father and brother were diagnosed brain tumours. Eventually Tan’s mind have those uncanny and baffling memories full of sadness, loss, pain, death and …show more content…

The club comprises of mah Jong game instilling elements of strong will and determination among its members to survive. In order to cope with their difficult times, the members of the group arrange feast to 'celebrate good fortune and play (Mah Jong) with seriousness and think of nothing else but adding to happiness through winning’. (TJLC,p.11) Thus the club helped its members to get off their difficult times and live their life with hopes in their

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Tan that despite its evident differences to Cofer’s memoir is discussing the same trials ethnic, culturally diverse people experience. On page 881, Cofer recounts her first public poetry reading where an older woman mistook the Puerto Rican author for a waitress that ignites passion to the reading, “her lowered eyes told me that she was embarrassed,” [4] at the sheer power and conviction of Cofer enforcing that she is an educated Latin woman that deserves respect for her identity. While academically Tan’s teachers would always direct her to STEM subjects as viable career options which contradict the author's passion for writing despite not being on-par with the typical standard of what’s expected of a Chinese-American girl. However, what sets both pieces apart is that Tan does this examination through her mother and her own experiences as Chinese-Americans, while Cofer’s memoir encapsulates her own struggles that intertwine with the vast Latin woman’s

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Tan expresses the life experiences of Chinese immigrants to the United States and attempts to depict the relationship of a mother and daughter through her significant piece of writing ‘The Joy Club’. Therefore, all these authors somehow portrayed their early struggles and their view point towards life from their literary

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During Christmas, Tan is worrying about how Robert is going react about their culture. Tan’s mom sees that she does not like the culture of her family in front of Robert. Furthermore, her mom does not want her daughter to be ashamed of her family and her culture. The best way for Tan’s mom to teach her a lesson is to follow their culture on her way to cook and act, and she says something unique, “Your only shame is to have a shame.” Its change the way she thinks after year later (111).

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Reflecting on them, she expresses the meaning her mother's English holds with her and emphasizes its importance with the metaphor, “It's my mother tongue.” She expands upon it in her statement right after; the use of parallelism between her description of her mother tongue, “Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery,” and its impact reinforcing, ”That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world.” Tan's inclusion of these childhood stories appeals to the reader’s sense of connection with her through the use of exemplification. This strategy focuses on Pathos by placing the reader in the author’s shoes and effectively conveying how, though difficult, growing up and living with these Englishes has molded her perspective on the power of

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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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When she was around others she would talk differently than how she talks with her mother. “…all the forms of Standard English that I had learned in school and through book, the forms of English I did not use at home with my mother” (118). Throughout her story she refers to the English her mother speaks as “Broken English” because her mother would say sentences like “Why he don’t send me check, already two weeks ago, but it hasn’t arrived” (119). Her mother didn’t have much difficulty understanding or reading English. When Tan was younger, she would feel embarrassed when her mother would speak because many people couldn’t understand her well.

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And when the doctor called her daughter, me, who spoke perfect English, low and behold we had assurances the CAT scan would be found”.(13). This shows that again Tan had to help her mother and that she had nothing to be ashamed of. Personally this affected her in the way that her mother could not speak English too well, but she could, so she was the talker in the family. This shows the readers that if someone is different, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t help them. The audience can take her memories, so that they can understand that some people are

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Nevertheless, as the story unfolds, Tan explains in more detail of the relationship of the mother and her daughter. In which the mother fully believed her daughter would become this great prodigy. Therefore, pressuring her daughter

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Her personal experience is socially and theoretically constructed and emotions play an essential role in the process of identity formation. Her identity is not fixed, which is portrayed by inquisitiveness that her own mother and Aunt thought she was possessed, enhanced and made this story an enriching experience. The family is the first agent of socialization, as the story illustrates, even the most basic of human activities are learned and through socialization people

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