The Joy Luck Club By Amy Tan

In today's society, it's often that parents and their children struggle to understand each other. There are many different reasons why parents have miscommunications with their children. In Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club, she writes about a chinese mother that tries to make her chinese-american daughter successful. Suyan and Jing-Mei lack communication because of the cultural difference between the two, so it leads to conflict between the two about many things that aren't important to Jing-Mei, but it is to Suyan. Suyan and Jing-Mei have grown up in two totally different settings. Suyan was raised to always achieve high expectations and accomplish goals that not many kids were able to achieve. Suyan, being a Chinese mother, tries to push those expectations on Jing-Mei in America, so Jing-Mei has different views on it than her mother. On page 131, Suyan says, “Of course you can be prodigy too”...”you can be best anything.” This shows that Suyan was raised to believe that she can do anything and tries to push it on Jing-Mei, but she takes it the wrong way. Jing-Mei says, “... I was filled with a sense that I would soon be perfect. My mother and father would adore me”(Tan 143). Her saying this

Since Jing-Mei was raised in a different culture than her mom, it made her more lazy and less confident. After her mom tries to get her to do stuff she isn't interested in, she snaps and says, “Why don't you like me the way I am? I’m not a genius! And even if I could, I wouldn't go on TV if you paid me a million dollars”(Tan 146)? She knows that her mom is going to show off her piano skills, so she doesn't try to learn to prove to her mom that she can't force her to do stuff. “...I also learned I could be lazy and get away with mistakes,..”(Tan 148). This shows that from her experiences she has lived in a different culture than her mom which made her raised to be negative and lazy over anything she