The Joy Luck Club Identity Essay

June, Jing-Mei, Woo lives in a whirlwind of cultures confusing her about her identity. Throughout Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, June is fighting to find who she is. The combination of her mother’s Chinese culture pressuring June to take advantage of her opportunities and the American culture of choosing one's own destiny results in June trudging through this turmoil to gather a sense of her identity. The cultural and historical settings of The Joy Luck Club majorly influenced the development of June Woo by placing her in a clash of cultures resulting in June realizing that both cultures are a genuine part of her identity, supporting the universal theme that the way to truly understand your parents and their motives, and yourself is to fully

June Woo’s upbringing placed her in the clash of her cultures, the Chinese strive to take advantage of your opportunities, and the American idea of choosing your destiny. In June's second story, she talks about her mother's pressure to be a prodigy. Her mother is obsessed with the idea that June could be the next Shirley Temple, and this pressure got June’s hopes up. She describes how “I was filled with a sense that I would soon become perfect. My mother and father would adore me. I would be beyond reproach. I would never feel the need to sulk for anything.” (Tan 143) In this excerpt, June truly believes that she needs to be perfect to be “worthy”. She hasn’t been influenced by the American culture yet, she only knows the Chinese culture. Afterward, she goes on to try out many other things to be a prodigy at. This Chinese idea is what June was raised to believe, and she truly took it to heart. She felt as though her worth lay in her ability to be perfect at something. However, as her story progresses her mother is progressively more and more disappointed in her failures at being a prodigy. As June noticed

In her last story, June remembers a lesson her mother told her as she tried to erase her Chinese side. She said “Once you are born Chinese, you cannot help but feel and think Chinese. “Someday you will see,” said my mother. “It is in your blood, waiting to be let go.” (Tan 304) June was 15 when her mother told her this. It was her mother that first understood that she couldn’t erase her Chinese side, that it was a part of her identity as much as being American was. As she reminisces on this, it starts to guide her in finding her identity. When she meets with her sisters, she thinks to herself “... I see no trace of my mother in them [her sisters]. Yet they still look familiar. And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my Family. It is in our blood. After all these years, it can finally be let go.”(Tan 329) This is when June embraces her Chinese side. She understands what her mother was trying to get through to her after all these years and understands that although she is American, she is as much Chinese. She realizes