The Joy Luck Club Identity Quotes

Jingmei Woo, the main character of The Joy Luck Club, has been troubled by the obstacle of her own identity. She also doesn’t really know anything about her mother, while she was back in her home country, China. From the novel, “What will I say? What can I tell them about my mother? I don’t know anything…The aunties are looking at me as if I had become crazy..” Jingmei is seen as the representative of the younger generation in the book, who was born in the United States and feels largely disconnected from her Chinese identity. She admits this while displaying deep sympathy with the older generation. Her “success” is wanting to become someone like her mother, however, she does not necessarily know any much about her. This is due to her mom putting

This quote related to the barriers of the American Dream unit because this is her mother’s teachings that are meant to be successful later on. “I looked into the mirror… I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind…” Standing as herself, seeing herself as a person who has genuine thoughts, though no one could see it, she has them and they would be taken from her. She refuses to pull apart her thoughts from her mother’s sayings and teachings. This is her first indication of her achievement of the American Dream. After Jing-mei's experience in China, the potential of a richly mixed identity rather than an identity of warring opposites seems to be supported. She realizes that just as the region of America she grew up in—San Francisco's Chinatown—contained Chinese components, so does China itself. As requested by her entirely "Chinese" family, she eats hamburgers and apple pie for her first dinner in

“After seeing my mother’s disappointed face once again, something inside of me began to die. I hated the tests, the raised hopes and failed expectations… I made high-pitched noises like a crazed animal, trying to scratch out the face in the mirror. And then I saw what seemed to be the prodigy side of me—because I had never seen that face before… The girl staring back at me was angry, powerful… I had new thoughts, willful thoughts, or rather thoughts filled with lots of won’ts. I won’t let her change me, I promised myself. I won’t be what I’m not.” June has grown to feel bitter about her mother, Suyuan's relentless pursuit of June's unique skill, which Suyuan is confident exists. June first experienced excitement about her prodigy status, but she now perceives her mother's pursuit as an effort to impose an identity on her. In this scenario, June makes the decision that her unique quality, independence of thought, will make her stand out, but not in a way that her mother will recognize until much later. “It was not the only disappointment my mother felt in