What Is The Lectern's Relationship In The Joy Luck Club

I have read the book The Joy Luck Club that was written by Amy Tam, who is a Chinese American writer. The relationship between mother and daughter in the book seems to be a struggle between liberty and authority. Mother represented the authority that tried to shape a daughter with his own idea and refuses the independence of her daughter; the daughter was a symbol of freedom that tried to deny the authority of the mother and got rid of the influence of the mother. The author described the conflicts between generation gap and estrangement between four pairs of mothers and daughters that reflected the collision and compatibility between Chinese culture and America culture.

James:

“unlike some people, I don’t just kowtow to the police.” In the

Marilyn spoke without careful diction to James because she felt dissatisfied with the attitude that James spoke with the policeman. However, Both the two words of kowtow and coolies were from Chinese. Those two words showed the unbearable image of China that make James feel bad.

Marilyn:

The man setting his papers on the lectern was youngish and thin, but that was as he came to what they all had pictured. And oriental, she thought. She had never seen one in person before. He was dressed like an undertaker: black suit, black tie knotted tight, shirt so white it flowed. His hair was slicked back and parted in a perfect pale line, but one wisp stood straight up in back, like an Indian chief’s feather. As he started to speak, he reached up with one hand to smooth down the cowlick, and someone snickered.

This is a passage that Marilyn reviewed the first time she met with James. In her mind, the word such as oriental and Harvard was a synonym of out of the ordinary which showed that she wants to be different all the

She had made a promise and her mother had heard it and come home. She would keep her word. That afternoon, when her father had hung up the phone and said those astonishing words – your mother is coming home – she had made a decision: her mother would never have to see that sad cookbook again.

The cookbook was a thing that was tied to the feelings of the mother and daughter of the times between Marilyn and her mother and Lydia and Marilyn. Marilyn didn't like the family concept that her mother showed through this book, and Lydia was unwilling to see a mother's sentimentality.

Hannah:

The necklace is broken now but, anyway, Hannah has promised Lydia that she will never put it on, and she does not break promises to people she loves. Even if they aren’t alive anymore. Instead she rubs the fine chain between her fingers like a rosary. The bad smells like her sister sleeping: a warm and musky and sharp smell – like a wild animal – that emerged only when she was deep in slumber.

Hannah, as the youngest child at this home, she knows everything but doesn’t say anything. Lydia is not the “medium” that is the child who is most easily ignored among the typical middle-class family in the United States, but Hannah is a kind of this type of child. She always keeps the secrets of everyone.