Along the way, she meets her chinese family members, including the twins sisters whom she has never seen. When June May learns more about her Chinese culture as well as her mother past, it helps her find her own identity. The narrator uses setting, point of view and theme into each element of the story. June May takes a journey to China to fulfill her mother’s wishes of finding her long abandoned twins. She States, “My mother is dead and I am on a train, carrying with me her dreams of coming home.
The Daughters in The Joy Luck Club battle the cultural differences between the ancient values of their immigrant mothers and the American way of life they live in. In China, the mothers were taught strength of character was built through obedience. In modern American, the daughters are exposed to a society where women have more freedom of expression. Even clothing is different in each culture. The daughters are being raised on conflicting cultural differences.
As an adult, Wong realizes that she had lost an opportunity to become a more complete Individual when she let go Chinese identity. Part 2: Reaction In “The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl.” Wong talks about her cultural experience. It is sad that she denied her Chinese culture and missed the chance to have a mixed culture. She refused to accept her Chinese origins, which her family was intent on keeping. Chinese culture has a long history, and to inherit one’s culture is valuable; Wong should have cherished it.
When she travels to China, she discovers the Chinese essence within herself, thus realizing a deep connection to her mother that she had always ignored. She also brings Suyuan’s story to her long-lost twin daughters, and, once reunited with her half-sisters, gains an even more profound understanding of who her mother was.For the most part, Jing-mei’s fears echo those of her peers, the other daughters of the Joy Luck Club members. They have always identified with Americans but are beginning to regret having neglected their Chinese heritage. Her fears also speak to a reciprocal fear shared by the mothers, who wonder whether, by giving their daughters American opportunities and self-sufficiency, they have alienated them from their Chinese heritage.Jing-mei is representative in other ways as well. She believes that her mother’s constant criticism bespeaks a lack of affection, when in fact her mother’s severity and high expectations are expressions of love and faith in her daughter.
Suyuan’s most cherished wish was that she could be reunited with her long-lost twin daughters. The friends urge her to go to China and tell her sisters about their mother. Jing-mei doesn’t think that she’s capable of telling her twin sisters about their mother because Jing-mei isn’t sure she knew their mom herself. She travels to China and realizes that she’s more Chinese than she thought. She learns about her own identity while also learning about her mother.
One can tell by reading the story, that Jing is a young character and how she does not realize about her mother’s good intentions for always wanting the best for her. Reading Amy Tan’s biography we get a sense of her personal life story through the character Jing. The biography states “that the tensions and conflicts produced by her dual heritage eventually found their way into her fiction, which often portrays the generational conflicts in immigrant families”(Huntley 3). We understand that Amy Tan was the daughter of a Chinese
北京电力高等专科学校学报 No. 8.2010 Beijing Electric Power College 理论探索与创新 D Chinese Traditional Cultural Components in The Joy Luck Club 黄秀琴 （广州大学华软软件学院外语系， 广东 广州 510990） Abstract： the film The Joy Luck Club, which is written originally by a Chinese-American writer, Amy Tan， In describes the relationship between the Joy Luck Club mothers and their daughters and their cultural conflicts. There are four pairs of mother-daughter. Mothers are the first generation immigrants who come from the Chinese traditional families with Chinese traditional culture in their minds firmly in 1940s while their daughters are born and raised in American, the second generations immigrants, who don't quiet understand their mothers' Chinese traditional culture and the way their thinking. So there are misunderstandings and conflicts between them, but finally the daughters gradually understand their mothers and their Chinese traditional culture through the great efforts the mothers make.
This essay, mainly focusing on Suyuan Woo and her daughter June, is aiming to further analyze the causes and manifestations of this complicated mother-daughter relationship. The relationship is by no means conflicting and it is not hard to understand. First of all, the conflict is due to the daughters’ attitudes towards their Chineseness, which can be normally understood as the Chinese character and traditional culture, in all, it can be understood as the temperament of a Chinese. Different from their mothers, the daughter generation is born and raised in America, what they have experienced is enculturation, and they are trying to get rid of their Chineseness and every influence of the mother generation. Far from knowing Chinese culture and without the awareness to know, the mother generation is alien and ridiculous to them.
Amy Chua has one statement that she uses “Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them” (p. 3 l 26) later in the article she add “Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As… western parents can only ask their kids to they their best” (P 1, l 44). When she says that she indirectly means that Chinese parents are tougher than western parents. They don’t believe in their children, like Chinese parents do. They should rather make their child fell ashamed by using punishment, instead of always being careful and positive. Amy Chua gives a great example of the contrast between the cultures, she tell her readers how Chinese parents and western parents would react if their kid came home with an A minus “ the Chinese parent would gasp in horror and ask what went wrong” (p. 3 l 2) “A western parent would support and praise the child.” Later in the article Amy Chua comes with one of her statements, again“if a Chinese child gets a B – which would never happen” (p 3, l 21).
In most cases this is true, for when they grow up they eventually figure out that they can reflect (retrace) their problems to that of their parents, and later understand what they had to go through. In the story The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, Jing-mei is (acts like) an ignorant girl to her mother. Whatever tactic her mother tries on her to make her a better person she rejects. Jing-mei is constantly trying to hide her Chinese heritage and even changes her name to “June” to conform to American ways. But as she moves on in life, she begins to regret her past actions and finds out that her mother’s difficulties and problems, are (now) put on her shoulders and (now) for her to solve.