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. All of the other mother-daughter pairs experience the same misunderstanding, which in some ways may be seen to stem from cultural differences. What Tan portrays as the traditional Chinese values of filial obedience, criticism-enveloped expressions of love, and the concealment of excessive emotions all clash with the daughters’ “American” ideas about autonomy, free and open speech,
The daughters disagree and believe divorce is ok. The Mothers belief stems from old Chinese culture while the daughters belief stems from American culture where divorces are very common. Another chinese belief the mothers believe that every women should be married. That conflicts with the american belief that a woman is not required to get married, this creates conflict among the daughters. The daughters of the members of the joy luck club grow up struggling to balance
Submitted to: Mrs. Lisco Submitted by: Quynh Tran Course Code: ENG 4U1 Submitted Date: Jan 13, 2012 Woman Suffering in the Traditional Chinese Society The sixteen intricate interlocking stories from Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club weave the reader through the complex relationship of four Chinese immigrants, Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-Ying St. Clair and their daughters. The high expectations they have for their children and their desire to have a “Joy Luck” (Tan 25) life are the sufferings they have endured through the strict traditional Chinese society and understand the value of the “luxuries” (Tan 23) they have in America. Women in the tradition Chinese society are regarded as “disposable property”, “detachable appendages” and “expendable” (Heung 29). Unlike the significant birth of a son who is believed to “carry on the family name, provide leadership for the family, and take care of the family ancestors” (Woman in China), the birth of a daughter is “virtually unremarkable” (Yanfen). The different social status determines their position in the family and it is revealed through the stories of Ying-Ying St.Clair, Lindo Jong and An-mie’s mother.
Belonging compiles notions of identity; relationships and connections to society. Jook Liang, Jung-Sum and Sek-Lung articulate this fact in the many texts throughout the novel The Jade Peony. Jook- Liang narrates the first chapter in the book The Jade Peony. It is difficult for Jook-Liang to get a sense of identity when her grandmother is constantly putting her down. “Jook Liang if you want a place to fit in in this world, do not be born a girl child” (56) When a child is constantly being put down, it is difficult for them to gain a sense of identity.
Far from knowing Chinese culture and without the awareness to know, the mother generation is alien and ridiculous to them. June considers her mother and Auntie Am-mei’s dress as “too fancy for real Chinese people and too strange for American parties”, and she even imagined Joy Luck “was a shameful Chinese custom, like the secret gathering of the Ku Klux Kan or the tom-tom dancers of TV Indians preparing for war. (Tan 28)” The daughter is not only ignorant to Chinese culture, but also initiatively wants to get rid
Katie Tava July 25, 2012 “The Struggle to Be an All-American” Part 1: Summary In “The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl,” Elizabeth Wong writes about her transformation from being a Chinese girl in to an American girl, as she moved to the U.S. Wong went to a Chinese school at the same time she attended American school because Wong’s mother wanted her and her brother to maintain the Chinese language as part of their heritage. Wong became embarrassed by her Chinese culture while studying in America. She said Chinese was, “ quick, it was loud, it was unbeautiful…. Chinese sounded pedestrian” (98). The desire to become American had become her dream.
Velez2 Jennifer Velez Comp107 Miss Atzeni 3/22/2012 The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl By Elizabeth Wong In Elizabeth Wong’s writing on how she struggled to be an “All-American” girl, she expresses the strict religion and culture brought on by her single-parent raising mother, when all she only wanted was to fit in with American culture. While Elizabeth and her brother wanted to play childhood games, such as ghost hunt, with their friends their mother was stern on the importance of learning the language of their heritage. She would walk them seven long blocks to Chinese school, no matter how often they pleaded with her to not attend. Elizabeth wasn’t fond of the smell of the school or that the learning was restricted. She felt that American school would be a better fit for her.
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.
Chua’s text is very harsh toned, yet effective due to the use of all three appeals: Ethos, Logos, and Pathos. The author is raised by Chinese parents, which defines a big part of who she is. In the text Chua uses Ethos to establish her personal experience with parenting. She chooses a hard, and a time consuming parenting technique “ The Chinese method” to raise both of her daughters. For instance:“ A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids well I can tell them, Bachour 2 !
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.