The
Joy Luck Club is Chinese American writer Amy Tan’s masterpiece. It was composed
of sixteen small stories, presenting conflicts and integrations between the
four pairs of Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters. Amy
Tan mixed her personal experience into this novel: from the lines of the stories,
we could see not only her early times in the U.S. as a Chinese American, but
also her unique views on Chinese culture and women’s inferior position.
Amy Tan’s
parents immigrated to the U.S. in the 1940s and gave birth to her in 1952 in
California. Their traditional Chinese cultural background and life experiences
provided Amy Tan with abundant writing materials. As a typical second
generation of Chinese immigrants, Amy Tan devoted her unique diversified life stories
to depicting the life experiences of the Chinese mothers and their “American
daughters” as well as describing their inner journeys of confronting generation
gaps and cultural diversity. In The Joy
Luck Club, she built a special world only for women and lifted the mother-and-daughter
relationship to a higher level of cultural conflicts and integrations.
It is very interesting
to analyze the cultural elements of The
Joy Luck Club, because Amy Tan tactfully embedded and expressed these elements
through the mother-and-daughter relationship. From the prospective of mother-and-daughter
relationship, Amy Tan explored the Chinese-American cultural conflicts and
integrations, the Chinese awareness inside the “American daughters”, the
Chinese-style modesty, traditional harsh education, and collectivism.
Cultural Conflicts and Integrations
There are
many differences between China and the U.S. in cultural traditions, life
styles, and social customers. The conflicts between the Chinese mothers and “American
daughters” represent the conflicts between Chinese culture and western culture.
In The Joy Luck Club, the daughters were
born in the U.S., growing up with the American-style values, life styles, and
thinking models; they spoke fluent English, pursue freedom and equality, and
advocated individualism. As a contrast, the mothers were still the typical
Chinese-style mothers, speaking broken English, being deeply influenced by the
traditional Chinese values—Confucianism, and educated their daughters in a
traditional Chinese way.
Because of
the language and cultural barriers, the daughters always failed to communicate
well with their mothers, and thus failed to understand the actual Chinese
traditions and cultures brought from their mothers: Jing-mei Woo could not
understand her mother’s Chinese way of tactfully playing with words; Lena St.
Clair didn’t understand the Chinese saying “Chunwang chihan” mentioned by her
mother, but insisted to define it in her own way; Waverly Jong refused to
accept the Chinese-style art of invisible strength which was taught by her
mother, but tended to embrace the American-style frankness;…
The mothers
felt alienated and lonely in living in the U.S., though they had got the
American nationalities. To pouring out their complicated feelings, they resort
to the traditional Chinese game—mahjong; during the mahjong-playing, they could
better release their depressed feeling of being marginalization by American
society. However, the daughters would never understand their mothers’ way of
communicating, and imagined it as a shameful Chinese custom, “like the secret gathering
of the Ku Klux Klan or the tom-to, dances of TV Indians preparing for war” (28)
Despite of
the misunderstandings between Chinese mothers and “American daughters”, Amy Tan
left hints that there must be some ways for two different cultures to integrate—that
the mothers finally found ways to communicate with their daughters: they told
stories about their experience in China, when their daughters encountered
setbacks in their love relationship or marriage. Through this kind of actual communication,
the mothers fulfilled their duties of integrating different cultures and
rebuilding their daughters’ cultural identification.
Chinese
Awareness inside the “American Daughter”
Although
the four daughters appeared bewildered and reluctant to accept Chinese culture,
some traditional Chinese values had already rooted deeply inside them, because
they all brought up in Chinese family.
From the
stories, we could easily find the daughters’ unconsciously Chinese awareness. When
the mother Lindo Jong commented on Rich’s freckles, the daughter Waverly argued
that freckles meant good luck in Chinese culture. The daughter Lena asserted
that she didn’t believe her mother’s Wu Tsing Theory; however, when her mother
looked in her rice bowl and predicted that she would marry a bad man, and her
future husband had one pock mark for every rice she not finish, Lena picked up
the bowl and scraped the last few grains into her mouth. For the daughter Rose,
when she was in a mess of her marriage, she misused a Chinese phrase to express
her feeling, because she subconsciously believed that only Chinese vocabulary
could describe her exact feeling.
For these
American born Chinese daughters, it might be difficult for them to figure out the
thick meanings behind some seemingly weird cultures, customs and traditions;
however, there were parts of Chinese inside them. They cultivated by the larger
American society as well as being nurtured by their traditional Chinese family.
Chinese-style
Modesty and Other Manners
In
westerners’ eyes, Chinese-style modesty is very hard to understand. When
Chinese-style modesty met American-style frankness, there would be big embarrassment.
In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan designed three distinct groups to reveal this
kind of embarrassment resulted from cultural differences.
The
four mothers represented Chinese-style modesty—they always talked in an
implicit way, they would deny themselves first as cues to bring more praise. The
four daughters were served as inter-mediators—they knew both Chinese and
American cultures, but were unable to judge which one is better for themselves.
The American friends of the four daughters were on behalf of the American-style
frankness that they expressed feelings in a very direct way.
In
the stories, Waverly designed a family meeting for her fiancé Rich, to help him
win her mother’s favor. Before the meeting, she urged Rich again and again to
praise her mother’s dishes after the dinner, because her mother used cooking to
express her love, her pride, and her power. However, when her mother modestly
said her dishes was not good, which expected to receive others’ praise, Rich
responded to it that adding soy sauce would be better. It was very embarrassing,
because this kind of American-style frankness hurt. Rich’s frankness also
revealed as his refusal to eat some vegetables, and called Waverly’s parents’
names directly. In Chinese culture, it is very impolite to refuse directly, and
is very rude to call elders’ names.
Traditional
Harsh Education
In The Joy Luck Club, the mothers taught
their daughters in two ways. On the one hand, they wanted their daughters to be
independent, and got rid of their own tragedies. On the other hand, they taught
their daughters in a traditional Chinese way unconsciously, which was unacceptable
by their “American daughters”. Being well educated by American society, the
daughters expected an absolutely equal mother-and-daughter relationship, and tended
to interpret their mothers’ Chinese-style consideration and love as rude
interference.
Chinese mothers
always regarded their daughters as part of themselves, and wanted to
participate in their daughters’ lives, while the American daughters thought
themselves as independent individuals, and didn’t like to share life experience
with their mothers. In The Joy Luck Club,
Waverly won the chess competition, her mother commented happily that she had
just lost 8 chesses and she had better lose less next time. For Waverly, she
thought her mother’s comment was a kind of interference that her mother was showing
off through her. For the mother, she would interpret her daughter’s impatience
as a kind of despise. In the same way, Jing-mei also turned against her mother
after she failed the piano playing, as a resist to her mother’s traditional
harsh education.
The essence of the
conflicts between mothers and daughters are the conflicts between Chinese
culture and western culture. The traditional harsh education did not work well
in the American soil.
Collectivism
To
define the features of Chinese culture and American culture, the former should
be collectivism and the latter is individualism.
Amy
Tan presents some of Chinese traditional cultures in her The Joy Luck Club; some cultures are very attracting while some
reflect darkness, backward, and irrationality of China. Overall, all the
cultural elements serve for the theme of mother-and-daughter relationship. Although
the cultural differences are barriers for mothers and daughters to communicate and
understand, there is a cross-cultural nature ties the mothers and daughters—love.
Because of love, their relationship was repaired in the end, and the daughters finally
understand their mothers.
