Analysis on the Cultural Elements of The Joy Luck Club

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.

In American society, people are regarded as independent individuals; in Chinese society, families are valued much more than individuals. For common Chinese families, the family gatherings are of great importance in maintaining the family harmony and development of personal characteristics. However, for Chinese Americans like Jing-mei, who was born and grown up in the American culture, other people’s affairs are nothing important to them, and that’s the reason why they could not understand why their mothers organized the mahjong activities actively. Mahjong means a lot to Chinese people, especially to those who are far away from home. It is not merely a game; it reunites people as a family, and helps them regain their weakening identities as Chinese. One of the biggest disadvantages of collectivism, or family culture, is the weak privacy, which is also the place where the daughters cannot understand. During Waverly’s first marriage, her mother always visited her house without informing her in advance. It is very common in China, but goes against the daughter’s privacy right.

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.