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The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tam

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tam

Introduction

Different women are faced with numerous difficulties in their lives. One of the major emotional challenges that they have had to cope with is losing someone they love either by separation or nature, in this case, the concern is more on the daughters (Tan, 1989). The novel Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan is about the existing conflicts between the American-raised daughters and the Chinese immigrant’s mothers. It has four distinctive narratives and tends to be centered on the mothers who have daughters and has several ways in which they have worries as a result of the variation in the recollection intensity. It portrays the existing relationship between the mothers and their daughters as a concept that is very broad. The birthplace of Amy Tan is Oakland and her parents of Chinese origin. She had a very great history, one which is believed to have been the driving force behind her decision to write the novel. The books concentrate on the mothers who have lost their daughters and are reminiscing on the past, the exact thing that happened to Tan's mother and thus makes the decision of going back to the family when the husband and the son die (Tan, 1989). The only thing that Tan forgets is the fact that not every mother can reminisce due to a daughter who is alive but not close, some are dead due to murder or even illness, and they will live to reminisce forever, out of this then she would have kept that into consideration while writing the book.

Rose reveals to her mother, An-mei, that her marriage is on the brink of breaking. As a result of the grief and the indecision paralyzing her, Rose sees no other way she can help other than to weep (Tan, 1989). An-mei, by understanding the situation, decides that she will not lay a hand to help with the problem. However, she holds to a thread of hope that her daughter had to rise up and at least do something. However, An-mei understands the danger of the consequences due to the fact that she had not received teachings of demanding herself.

An-mei flashbacks to an event that took place about sixty years ago, the day she saw her mother for the first time. When An-mei's mother returned home, she found Popo, her very mother, laying on her deathbed. After Popo had passed away, An-mei's mother made her preparations and was about to ready to leave. When she was about to leave, An-mei’s mother told her that she had nothing to cry about and since then, she learned that there is no gain in crying.

One of the shocking things that An-mei’s mother did was to take An-mei with her and deep into their journey; she discards the mourning dress that she had in favor of the clothes that were of Western styles. Without considering how her daughter's feet felt, An-mei's mother decides that they would leave in the household of a man named Wu Tsing. This turned out to be a decision which made her pay greatly, since An-mei’s mother was tricked by Wu Ting’s second wife and raped by him (An-mei Hsu: Magpies. 2016).

This seems to be the same fate that maternal grandmother to Tan faced. Later on, she was forced by a wealthy womanizer who made her his concubine.

In conclusion, one cannot say that although some characters in the novel portray the lives that their mothers lived, they seemed too afraid to do so. This goes ahead to show the difference that is seen when the parents are of different origin. The lifestyle, as well as the parents, has great influence on an individual, and therefore this explains the difference in behavior and character even in the real world. However, the key factor revolves around women, and this shows that they have the strength to raise daughters in a respectable manner (Bloom, 2009).

Reference

An-mei Hsu: Magpies. (2016). Cliffsnotes.com. Retrieved 9 September 2016, from https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/j/the-joy-luck-club/summary-and-analysis/anmei-hsu-magpies

Bloom, H. (2009). Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism.

Tan, A. & Tan, A. (1989). The Joy Luck Club. Beverly Hills, CA: Dove Audio.

Tan, A. (2006). The Joy Luck Club. New York: Penguin Books.