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Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club: 
The Mother-Daughter Relationships
Chris Hardin
Univerisity of Georgia

Project Rationale:
The overall purpose of this research project was to successfully explicate and analyze specific articles, essays, and books written about the mother-daughter relationships in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club.
 

Findings:
These essays, articles, and books all show the common problem of miscommunication across cultural and generational boundaries in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.  Each of the following critical essays focuses primarily on the generational gaps, language barriers, fears, and frustrations between the mothers and daughters in the story.  Each side, mother and daughter, has differing and prejudicial views of the other.  Neither side really understands each other, but the mothers feel that the best way to relate and help their daughters to understand and respect their Chinese culture is through their past stories and memories.  They each specifically focused on the main issue present in the story: the mother-daughter relationship, and how cultural differences hampered any possibility for a normal relationship.
 

Conclusions:
After reading all of the articles, I realized that there was more to the story than just continuing one's heritage.  There was an even more subtle underlying need on the mothers part to have any kind of substantial relationship with their daughters because of all the pain and suffering from their pasts.  The idea of passing on stories and memories showed that each mother wanted to begin a relationship with a solid foundation.
 
 

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(Sanford Stadium)

1) Heung, Marina. “Daughter-Text/Mother-Text: Matrilineage in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club.” Feminist Studies 19 (1993): 597-613.

    Marina Heung’s article evaluates the familial connections of the mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club through stories, memories, and language.  As she states, the connections of these women do “not arise from biological or generational connections alone; rather, it is an act affirming consciously chosen allegiances” (Heung 613).  These mothers, being immigrants from a far away culture, do not have the luxury of strictly relying on the simple fact that their daughters will be understanding or have anything in common with them simply because they gave birth to them.  These mothers must work even harder to show their daughters how important it is to understand their heritage and culture.  Because these two groups of women are socially segregated, with language being a barrier as well, the mothers can only rely on their past memories and stories of their culture to connect them together.  They hope that the daughters, whose only Chinese characteristics are physical features, will understand them and accept them with all of their differences.  Heung points out that the mothers take their past stories of pain and suffering, and alter them to seem more appealing and romantic in hopes that the daughters will listen to them.  Even with all of these attempts it is “unlikely that mother and daughter can achieve perfect identification: the burden of differences in personal history and cultural conditioning is too great” (Heung 603).
    The article goes on to further explain the language barrier put up between mother and daughter.  Even though “the daughters understand Chinese, […] they speak English exclusively” (Heung 604).  Because the mothers use Chinese and broken English to talk to one another, the daughters are embarrassed by them and shy away from taking their mothers seriously.  Unknowingly to the daughters, the mothers use both languages not because they are ignorant of American culture, but because they wish to preserve both cultures.  As Heung points out, the daughters do not understand the concept of multi-culturalism.  This further complicates matters for the mothers who are attempting to connect with their daughters who want nothing to do with the Chinese culture.
 

(University Chapel)

2) Lee, Rose Hum. “American-Chinese: Chinese Americans.” The Chinese in the United States. Hong Kong: Hong Kong UP, 1960. 113-131.

    The title of the chapter labeled “American-Chinese: Chinese Americans” goes into detail about how assimilation of Chinese immigrants in the United States has begun to effect the many succeeding generations of Americans with Chinese ancestry.  The differences between the immigrants and the native-born Americans with Chinese ancestry are that the Americans “want to be called citizens and thought of as Americans rather than as marginal men and assigned a minority status” (Lee 113).  The native-born citizens wish to be seen as separate from the immigrants.  They feel that to be seen in the same category as the immigrants only helps them to stand apart from the dominant majority of society.  Hence, there are “two ways of life, two cultural heritages and two racial groups, each of which is diametrically opposed to the other” (Lee 114).  The greatest difference amongst the two groups exists between immigrant parents and their native-born American children.  Language presents itself as the greatest barrier for them.  Parents feel it necessary for the children to retain the Chinese language, but American culture forces the children to focus more on English to better survive in society.  Because of the miscommunication “parents realize the offspring have become strangers and they cannot penetrate their thoughts and emotions” (Lee 127).
    The two groups are also separated by lifestyle.  To the American-Chinese, financial affluence is of greater importance than cultural issues.  These new citizens focus more on business, cars, stocks, bonds, home ownership, all things seen as a second priority to Chinese citizens.  Another difference is the clothing that each group wears.  The Chinese Americans are more apt to wear Chinese clothes on a regular basis, while American-Chinese tend to shy away from them except for on special occasions.  As far as the different lifestyles, American-Chinese “are Americans in all but physical appearance” (Lee 119).
    Apparently, the differences between generations decrease in the third, forth, and fifth generations because of the already Americanized citizens of the second generation who have been introduced and integrated into American society.  For example, the daughter’s children will not be as distant from them as the daughters are from their mothers because the third generation will have in common living in American culture.
 

(Ramsey Student Center)

3) Mistri, Zenobia. “Discovering the Ethnic Name and Genealogical Tie in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.” Studies in Short Fiction 35 (1998): 251-257.

    The article, “Discovering the Ethnic Name and the Genealogical Tie in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club,” digs deep into the very soul and meaning of Chinese American assimilation and cultural heritage.  Author Zenoba Mistri tries to show a connection between the mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club.  She points out the lack of strong ties between the mothers and daughters, as well as how the daughters are “at odds with their mothers, their inheritance, and the power of their mothers’ wisdom and strength” (Mistri 251).  Mistri focuses on the story of June Woo, who is in search of her half-sisters in China to finish her dead mother’s quest.  As Mistri points out, Woo undergoes a complete transformation “in hopes of rediscovering or reconstructing her American ethnic self” (Mistri 254).  Each of the other mothers see Woo’s journey and relate to their own daughters and “fears that the genealogical chain that links […] the foundation world of the ancestors will be broken” (Mistri 255).  Mistri then shows how the mothers, with enormous strength, reaches out to their daughters in one last hope of saving and carrying on who they are through their daughters, to preserve their heritage, and genealogical ties.
    The mothers in The Joy Luck Club are all extremely distraught over losing their daughters because of the cultural barrier that is placed between them.  Mistri explains that all the mothers want for their daughters is to have the best of both cultures “ ‘without losing [their] <<ancient souls>>’” (Mistri 253).  These mothers are so frightened that their daughters will only grow up to be ignorant of their culture without learning how to truly respect it.  Mistri points out that the only connections between the mothers and their daughters is the mothers ability to share their stories and memories with their daughters hoping that they will be able to find their ethnic selves.
 

(Myers Hall)

4) Shear, Walter. “Generational Differences and the Diaspora in The Joy Luck Club.” Critique 34 (1992-1993): 193-199.

    In Walter Shears’ article, “Generational Differences and the Diaspora in The Joy Luck Club,” his main focus is on how the Joy Luck Club, created by Chinese women who have immigrated to America, has a hard time reaching out to their American born daughters.  He feels that the generational differences, plus the different cultures in which the mothers and daughters were raised, has created a gap between them.  The mothers feel that is vital that this gap be filled to ensure that their daughters learn to “ ‘have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character’” (Shear 198).  Shear feels that a main reason for the gap is a lack of communication on both ends.  On one end you have “mother[s], who figure out [their] world, [and] on the daughters, who seem caught in a sophisticated cultural trap [.]” (Shear 195).  For Shear, the only hope that the Chinese mothers have of reaching their daughters before they are completely lost to their heritage, seems as simple as communication through storytelling.
    The importance of the Joy Luck Club is never clearer than when it comes to the survival of the relationships between the mothers and daughters.  Interpreting Shear’s reading, it would seem apparent that he finds it extremely hampering to their relationships that the mothers were immigrants from a different past, while the daughters have lived in a completely Americanized society where the “diaspora has created a total contrast in the experiences of mother and daughter” (Shear 198).  The joy luck club was originally created to provide “determination…in the face of constantly altering social situations and constantly shifting rules” (Shear 195).  As Shear points out, the courage and determination of the mothers ultimately brought them closer to their daughters.
 

(The University of Georgia)

5) Xu, Ben. “Memory and the Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.” MELUS 19 (1994): 3-16.

    This journal article’s main focus is on memories, and how they connect both mothers and daughters together throughout their lives.  The author, Ben Xu, stresses the importance for each mother and daughter to relieve themselves from fear and frustration in order to successfully build a strong cross cultural relationship, and to help the daughters find themselves as both Chinese and Americans.  As Xu states, the mothers’s fears come from the inability to open up and share their memories with their Americanized daughters.  The mothers, being immigrants who have lived in China, feel it necessary to wear a mask around Americans to keep them from understanding what a true Chinese person is like because to them Americans fear what is different.  To wear a mask “means the ability to suppress one’s true feelings and emotions - even to deceive - in order to be allowed to live” (Xu 11).
    As far as the daughters are concerned, frustration motivates their separation and differences from their mothers.  Xu points out that since the daughters were born and raised in America they are out of touch with their mothers and see them as old, inferior, and crazy.  The daughters do not realize that their mothers feel “unsure of [themselves], defensive, hesitant to impose [their] own standards on the young.  With [their] role[s] changed, the daughter[s] no longer identify[y] with [their] mother[s]” (Xu 13).  This failure, from both mother and daughter, to first teach and pass on memories of their ancestor’s past, and the failure to listen, sets them apart.  For the mothers, all they have are their memories of the past, and with no one to listen to them they are afraid that their children and grandchildren will never know what it is like to truly be Chinese.  Xu states that only when both sides find similarities through pain and suffering do they begin to connect with each other.
 

Last Updated December 9th, 2002