The Joy Luck Club

Essay Topic #1

The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan tells a story of four pairs of mothers and daughters and their discovery into understanding each other. The mothers are immigrants from China and their daughters are American born children who are tired of hearing the same stories of their mother's struggles in China. Each mother-daughter couple shows a deep desire to remember old fashioned customs and to make a better life for the next generation.

Jing-mei faces the difficult task of going to China to find her mother's two daughters, her twin half sisters, and telling them their mother's story. After her mother's death Jing-mei is concerned about how she will go about telling her half siblings about the life of her mother. Throughout the novel, Jing-mei is constantly implying that her and her mother often had a distance between them. Jing-mei feels almost superior to her mother because her mother speaks such broken up English. "I think my mother's English was the worst, but she always thought her Chinese was the best." (Tan, 17). It is often difficult for the other to express their feelings because there is an invisible barrier between the due to different views of the world as they know it.

Suyuan Woo often expresses her love for her daughter in a criticizing way. She pushes her daughter to be a woman of strong will and talent and is disappointed when she does not possess those qualities. Suyuan Woo becomes resentful of her daughter for lacking in the qualities that she had so long wanted for her daughter. Jing-mei also resents her mother's pushy ways and constant criticism of her. She has a hard time confabulating and expressing her true love for her daughter.

As is relevant in today's society many mothers want their daughters to have everything that they were unable to have. Some daughters often confuse this deep love with their mothers trying to hold them back from modern times. It is hard for two people from two totally generations to find a common ground within each other. It is often difficult for two different people to communicate their feelings. Their love is often confused with anger and resentment. Most mother and daughters can probably relate to the way Jing-mei and Suyuan Woo deal with their issues.

An-mei