The Joy Luck Club: themes and analysis

¶ … Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan

Multiple meanings, multiple experiences: Multiculturalism and mother-daughter relationships in "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan

In the novel "The Joy Luck Club," author Amy Tan delved into the dynamics and nature of relationships between Chinese mothers and second-generation Chinese-American daughters. Illustrating through the relationships of four mother-and-daughter pairs, Tan reflected how multiculturalism had contributed to the strain in the relationships of people exposed to different beliefs, values, and viewpoints in life. The novel centered most particularly on the relationship between Suyuan Woo and Jing-mei "June" Woo, whose antagonistic treatment against each other was the result of misperceptions and misunderstandings from the different cultures they had known and grew up with.

The antagonistic nature and conflict-filled dynamics of Suyuan and June's relationship reflected Tan's objective, which was to portray through their characters how multiculturalism had created a 'gap' between the two characters, straining their relationship until Suyuan's death. Their relationship was just one of the many conflicts that emerge from multiculturalism, an inevitable social change in American society that led to the hybridization of numerous cultures extant in the society. June's Chinese and American heritage created conflict within her, wherein she was not able to reconcile whether she should be Chinese or American; to reconcile both would result to an altogether different identity. Whichever cultural identity June chooses, she was met with criticisms by her mother -- by being 'not too Chinese or American enough.' Similarly, Suyuan's Chinese identity clashed against June's pluralist view of her culture (i.e., both Chinese and American).

Given these conditions of the protagonists' relationship, this paper presents a discussion of two emergent themes in the novel, wherein multiculturalism was put into the context of Suyuan and June's relationship in the novel. These themes are: (1) multiculturalism had created a feeling of void or inappropriateness to feel empathy for the other for both Suyuan and June and (2) Suyuan and June's different cultures, while most of the time detrimental and results to conflicts, actually complement each other in that it allowed each to further understand the other's feelings and thoughts.

The first theme was explicated through a story in the novel's introduction. In it, Tan illustrated the experience of the Chinese woman who had been hopeful about her new life in the United States. Symbolically representing this hope, aspirations, and a part of herself through a swan feather, the Chinese woman resembled the life of the individual who had diminished, if not lost, her hopes of fully sharing with her daughter the life and experiences that she had in China. The diminishing of hopes furthered when she realized that she raised her daughter in a society radically different from her own, distancing the woman from her daughter:

Now the woman is old. And she had a daughter who grew up speaking only English and swallowing more Coca-Cola than sorrow. For a long time now the woman had wanted to give her daughter the single swan feather and tell her, "This feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions." And she waited, year after year, for the day she could tell her daughter this in perfect American English.

This passage highlighted multiculturalism and its limits in creating a close relationship between mother and daughter. Evidently, a void was illustrated in the passage, where, through a language barrier, the Chinese woman was not able to express to her daughter her hopes, aspirations, and experiences in life. This void is specifically identified as the woman's feeling of being unable to share with her daughter and experience empathy to her experiences and everyday interactions in the hybrid American society.

This phenomenon was not only the mother's dilemma, but the daughter's, too. Having grown up in a culture that was more Americanized with the inclusion of other numerous cultures, the daughter (specifically, June) cannot empathize with her mother's desire to get to know her native Chinese culture and heritage. For June, what was worth knowing about was the culture she had known all her life; to know other cultures apart from hers would necessitate not only emotional attachment, but also dedication and perseverance on her part. Thus, both mother and daughter experienced their own kinds of 'void' -- that is, inability to express empathy for each other's feelings, thoughts, and experiences.

The second theme, which posited that Suyuan and June's different cultures complement each other to promote more understanding of each other's experiences, was reflected during the progress of the novel. June's interaction with her mother's friends by playing mah jong was her own way of trying to understand her mother's real personality; it was only in death that she was able to fully understand how, though they were entirely different from each other, they also had many similarities. It was also during this interaction that she discovered the hidden fears that her mother had, which was also shared by other mothers who were native Chinese women radically assimilated in American society.

And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all these truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see their daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same things to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds "joy luck" is not a word, it does not exist.