Mother-Daughter Conflict in Amy Tan's Fiction

Introduction: Amy Tan and the Mother-Daughter Theme

The Chinese-American writer Amy Tan, author of such popular and critically acclaimed novels as The Joy Luck Club (1989), The Kitchen God's Wife (1991), The Hundred Secret Senses (1995), and The Bonesetter's Daughter (1996), as well as two children's books and numerous short stories and essays (Huntley 19), often focuses in her work on conflict-ridden relationships between uneasily assimilated Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born, better-assimilated daughters. A dominant theme in Amy Tan's work is that of the Chinese mothers' hopes, wishes, and ambitions for their Americanized daughters; the daughters' frequent rejection of those same hopes and wishes in their quest for more individuated, Americanized identities; and the mothers' and daughters' alternately frustrated, alternately angry, alternately tender efforts to better understand one another and arrive at a limited peace.

In exploring this dominant theme within Tan's work, this essay focuses especially on three early works: her first novel, The Joy Luck Club (1989); the short story "Two Kinds" (1989); and her second novel, The Kitchen God's Wife (1991).

Waverly Jong and Public Pride in The Joy Luck Club

Typically, the thoroughly Americanized daughters in Amy Tan's novels and stories seek, starting as children and adolescents, to distinguish themselves powerfully from their mothers and to discourage their mothers from "living through them." Waverly Jong, the child prodigy Chinese chess champion in The Joy Luck Club, spends so much time studying chess that she has only one household responsibility: to accompany her mother to the market for groceries each Saturday. As Tan writes, "My mother would proudly walk with me, visiting many shops, buying very little. 'This is my daughter Wave-ly Jong,' she said to whoever looked her way."

One day, fed up with her mother's public boasting, Waverly asks on the way home from shopping: "Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don't you learn to play chess?" (Tan 99).

Waverly's mother, misunderstanding her daughter's angry outburst, believes Waverly is saying she is ashamed of her Chinese mother and reluctant to be seen with her in public. But Waverly means simply that she would like her mother to stop bragging about her, because she herself finds it embarrassing. The misunderstanding brought about by this heated exchange clouds the mother-daughter relationship for years afterward. Neither one can or will forget it, even long after Waverly grows up and leaves home. To Waverly's Chinese mother, family solidarity and pride are her most important values. But to her American-born and thoroughly Americanized daughter, individuality and independence matter far more, and she resents what she sees as her mother's smothering attitude. In this early scene, Waverly is not in fact rejecting her mother, but is simply asserting her own separateness — a distinction her mother finds impossible to understand.

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold. "Introduction." Modern Critical Views: Amy Tan. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003. 1.

Chen, Victoria. "Chinese-American Women, Language, and Moving Subjectivity." Modern Critical Views: Amy Tan. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003.

Huntley, E.D. Amy Tan: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998.

Tan, Amy. "Amy Tan on Writing" (from "Mother Tongue"). Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 4th Compact Ed. New York: Longman, 2005. 147–8.

---. The Joy Luck Club. New York: Putnam's, 1989.

---. The Kitchen God's Wife. New York: Putnam's, 1993.

---. "Two Kinds." Literature: The Human Experience. Ed. Richard Abcarian and Marvin Klotz. Eighth Edition. New York: Bedford, 2002. 424–32.

"The Kitchen God's Wife: Amy Tan." SparkNotes from Barnes and Noble. Dec. 4, 2004.