A Tale of Mothers and Daughters: The Joy Luck Club

Since Mother’s Day is just around the corner, Penstalker.com is featuring books, movies, and lots and lots of articles in honor of mothers and their great contribution to our world. If you notice the previous posts here, everything pertains to Mother’s Day.

As we honor our mothers, it would also be a great idea to learn more about the relationship and interactions between mothers and daughters. In dealing with this particular kind of relationship, Amy Tan’s book The Joy Luck Club is highly recommended. Read the book review after the jump.

The Joy Luck Club follows the lives of four Chinese-American mothers and their relationship with their daughters. It is an apt book for reading this Mother’s Day. These mothers migrated from China right after World War II. Since migrating, they have lived their lives and tried to adapt to the American society.

The daughters of these women had all been born in the US and they have to tread the fine line between the Chinese and American cultures. In doing so, they experience disconnection with their mothers. As members of their generation in the United States, they have adapted the norms and modes of conduct of their peers. This is the source of disconnection, misunderstanding, and miscommunication between the mothers and their daughters.

Apparently, the daughters, as much as the mothers, struggle with being Chinese, being American, and being Chinese-American. Amazingly, the book relates a number of stories–of Chinese people leaving their homeland for safety and economic security, and how immigrants deal with the difficulties of adjusting and negotiating their identities in a foreign land.

The best value of the book, however, concerns the relationship between mothers and daughters. It is a difficult job to be a mother. The book, in fact, opens with the loss of a mother. Jing-Mei “June” Woo, the main character of the novel, had just lost her mother to Aneurysm. She plays mahjong with the friends of her mother: An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-Ying St. Clair. In a gesture of generational continuity, June Woo takes the place of her mother, Suyuan Woo, at the mahjong table and learns about the life of her mother.

Since Mother’s Day is coming very soon. It would be a great idea to highlight the lives of the mothers in The Joy Luck Club. Read on and try to picture your own mothers as you read about the lives of the mothers in The Joy Luck Club.

The Joy Luck Club Mother no. 1: Suyuan Woo

Suyuan lived with her husband in Guilin during the period that Japan and China were at war with each other. Her husband is an army officer in Chungking. In order to deal with the rigors and the horrors of war, Suyuan starts the Joy Luck Club with three of her friends. The big turning point in her life is when Japan finally invades China. She ended up leaving behind her house. While traveling, Suyuan left her daughters under a tree. This way, she thought that they could be rescued even if she will die.

Later in life, she married another man and migrated to the United States. The act of leaving behind her twin daughters haunted her even when she was already in the US. While in the US, she starts another Joy Luck Club and trades stories with her friends while playing mahjong. Suyuan tracked one of the twins who is already in the US but she dies before the chance to meet her.

The Joy Luck Club Mother 2: An Mei-Hsu

An Mei had a very traumatic childhood. She was raised by her grandparents. To their consternation, her mother became a concubine and the fourth wife of a very wealthy man in China. An Mei moved in with her mother in the house of Wu-Tsing, her mother’s new husband. There was more to the story, however, than meets the eye. An-mei’s mother was raped by We-Tsing because of the manipulations of his second wife. An-mei’s mother also lost a child to the Second Wife. On top of that, the Second Wife even tried to win An-mei over by giving her pearls. Such pearls, however, were only made of glass as An-mei’s mother crushed one underneath her foot.

Because An-mei’s mother could no longer bear the treatment of the Second Wife and of Wu-Tsing, she committed suicide. She also timed her death such that the superstitions of Wu-Tsing would let him treat her children excellently. An-mei eventually defied the Second Wife when the latter attempted to treat them badly. When An-mei migrated to the US, she married and had several children but her youngest son died because of drowning.

The Joy Luck Club Mother 3: Lindo Jong

Lindo has a strong personality which was the result of a rather traumatic childhood. She was forced to marry a neighbor at a very early age, 16. Her husband though was not interested in her sexually because he was but a little boy in heart. Lindo cared for him well but since her mother-in-law wanted a grandson, she was forced to take a bed rest until she gets pregnant.

Because Lindo is strong and determined, she escaped her situation by concocting story regarding the fate of her husband. When she escaped her situation, she went to the United States and married a Chinese-American man. She regrets that she no longer has the Chinese culture in her. To make things worse, when she gets back to China, she is being treated as a visitor and a tourist. One of her major concern is that her daughter’s American upbringing has introduced a barrier between them.

The Joy Luck Club Mother 4: Ying-Ying St. Clair

In contrast with Lindo, Ying-Ying is passive and does not know how to express her emotions and her feelings to others. Funny as it may sound, she married her husband because she believed it was her destiny. Her husband abuses her physically and keeps mistresses openly. She became pregnant but her husband left her for good. She killed her son because of that and moved into the house of her relatives.

She went to the United States and married the man she loves after a very long courtship of four years. Her passive personality, however, is still at work and she allowed her husband to control different areas of her life. Ying-Ying was surprised when she saw her daughter Lena inheriting her passive personality. Lena became involved in a marriage with an abusive husband. She finally mustered enough courage to tell her daughter her own story in order to help her daughter.

The Joy Luck Club is an amazing book for reading this coming Mother’s Day. Mothers tend to sacrifice a lot for their children. Take time to thank your mothers this coming Mother’s Day. She is a big blessing!

Tags: Amy Tan, Book Review, Joy Luck Club, mother's day