Chinese Mothers and their American Daughters in Amy Tans The Joy Luck Club :: Joy Luck Club Essays

Chinese Mothers and their American Daughters in Amy false topazs The Joy Luck Club No choice No choice She doesnt know. If she doesnt speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn?t try, she can lose her chance forever. I know this because I was raised(a) the Chinese way I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other mickle?s misery, to eat my own bitterness. And even though I taught my girl the opposite, still she came out the same way Maybe it is because she was innate(p) to me and she was innate(p) a girl. And I was born to my perplex and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step subsequently other, going up and down, but all going the same way. (Tan 241) In desperation, mother An-Mei Hsu describes her frustration over her own mother- miss relationship in Amy Tan?s The JoyLuck Club. Four Chinese born mothers and their four American born daughters publish stories from their own point of view about their relationships with one another mother-mother, mo ther-daughter, and daughter-daughter. The way these stories weave in and out of the past and present, and how these women?s lives unfolded tell much of what women are taught to think of themselves, and how it shapes their lives. How a mother hopes to give her daughter strength, respect for herself, and a bond between mother and daughter, as told by the mothers, is reflected back by how each daughter processes what she perceives her mothers? lessons to be. All of the mothers came to America to hop out the horrors of war. They hoped for the prosperity and ease that living in the United States would afford them. With them they brought the sacral teachings of Taoism and Confucianism. Peter Tavernise defines these ancient traditions in Fasting of the Heart Mother-Tradition and Sacred Systems in Amy Tan?s The Joy Luck Club. Jing-mei describes her limited understanding of these concepts as, ?The elements were from my mother?s own version of organic chemistry.? (Tan 19) Tavernise s tates, ?Just as in the Confucian ritual system, very little of the mother-tradition in the text is told explicitly from mother to daughter ritual actions are supposed to be observed, absorbed, read, and soundless in order to be transformed, preserved and handed down in turn.