In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, mother and daughter relationships are put to the test. Four women meet to play a game of Chinese mahjong, keeping a tradition alive. Suyuan Woo, founder of the club, had a daughter named Jing Mei June Woo. Suyuan had two daughters which she expected both to succeed to her standards. June, however, struggled to please her mother in all she did, and never felt as if she had any worth. Their relationship becomes distant due to miscommunications. Asian culture and expectations weigh heavily on Suyuan’s mind as she worries about the path her daughter takes, one that is untraditional and looked down upon. June finally understands her mother, after it is too late. Secrets and traditions can either tear apart or build up a relationship. Suyuan Woo had a hard life growing up. She gives birth to two girls, but is forced to leave them in China, where she grew up. She goes onto live in America, where she marries and has June and Waverly. The secret of her twin daughters remains hidden to her daughters, until the time is right. Suyuan kept a jade pendant necklace in hopes to one day give it to her …show more content…
See, I wore this on my skin, so when you put it on your skin, then you know my meaning. This is your life's importance."(Tan 235) June did not care for it at, at first. After her mother's passing, however, the pendant meant much more to her. Although June never was as successful as her mother had hoped she’d be, her mother was very proud and believed that she had a good heart. June finally understood her mother’s intentions in her parenting. Suyuan wanted June to realize her internal worth, rather than monetary and academic success or fame. Suyuan had to grasp that her daughter wasn’t a traditional Asian girl with traditional goals for her life. She was June, and she was
Jing-Mei has this mother who lost her husband and twins back in China and is now trying very hard to get a fresh and better start on her new life with her child. Now this could mean many different things to different people, but
One of the characters, Suyuan Woo, went through Campbell’s monomyth. Departure; where she loses her twin babies in China. Trials; when she has to overcome the massive obstacle of finding her daughters. Fulfillment; when Jing- mei finds her twin sisters and how Suyuan
In the story, A Pair of Tickets, Suyuan, was not happy because she couldn’t relocate her twins from China while Jing-Mei is denying her Chinese heritage and becoming Americanized. After her death, Jing-Mie at age 30 was struggling to reconnect with her roots and had many questions about her identity. Luckily, she relocated her lost twins sisters and finally discovered her identity; Chinese. Nevertheless, the little girl in the story Volar wants to fit in the society where she was different and having difficulty fitting in. However, she was becoming someone else in a dream abandoning her old identity.
Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club is an amazing representation of what Chinese immigrants and their families face. The broad spectrum of the mothers’ and daughters’ stories all connect back to a couple of constantly recurring patterns. These patterns are used to show that how the mothers and daughters were so differently raised affected their relationships with each other, for better and for worse. To begin with, the ever-present pattern of disconnect between the two groups of women is used to show how drastically differently they were raised.
Suyuan’s American Dream starts in her heart when she decides to escape from the chaotic China and find a better life by immigrating to America. However, she loses her two babies on the way to Chungking. American Dream means different things for different people. Suyuan has fulfilled her American Dream in a certain degree by trying to provide her daughters with successful, blissful and better lives. First of all, Suyuan left Kweilin for Chungking in order to find her husband and avoid the Japanese.
In The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan, we are introduced to Suyuan and her daughter Jing-Mei “June” Woo. As with any relationship, there is conflict between Suyuan Woo and her daughter, as it seems that Jing-Mei doesn’t understand her mother’s Chinese culture and ambitions. In the Chinese culture, women are seen as inferior and often lack basic rights such as the right to marriage or financial holdings, thus deprived of their potential. This is why the rights in the U.S. are seen as privileges to Chinese women, among other minorities, and why Suyuan endeavored for her daughter to become a prodigy and excel in anything and everything. Yet as Jing-Mei was forced into this ideal, and the more her mother tried to enforce this idea, the further she begun to despise her mother for attempting to turn her into a “fraud”.
The Rebellious Daughter: Analyzing the Theme of Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds” The story “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan explores the deep familial emotions between a mother and her daughter. Jing-Mei’s mother had left China to come to America after losing her family, and had been raising Jing-Mei in America with her second husband. Despite her mother’s grand hopes for Jing-Mei to become successful in America by becoming a child prodigy, Jing-Mei did not share the same opinions.
The first part June doesn’t take where she is from and who she is, but as the story goes on she learns more about her mother and realizes who she is. Growing up in America, June was used to the western civilization. While June was in school she "..denied that I had any Chinese whatsoever below my skin.."(302). She didn’t think she was in fact Chinese. Identifying she doesn’t have any Chinese was in fact her saying that she doesn’t identify with this other side of her.
Her intentions are not meant for heartbreaks, but for the well-being of her babies. Support Point # 2- Suyuan’s top priority is to educate Jing-mei as ideal daughter; however, high expectations are difficult to achieve causing problems and leading bitterness into the relationship. Support Point
In the words of Jing-Mei in the last line of the story, “Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished wish” (Tan 159). Throughout her life, Suyuan, their mother, held onto the hope that she would see her daughters again. In this hope, she named Jing-Mei in connection to her sisters, keeping the “long-cherished wish” that someday her daughters would reconcile and complete their family circle. The occasion that
Throughout the entire novel, the mothers and daughters face inner struggles, family conflict, and societal collision. The divergence of cultures produces tension and miscommunication, which effectively causes the collision of American morals, beliefs, and priorities with Chinese culture which
Family in Chinese Culture As shown in Amy Tan's short stories A Pair of Tickets, Immortal Heart, and Two Kinds, one can see the importance of family in Chinese culture. In the piece A Pair of Tickets, it is shown how hard Jing-mei's mother Suyuan looks for the twin babies she is forced to leave behind. Her effort is shown when Jing-mei's father recalls the travels, saying, "We went to many different cities, back to Kweilin, to Changsha, as far south as Kunming. She was always looking out of one corner of her eye for twin babies, then little girls" (Tan, A Pair of . . . " 163, 164).
One dynamic that false expectation strains is the relationship between Suyuan and her daughter Jing-Mei. In a vignette told from the perspective of the latter, Suyuan has the notion that Jing-Mei should be able to perform something at the level of a prodigy. She begins
On the other hand, being born into this country, Jing-mei is against wanting to live up to the expectations her mother sets on her. Two kinds reveal two different sides of the cultural spectrum, and their opposing view towards their values. Jing-mei 's mother felt like an outcast existing in a dominate population. Grasping the same idea, she held onto her hard time back in her home. Jing-mei is her last hope to prove that her homeland can be just as talented as Americans.
However, this determination sometimes appears to be obsessive to the point of running her daughter’s life for her. Regardless, she is only trying to help, as she encourages Jing Mei by asserting “‘You can be best anything.’” (1). Because of this, it suggests that although she is very harsh on her daughter at times, it is only to make sure that Jing Mei can use her full potential and not end up losing everything like her