3.1 Chinese and American cultural gap
In The Joy Luck Club the tensions between mothers and daughters and between U.S. and Chinese influences are constantly expressed in bicultural ways. The mothers are firmly rooted in their Chinese cultural heritage and are comfortable with being Chinese. The daughters are awkward with their own Chinese features, the Chinese language, and their repressed Chinese spirituality. The mothers identify with their ethnicity, but the daughters are ambivalent about whom they are.
Because of their significant presences, the mothers reinforce Tan’s portrayal of tension existing in the intricate relationships between mothers and daughters. Gloria Sheen notes that “the mothers are possessively trying to hold onto their daughters, and the daughters are battling to get away from their mothers.”[11] Lindo Jong may be the most possessive and powerful of the mothers. In both stories narrated by her daughter, Lindo often hovers over Waverly’s shoulders as she practices chess; gives Waverly instructions such as Next time win more, lose less; takes credit for Waverly victories; and barge about Waverly in the marketplace. Finally, Waverly, not able to hear her mother’s boasts, says, “I wish you wouldn’t do that, telling everybody I’m your daughter.”[3] The tension between the mother and the daughter then erupts into Lindo’s prophecy of Waverly’s future failures at chess. Lindo’s prophecy is fulfilled; Waverly eventually gives up chess at fourteen. Twenty years later, Lindo Jong’s power over Waverly nearly inhibits Waverly from reporting her forthcoming second marriage for fear of Lindo’s disapproval. However, the daughter’s battle song about getting away from her mother has a positive finale. Waverly’s narrative about the conflict between her and Lindo end with Lindo’s acceptance of Waverly’s fiancé.
Though Tan’s storytelling in The Joy Luck Club, the meaning of perfect English is transformed from the mother’s native American dream to the daughter’s awakening bicultural disillusionment, as the daughter June laments: “These kinds of explanations made me feel my mother and I spoke two different languages, which we did. I talked to her in English, she answered back in Chinese”[3], and later, “My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each other’s meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more”[3]. The lack of shared languages and cultural logics remains a central theme throughout all the narratives in Tan’s book. This absence transcends the simple linguistic dichotomies or cultural misunderstandings; both mothers and daughters are negotiating their relational and social positions and contesting their identities as Chinese American women in the languages that can enhance or undermine their power, legitimacy, and voice.
The family ties between the mother and in each Chinese-American families is no longer what determines the Chinese daughters’ obligation or the Chinese mother’s authority. Family features shared by mother and daughter in those Chinese-American families are not something to be proud of, but rather something that causes embarrassments on one side or the other, and often on both sides. The loosen family tie and shaky continuity between the two generations represented in The Joy Luck Club account for the particular narrative form in which their life acts and events are told. These stories share no apparently recognizable pattern or fully integrated narrative structure. The character relations are suggested but never sufficiently interwoven or acted out as a coherent drama. Our attention is constantly called to the characteristics of consists of isolated acts and events, which remain scattered and disbanded. It has neither a major plot around which to drape the separate stories, nor a unitary exciting climax which guides the book to a final outcome.
3.2 Chinese and American cultural collision
Conflicts between the mothers of one generation and the daughter of another indicate the cultural collision between Chinese and American.
The major theme of The Joy Luck Club is the difference and lack of understanding between mothers and daughters caused not only by generational gaps but also by the immigrant experience. Suyuan Woo started the first Joy Luck Club in China during the Sino-Japanese War; four women played mahjong and held weekly parties in the middle of mass destruction. As Suyuan told Jing-mei, “each week, we could hope to be luck. That hope was our only joy.”[3] The same spirit of hope prompted Suyuan to organze another Joy Luck Club in San Francisco. The daughters, on the other hand, fail to understand the significance of Joy Luck and regard it as a shameful Chinese custom. Suyuan’s daughter, Jing-mei, comes to understand the fear of her Joy Luck aunts after her mother’s death, “They see that joy and luck does not mean the same to their daughters, and that to these closed American-born minds joy luck is not a word, it does not exist”.[3] To bridge the gap, the American-born daughters open their minds to their maternal cultural heritage. Tan provides the bridge through her skillful storytelling. The Joy Luck Club ends with a reunion of Suyuan’s two Chinese daughters and Jing-mei, emblematic of the unification of the mother’s Chinese past and American present that will create a Chinese American future for all of the daughters.
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