Joy Luck Club FINISHED!

     Finally, we've finished the Joy Luck Club!
Throughout this book, Amy Tan uses a lot of "cycles" and repeats many of the things that she wants to emphasize. One thing that stood out to me was the used of jewelry.In the first chapter/last, The Joy Luck Club, the Red Candle, Two Kinds, and in Magpies, jewelry plays a role in the story.
     In the first chapter by Jing-Mei Woo, she talks about her mother's story of what had happened to her in China and why she had come to America. Jing-Mei's mother, Suyuan Woo, had had two daughters who she was forced to leave behind. In the last chapter, when Jing-Mei decides to go back to China to find her sisters, her father tells her the story of what her mother experienced. It turns out that Suyuan had left a family picture, a letter, jewelry and clothes to bundle the two babies all on the side of the road when she was fleeing form the Japanese. These were the only things that she had to offer and she gave them up in order for her children to have a slight chance of living. The jewelry was especially significant because it was the thing that her mother hoped would be enough money to allow her children to live under the care of others. The jewelry was the thing that represented Suyuan's willingness to sacrifice all she had for her children.
     In the Red Candle, again, a piece of jewelry expressed a mother's love and a mother's sacrifice. When Lindo's home was flooded, Lindo was sent to go live at her future husband's house (her arranged marriage). When her family left, they left Lindo. Her mother gave Lindo her jade and expressed her sadness to give her daughter up to another family. Her father did not let her mother show pain or sadness, but the only form of love her mother was able to show her was by giving her a jade pendent for luck and as a memento of love from her family.
     In Two Kinds, Jing Mei's mother wanted her to be a prodigy of some kind and her mother decided on her being a piano prodigy. Jing- Mei did not take her lessons seriously and when her mother pushed her to do a competition, she still felt confident she would do well. As a token of luck from her mother, Suyuan gave Jing-mei her jade. Again, the jade represented the pride an the luck from a mother.
     In the last section's first chapter, Magpies, An-mei's mother brings her back to her husband's house where she is a concubine. At their first meeting, the 2nd wife gave An-mei a pearl necklace. An-mei was overjoyed, but soon, her mother proved to her that it was in fact fake and the An-mei had been shallow to be won over by cheap means. Her mother gives her a sapphire ring and An-mei treasures it as a truth. The fake pearl necklace represents lies and deception, but the ring represented trust and truth. An-mei's mother proved that she should be trusted by An-mei because she did not want her child to be deceived by underhand means.
     All the jewelry in the Joy Luck Club represented a mother's love and caring for her daughter. This cyclical object meant a lot to the context of the stories.

Twenty Six Malignant Gates

In "The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates", the second section of four stories in The Joy Luck Club, the relationships between the mothers and daughters in America are very similar to Amy Chua's Tiger Mom article we read in class a few weeks ago. In Chua's article, she describes how she forces her child to learn the piano and learn the piece until she knew it and perfected the piece. In The Joy Luck Club, Jing-Mei's mother forces her to take piano lessons because she wants her child to become a prodigy.   

The difference between the two situations are that Jing-Mei's mother wanted her daughter to be a prodigy because she wanted her daughter to be able to compare with Waverly Jong, who was a national chess winner at a very young age. Jing-Mei's mother wanted Jing- Mei to be able to beat Waverly and her mother in a contest of who's daughter is better than the other. In the Tiger Mother article, Chua's intentions was to get her daughter to be able to perfect this piece on the piano.

"Over the next year, I practiced like this, dutifully in my own way. And then one day I heard my mother and her friend Lindo Jong both talking in a loud bragging tone of voice so other would hear." (138) 

      Jing -Mei's mother may seem demanding and mean, but really her underlying intentions are to give Jing-Mei a goal to become someone and Waverly was just a benchmark for Jing-Mei for how good her mother wanted her to be. Chua knew that her daughter could do it and can do the piano piece without any flaws and thats why she forced her daughter to sit down and just play and practice. Both mothers had the intentions to help their children see their potential and to reach. Both mothers didn't mean to be mean or to make their daughters feel bad, but they expected their children to live to the best of their abilities. To get them to reach their potentials the mothers believe that they need to push their daughters to get somewhere.  

Rules of the Game + The Voice from the Wall

What is Amy Tan's purpose behind this introductory piece? What thematic elements, characterization, or plot foreshadowing connect it to the stories that follow, particularly "Rules of the Game" and "The Voice from the Wall"?


     In the Rules of the Game and The Voice from the Wall, both daughters didn't listen to her mother. In the introductory piece, the girl on the bike also did not listen to her mother. Ultimately, the daughter was the one who got into trouble from trying to prover her mother wrong about how she cannot do something. 
     In "The Rules of the Game", Waverly Jong is a gifted girl with skills in playing chess. When her brother gets a gift from church for Christmas, it is the first chess set Waverly has seen. She learned how to play and soon, she excelled into playing at the national level. When her mother began to show her off, Waverly got embarrassed and upset at her mother. She yelled at her in public telling her mother that if she wanted to show off something so badly, then her mother should play chess instead so she can brag. She then proceeds in running away. When she gets back home, her mother tells her family to ignore her. And says that if she did not care about her family, her family doesn't have to care about her. In the introductory piece, the girl thinks her mother is full of it and decides that she doesn't have to listen to her mother. In the end, something bad happened to her.
     In "The Voice from the Wall", Lena St. Clair visualizes everything as being wrong. She hears of her mother's great grandfather, who did something wrong and sentenced a beggar to life in prison. Lena's mother tells her that the beggar's ghost still lives and follows them. At night, Lena hears her neighbors yelling at each other, a daughter and a mother. She only sees the worst parts of their relationship. She thinks that this girl is being abused. Ying Ying, Lena's mother, nearly has a baby, but the baby turns out to have died before being born. Lena's father puts words into Ying Ying's mouth and keeps saying that she is okay and would be fine by tomorrow. Ying Ying doesn't have the courage to tell her family of the guilt or the pain she is suffering from.

Scar

    In the story Scar in The Joy Luck Club, An-mei's mother was kicked out of her home because of how she disgraced her family.  An-mei's mother's first husband had died after they had An-mei and she remarried to a man, becoming his third concubine. She was considered a disgrace to the family because in Chinese tradition, when a woman and a man marries, no matter what happens to the man, the woman must stay loyal to him.  An-mei's mother did not do this and was kicked out by her own mother. An-mei, her daughter was taken away from her mother after her mother was kicked out and lived with her Popo. Her Popo was one who continuously discouraged An-mei to have any connection with her mother and banned An-mei from even saying her name.
     The question here is whether or not family and honor should take priority over the rights of the individual family member. In the book, family and honor did take priority. Although An-mei's mother came back for An-mei, none of her family members would allow her to even get near her. They thought she would become like her mother of she was near her. I think that what Popo did was out of being ashamed of her daughter doing such things. She had to suppress the love she had for her daughter and for the good and honor of the family, kicked her out and banned her from ever coming back. 
     At the end of the story, Popo became very sick and An-mei's mother made a huge sacrafice and endured horrible pain to try to make her own mother get better. I don't think love was ever lost between the two of them, but Popo was definitely horribly ashamed of having her own daughter be the disgrace of the family. An-mei's mother came back because she still loved her family despite all that they did to her. I think she understood the reasons they had kicked her out of the family, but still kept the feelings of love. An-mei ultimately "forgets" her mother, but inside her, she will never forget her because she is a huge part of her past.