[213] The Joy Luck Club – Amy Tan

It’s hard to keep your Chinese face in America. At the beginning, before I even arrived, I had to hide my true self.” [294]

Through the stories of four immigrant women in the first half of 20th century, Amy Tan weaves a myopic tapestry that details their struggle to preserve the Chinese heritage while gingerly assimilating to the American society. The Joy Luck Club revolves around these four friends, or at times secret rivals who boast about their daughters’ talents, at the mah jong (a Chinese tile game that mandates four players) table who share stories of their lives in China and the journey to America. Woven in their narratives are their daughters’ recollection of the problems growing up in two cultures.

Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, when why don’t you learn to play chess? [101]

But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. You have to pay attention to what you lost. You have to undo the expectation. [140]

These interlocking stories evoke tension that is rooted in the misunderstanding between the two generations separated by geographical barriers. Mothers work hard to instill in their daughters the remnants of the native culture and heritage, while the first generation Chinese-American girls are “too busy chewing gum, blowing bubbles bigger than the cheeks.” While mothers worry their daughters’ not being the own person, having the best of the two worlds—American circumstances and Chinese character, the daughters are embarrassed at their mothers’ old ways.

I smile. I use my American face. That’s the face Americans think is Chinese, the one they cannot understand. But inside I am becoming ashamed. I am ashamed she is ashamed. Because she is my daughter and I am proud of her, and I am her mother but she is not proud of me. [291]

The versatility with which the older Chinese women, who have respectively escaped pre-arranged marriage, survived war, and left behind babies in China, switch their Chinese face to American face is remarkable. This flexibility, although at times inevitable, is interpreted as means to protect their children. Like the ambivalent nature of the club’s name (joy luck in Chinese means happiness by chance), whose meaning is lost when translated from Chinese to English, one realizes that the mothers’ experience and values are also not to be fully translated to their daughters. Throughout the novel Amy Tan reminds us that an understanding of Chinese culture is a prerequisite to understanding of its meaning. The novel as a result captures the struggle of Chinese-American immigrant experience through an examination of the historical legacy and the problem of the immigrant identity. It poignantly captures that bittersweet contradicting desire to foregoing non-American attributes and embracing ethnic root and identity.

332 pp. [Read/Skim/Toss]