An Analysis of the American Born Chinese in the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

In American literature today, many authors from various cultures are rising above the rest to be recognized. One culture in particular is the Asian culture; whose literature up until the 1970’s was virtually unpublished (Nash 557). Asian people had to overcome many obstacles in order to be accepted as capable of having the skills to write. The Japanese encountered their greatest challenge after the bombing of Pearl Harbor during World War II. It is said that, The U.S. government uprooted over 120,000 Japanese Americans despite the fact that two thirds of them were citizens by birth” (Nash 558). Families were given little advanced warning before they were torn from their homes and forced into brutal and unsanitary internment camps (Hsu, 2). At these camps, they were called names such as “Fat Japs” or “Ching Chong Chinaman”. Names and experiences that occurred in these camps would follow Japanese people into the future and encourage stereotypes from all people who were not of Japanese origin. Before long, society’s interpretation said that Japanese people weren’t as capable or as smart as others. The Chinese encountered much of the same after their immigration. onto U.S. soil.

They were repeatedly told by dominant whites that keeping to themselves and keeping their place was their only worth and duty in life. Therefore, the first generation Chinese spent their lives working nineteen to twenty hour days with their highest hope and goal being to escape the torment from whites. The sons and daughters of these were more determined to be worth something and dreamt of equality. They worked towards breaking away from Chinatowns and adapting to the middle class way of life (Hsu 10). With all this taken into account, Japanese and Chinese literature was at a standstill until the third and fourth generation took the reins. When writing began to grow among the Asian people, publishing and proper recognition was ignored due to the white dominated society. As a result, many determined writers began to use a pen name to disguise their ethnicity (Hsu 11). Unfortunately the powerful words of writers lost their meaning in the translation to English. However, through hard work, determined Asians triumphed. In 1854 a Chinese newspaper was published in San Francisco (Hsu 13). Autobiographies were the next step on the ladder. The earliest autobiography, When I Was A Boy In China by Lee Phan Phou was publeshed in 1887. It dealt with daily life in China such as: food, ceremonies, and games. The theme of life in China echoed in the writings of many others. The authors believed this was the way to gain acceptance in a white, Christian society (Nash 558). The opposite was accomplished when many works failed to modify stereotypes, and rather confirmed them. The unpopularity of these autobiographies resulted in a twenty year time lapse before Asian people would attempt to write again (Hsu 10). When they did, it was greater than ever. Authors such as Hong Kingston and Amy Tan brought an awareness that Asian people had a literature all of their own and put Asian American aspects into a mainstream U.S. culture.

Amy Tan, whose name means, “blessing from America”, was born in Oakland, California in1952 to John and Daisy Tan (Ducksworth 559). John Tan studied in Beijing to become an electrical engineer and Baptist minister. During WWII, before immigrating, he worked for the U.S. information service. He immigrated to the United States in 1947 making him a first generation Chinese American. A few years after immigrating, he married Daisy Tan (the exact date is unknown). Daisy Tan, was also a first generation Chinese American who immigrated to the U.S. in 1949. Daisy was a busy woman working nights as a vocational nurse to help with family expenses. She was the mother of three children: two sons Peter and John Junior and one daughter, Amy. She lost her husband and her son within two years of each other; both due to brain tumors. Thinking she was cursed in America, she moved her family to Montreaux, Switzerland and tried to control the lives of her children (Ducksworth 559 and Henry 370). Amy Tan completed grade school and began high school in California. After moving to Europe, where she graduated high school early, Tan enrolled in Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon 1969. After two semesters there, Tan decided to follow her boyfriend to San Jose City College in California. Once enrolled there, she changed her major from pre-med to a double major in English and linguistics and she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in that field. After accomplishing this, she studied toward a doctorate at the University of California Santa Cruz and Berkeley. However, she dropped out of the program in 1976 to become a language development consultant for the Alameda County Association for Retarded Citizens, Setting out into the work force, Tan started her own business of drafting speeches. She had great success and acquired clients as big as IBM.

Unfortunately it turned out to be too much and Tan had to start therapy for workaholics. She decided to quit the freelance and concentrate on her own works. Tan wrote her first story called Endgame around1985. Because of it’s success in the magazines, Tan wrote two sequels and titled the series Wind and Water. In 1986 she signed a contract with Sandra Djidstra. Wind and Water was renamed The Joy Luck Club, delivered to a publisher in May of 1988 and published in March of 1989. Her success continued as she wrote Kitchen God’s Wife which was published in 1991 and The Moon Lady published in 1992. (Ducksworth 559-562)

The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan’s most successful book, is a series of short stories about Chinese mothers and their American born daughters. The book emphasizes the difference in views in each family set. In one story one of the daughters is getting involved in her second marriage. She is content and very much in love with the man she wants to marry, however, her mother doesn’t see how her daughter would marry him because he is not Chinese and does not keep a clean house. The daughter would say that her mother was too stuck in her old Chinese views, while the mother would say that her daughter is foolish and has let herself become too Americanized. Other stories just center around growing up and learning to accept life’s hardships. An example is the story of a girl who goes to the beach with her family and is left with the responsibility of watching her brothers. Her youngest brother tries to go by his father who is fishing and has to walk over rocks to do so. On his way, he trips and no one sees him drowning but the girl who was supposed to be watching him. However, she finds herself unable to move and stands frozen as the horrible event takes place. The rest of the story is about how she and her family deal with the death throughout the rest of their lives. Tan organizes this book so that each mother-daughter story comes together in the end, with life’s lessons revealed and learned (Tan).

The title of The Joy Luck Club, from a gathering that started during wartime in China. The club consisted of four women who met once a week to maintain sanity and luck during the raid in China. The name of the club was called the Joy Luck Club. (McCarthy 2793) At every meeting, the women would sit at the four corners of a Mag-jongg table and play games that always started on the east end. The book The Joy Luck Club follows this idea to a “T”. Just as there are four corners to the table, the book has four main sections and four mother daughter pairs. As the games always started in the east, the stories in the book start with the story of the woman who sat on the East corner of the table. (McCarthy 2792) The mothers and daughters tell two stories each, with the exception of Jing-mei who speaks four times because her mother is dead. One critic noted that,” The voices of all stories are told in first person, making the character differences hard to differentiate. Who’s speaking now, whose mother, whose daughter? One must constantly wonder.” (Painter98) The mother’s stories are about their life in China. Through these stories they reveal how they stand for China and older beliefs, map out their daughter’s lives for them and never take no for an answer. Their main ground rule is that there is no way the daughter wins and American decisions always disappoint them. For example, Lindo Jong said, “I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these two things do not mix?” (Ling 441) The daughter’s stories are just about growing up and their current family situations. Amy Tan incorporates herself into the novel as one of the daughters by reshaping some of her experiences into fiction. The combination of the mother-daughter stories, bring out how the two generations as well as the two different cultures contrast each other. However, no matter how they fight and disagree, the love the mother-daughter pairs share for each other is made evident. One critic commented, “Tan’s implication is clear: we all take our mothers for granted and we don’t fully appreciate them until they’re gone.” (Ling 441) Most critics agree that The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan is an enjoyable book due to it’s content and lessons.

For me, The Joy Luck Club proved to be a very confusing, yet enjoyable book. I found that as I was reading I had to continually look back to figure out which character I was reading about. It was very frustrating and sometimes I would have to just take a break from reading to sort things out so they made sense. However, I found that once I had a clear understanding, the book was really neat. I found myself really caring for the characters and getting mad at the moms at different points. Like when the mother makes her daughter see all the bad things in the people she falls in love with. I just wanted her daughter to say “STOP RUINING MY LIFE!” I enjoy a book that can take control of your emotions and pull you into the story. Though I couldn’t relate to the Chinese viewpoints, I learned a lot about what Chinese life and culture was like and how difficult the transition to American life must have been for many immigrants. The structure was also very interesting in how it reflected the corners of the table. It was really neat to see the correlation in the end. As far as recommending this book… would only recommend it to people who have a lot of time to concentrate on it and really understand its content. It is definitely not a book to just skim over and read once through. The reader has to have time to look back, see who the story is really about and think about how it fits in with the story opposite it. With that in mind I would never recommend The Joy Luck Club be in a curriculum. There are just too many students who would try to rush through the book just for the sake of finishing it, which wouldn’t do the book justice with the reviews it deserves. I do however believe that it should be recommended and in circumstances such as what our class did, it should be made available. The age level I would recommend for reading this book would be fourteen and up just because of the confusion and some of the vocabulary it contains. Also because I think it takes that kind of maturity to appreciate the cultural points made and to read about the sexual aspects in a respectable way. All in all, I thought Joy Luck Club was a great book and a really neat style that deserves the attention of those who are willing to take the time.

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