Mothers, Daughters and Common Ground in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club Ess

Mothers, Daughters and Common Ground in Amy Tans The cheer circle ClubHere is a journey that non altogether started a thousand Li away, but from generations upon generations of tradition. The Joy Luck Club travels over time and continents to present the background and turmoil of viii amazing women. All of these women have had to deal with the issues of culture, gender, and family, from each one in their declare way, yet all similarly. Amy Tan dedicates her novel to her mother with the comment You asked me at a time what I would remember This, and much more. Each of the mothers in Tans novel cherished to teach their girlfriends the lessons learned in China while giving them the comforts of America. But language and culture barriers diverge the women until they were almost befogged to each other. Each character had to take their own journey to finally check what drove them apart and find their common ground.Each Mother brought luggage with her across the pacific. They wa nted to teach their daughters from all of their pain and suffering, but were never able to communicate the complexities of their life. Suyuan Woo struggles to explain herself to her daughter This feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions. And she waited, year afterwards year, for the day she could tell her daughter this in perfect American side(3). The journey that brought Suyuan to America was long and full of hardship. From the Japanese invasion of Kweilin were she lost her husband and had to leave her daughters, to her assimilation in America. Suyuan wanted to teach her daughter about these hardships so that she could actualize the extent of her potential. My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in Ameri... ... finding her sisters and in doing this fulfilling her own. Just as Jing-Mei nominate what made her Chinese, Lindo discovered what made her American. I was so much alike my mother. She did not see h ow my face changed over the years. How my eyes began following the American way(293). She is a mixture, no longer one hundred percent Chinese, yet she has held her culture with her throughout her life in America. Not however traditional and not only modern, not just Chinese and not just American, but Chinese-American(Reece). This is the same discovery that Waverly and Jing-Mei come to, they finally understand were their mothers have come from and the history brought with them from far away. And the mothers best intentions are no longer like the illusive mountains covered in fog, left in China. Works CitedTan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York Random House, 1989.