Joy Luck Club

Returning to One’s Roots and Understanding Chinese Culture in The Joy Luck Club
Cultural divides are difficult to overcome in storytelling because understanding another culture is a not an easy task. However, in The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan does a wonderful job of making the Chinese culture comprehensible for the American reader. With a culture that is exceedingly different from American way of life, Tan presents both cultures side by side in order to draw attention to their differences and benefits. She acknowledges the materialistic American mind that is focused on the present and contrasts it with the Chinese mindset, which focuses on the past and future. After presenting both cultures, the book documents the daughters’ return to both their
mothers and to their Chinese heritage. A part of the story is told through the daughters, who are raised in the American way, which gives the readers an American viewpoint to identify with as they are given a look into the lives of both the girls and their mothers.
However, as each girl returns to her Chinese heritage and mindset, the reader can easily slip into this mindset as well to better understand the feelings and actions in the story. This return to one’s heritage is the focus of the book and is outlined most prominently in the section “American Translation.” Through the “American Translation” parable and the characters Rose Hsu and Jing-Mei Woo, Tan identifies both the Chinese and the American ways of life and conveys the strength and sense of belonging that can be found in the Chinese tradition as these two girls return to the ways of their mothers.
As Amy Tan sets the scene for the “American Translation” section, she gives the reader a parable that encapsulates the difference between the American and the Chinese viewpoint. In
the parable, the mother and the daughter gaze into a mirror. The mother, who symbolizes the Chinese way, exclaims, “In this mirror is my future grandchild, already sitting on my lab next spring” (Tan 159). Her eyes are set on the future and the continuation of her family. The daughter looks into the mirror and simply sees “her own reflection looking back at her” (Tan 159). This conveys the American worldview, which focuses on the present and the individual alone. Tan uses this mirror symbolism again when Lindo Jong is at the salon with her daughter. When she sees her daughter in the mirror, she sees herself and her own mother. With this reflection showing the past while the other story focused on the future, the Chinese worldview is complete because it focuses on both the past and future with little regard for the present, which is the focus of the American worldview. This dynamic carries through the entire story as the mothers, who were raised the Chinese way, watch their daughters grow up in the American way. Ying-Ying describes this as a difficult way to raise a child by stating, “I raised a daughter, watching her from another shore. I accepted her American ways” (Tan 286). Their daughters grow up with a different focus in life and therefore become strange to their mothers because of the different worldviews. However, the reoccurring idea in the book is that “if you are Chinese you can never let go of China in your mind” (Tan 203). While this sentiment is confusing to the daughters in the beginning of the book, the mothers know it to be true and the daughters slowly come to believe it as well. While this difference in focus is evident in An-Mei and Rose, Rose comes to terms and ends up returning to her Chinese heritage. Ted takes advantage of Rose and makes her feel insignificant. After their separation, she goes out to view the garden in the yard and remembers how Ted would tend to the garden constantly and control every aspect of the planting and maintenance. He arranged them in different boxes, which allows plants to grow only under his controlling supervision. As she overlooks the overrun garden, Rose recalls something she read in a fortune cookie: “When a husband stops paying attention to the garden, he’s thinking of pulling up roots” (Tan 215). This is significant because with the way Ted gardened, with the plants in different and specific boxes, the root systems and the plants themselves would have been tame and easy to pull up. This is meant to convey the American way of life, which sees little connection with the past, which makes it easy to leave and change. However, Rose realizes this inconsistent way of life creates an unstable foundation on which to stand. As she views the overgrown garden with it’s strong, interconnected roots, she decides she prefers this to the well-kept garden because there is “no way to pull [the roots] out once they’ve buried themselves in the masonry; you’d end up pulling the whole building down” (Tan 218). With its interconnected and grounded roots, the garden symbolizes Rose’s Chinese heritage, which provides her a sound foundation on which to stand. With this newfound strength, she stands up to Ted and demands the house in the divorce rather than letting him simply throw her out. With this return to her Chinese heritage, her American view centered on the present is widened to include her past, which strengthens her because she realizes she has a strong Chinese identity and, as a result, obtains a new sense of self. With their Americanized childhoods, Jing-Mei’s worldview is comparable to Rose’s and undergoes a similar change. Suyuan Woo gives Jing-Mei a jade pendant and tells her, “I wore this on my skin, so when you put it on your skin, then you know my meaning. This is your life’s importance” (Tan 235). The necklace symbolizes her Chinese heritage, which is why Jing-Mei does not wear the necklace until after her mother’s death. She lives the Americanized way of life until the death of her mother, after which she feels a need to understand and return to her Chinese roots. She recalls her mother’s words about the jade as she contemplates its meaning: “This is young jade. It is a very light color now, but if you wear it every day it will become more green” (Tan 235). This charge for her to wear the pendant every day is Suyan’s attempt to constantly remind Jing-Mei about her heritage. In describing the process of darkening the jade with wear, Suyan is conveying that the future is just as important as the past. Jing-Mei needs to remember the past and the heritage she stands on, but she also needs to darken the necklace, which symbolizes building upon her heritage in order to pass on a stronger foundation to her children. Therefore, Suyan’s description of the necklace as “life’s importance” bears the Chinese worldview, which considers the past and future to be the focus of everyone’s lives. The fact that Jing-Mei chooses to wear the necklace after her mother’s death shows that, like Rose, she has returned to her heritage and the ways of her mother. Jing-Mei and Rose have adopted the American way of life, but eventually return to their mothers and their Chinese heritage because, as Jing-Mei realizes in the end of the book, the Chinese worldview is in their blood.
Each daughter starts out as an Americanized girl with their sights focused on the present and the individual, which is unattached to origin or family. This creates a fast paced life full of change and uncertainty. However, as they grow older, they begin to understand their mothers and their traditional Chinese views. Returning to this heritage gives them a true sense of belonging amongst a society where they are considered to be outsiders and struggle to find a steady place. Rose finds a firm foundation on which to stand in her heritage, which strengthens her. Jing-Mei discovers a connection with her mother as she truly accepts her Chinese heritage, which causes her to both look to the past and to the future. It is with this newfound attitude that Jing-Mei goes to meet her sisters and upon meeting them, she realizes just how deep her Chinese roots go as she states, “And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood” (Tan 331). Although they do not look like her mother, Jing-Mei feels a connection to them and realizes her heritage goes past looks and to the blood connection they have. She is overcome with emotion because she has found the ultimate sense of belonging. She has discovered that her life’s
importance lies with her family, their past, and the future she will help shape and pass on. This is a difficult concept to grasp from the American standpoint because of the bias that exists and the focus Americans have on the present. However, by making the characters relatable and then having them evolve from the American mindset to the Chinese mindset enables the reader to undergo a similar evolution and slip into this mindset as well, which allows for a better understanding of a vastly different culture.