Qualia In The Joy Luck Club

The philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett has done numerous researches on the concept of Qualia: a gap in language. Qualia are the subjective experiences that cannot be described by words, such as describing color to a blind person, or the blind describing the lack thereof to a seeing person. In the novel "The Joy Luck Club," the mothers and the daughters have somewhat of a communication gap: one is centered on the Chinese language and the other American English. In communication between the mothers and daughters, there is a large amount of misunderstanding that can be seen due to the mother’s insistence on speaking Chinese and the daughter’s habit of speaking English.
The novel illustrates the relationships between Chinese Society
and American Society through the communications and understanding of the mother, Suyuan Woo, and the daughter, Jing-Mei Woo. One place this is seen is when Jing-Mei was reminiscing on her relationship with her mother and considering the communication gap: “These kinds of explanations made me feel like my mother and I spoke two different languages, which we did.
I talked to her in English, she answered back in Chinese” (Tan 33-34). The difference of languages is a synecdoche of the difference of the culture as a whole, with the daughter being strongly connected to the American world and the mother being strongly connected to the traditional Chinese world. Because of this barrier, neither side can completely be adapted to the other; similar to how a perfect translation cannot exist from the Indo-European language family to the Sinto-Tibetian language family. A transition from the main language in a family is a “growing pain” of immigration. The communication between them, or lack thereof, makes them seem unrelated and certainly not close due to their reactions, their communications, and their ideas. This event has happened all over the world, from the Hellenistic Era in Greece to the Pax Sinica in China, where new cultures were accepted throughout the entirety of the ancient world. Another place where a difference of culture and beliefs are seen is when Jing-Mei was thinking through her argument
with her mother about “dropping-off” of college and the meaning of it, the catalyst of it being her mother’s misunderstanding of the meaning of the word, caused by her lack of knowledge of the Western world: “I had always assumed we had an unspoken understanding about these things: that she didn’t really mean I was a failure, and I really meant I would try to respect her opinions more. ...My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each other’s meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more” (Tan 37). This demonstrates the isolation Jing-Mei is feeling from her own mother due to the conflicts faced by adapting two cultures as once.
The language gap between the daughter and the mother has illustrated the way of their communications. Since the western and the eastern nations have completely different cultures from each other, they have had difficulties with their cultural understanding due to their incomplete knowledge of language. All in all, the novel The Joy Luck Club established an interesting take on the difference of culture and immigration that was both thought-provoking and entertaining. These topics are still relevant today, with immigration reform being a large issue in the media. The unique style and tone of the author also worked well to capture the attention of the reader and help points. This novel has affected me personally quite deeply, and I look forward to finishing it.