The Joy Luck Club Identity Analysis

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan talks about the lives of four Chinese immigrant mother raising their daughters in America. During the World War II, the mothers decide to vacate China to have a clean slate for their future daughters and themselves. With raising their daughters in America, the mothers decided not to inform them of their Chinese heritage, or as the mothers put it “.. being measured by the loudness of her husband's belch ”(Tan 17).Therefore, allowing their daughters to make a name for themselves without being looked down upon by others( Tan17). Amy Tan discusses the topic of culture and the true meaning of identity as portrayed in the storyline of the mothers and daughters of the Joy Luck Club. More specifically how the cultural
Jing-mei saw success as something that could be obtained effortlessly and if not reached it would indicate that it wasn’t meant to be. In other words, she disbelieved in persistence when it came to achieving success. Hence why Jing-mei saw her mother wasting her time trying to make her a prodigy when “she had hoped for something so large that failure was inevitable”( Tan 142). Amy Tan depicts Jing- mei idealism of success being fatalistic by the argument between Jing- mei and Suyuan, where Jing- mei declaimed that she’ll never be a prodigy as her mother hopes( Tan 142). Jing-mei discerned her mother’s multiple attempts of making her a prodigy as a fixation of correcting her flaws and a misuse of time since after her mother first failed attempt of making her a “ Chinese Shirley Temple.”( Tan 132) The way Jing-mei inspected her incapability of become a prodigy, was a predestined answer to quit and accept the fact that she will never be a genius( Tan 141). Jing-mei’s fatalistic idea of success perceived her as having “...too much water and you [ Jing-mei] flow into many directions.” as her mother stated since she “.. started a half a degree in biology, then half a degree in art”( Tan 31). In other words, her mother perceived her as indecisive due to her idea of success being something that was only attempted once and if resulted in a failed attempt
While she found the closure ,Jing-mei comes to a realization that her perception of Suyuan's idea of success was imprecise and started to incorporate Suyuan's idea into hers. Amy Tan signifies Jing-mei’s sudden epiphany when she wrote how Jing- mei came to realize that the Perfectly Content and the Pleading Child pieces, which was the piece that symbolized her ideas of success, were two halves of the same song. The Perfectly Content piece being symbolized as her mother idea of success which she describes as " longer , but faster" being that it took more time but eventually " turned out to be quite easy"(Tan 144). By the action of playing the two pieces together( Tan 144) , it symbolized her incorporation of Suyuan's ideas into hers. After her epiphany occurred, Jing-mei decides to follow through with meeting her half-sister even after knowing the task was going to be laborious for her. Jing-mei finds the task being strenuous due to addressing her sisters about their mothers who she claims to know nothing about ( Tan 40). The overall act of Jing-mei meeting her half-sister shows her change of perspective on success. Subsequent Jing-mei’s encounter with her half- sister , she finally claims her Chinese identity being a part of her and in her