Essay on Search for Identity in Amy Tans The Joy Luck Club

Search for Identity in Joy Luck Club Each person reaches a point in their aliveness when they begin to search for their own, unique identity. In her novel, Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan follows Jing Mei on her search for her Chinese identity an identity long neglected. quaternion Chinese receives have migrated to America. Each hope for their daughters success and pray that they will non experience the hardships faced in China. One mother, Suyuan, im picks her acquaintance on her daughter through stories. The American culture influences her daughter, Jing Mei, to such a degree that it is hard for Jing Mei to understand her mothers culture and life lessons. Yet it is not until Jing Mei realizes that the key to understanding who her mother was and who she is lies in understanding her mothers life. Jing Mei spends her American life trying to pull away from her Chinese heritage, and therefore overly ends up pulling away from her mother. Jing Mei does not understand the culture and does not feel it is necessary to her life. When she grows up it is not fashionable to be called by your Chinese name (Tan 26). She doesnt use, understand, or remember the Chinese expressions her mother did, claiming she can never remember things she didnt understand in the first place (Tan 6). Jing Mei begs her mother to buy her a transistor radio, but her mother refuses when she remembers something from her past, asking her daughter Why do you think you are missing something you never had? (Tan 13) kinda of viewing the situation from her mothers Chinese-influenced side, Jing Mei takes the juvenile American approach and sulks in silence for an hour (Tan 13). By ignoring her mom and her moms advice, Jing Mei is also ignoring... ...Jing Mei realizes the part of her that is Chinese is her family. She must embrace the memory of her dead mother to grasp that part of her identity. Works Cited and Consulted Gates, David. Critical Extract. Asian-American Women Writers. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia Chelsea House, 1997. 83-4. Heung, Marina. Daughter-Text/Mother-Text Matrilineage in Amy Tans The Joy Luck Club. libber Studies (Fall 1993) 597-616. Huntley, E. D. Amy Tan A Critical Companion. Westport Greenwood P, 1998. Shear, Walter. Generational differences and the diaspora in The Joy Luck Club. Women Writers. 34.3 (Spring 1993) 193 Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Vintage Contemporaries. New York A Division of Random House, Inc., 1991.. Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. denotation Asian American Literature From Necessity to Extravagance. Princeton Princeton UP, 1993