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

Search for Identity in delectation luck Club Each person reaches a point in their life when they begin to search for their own, unique indistinguishability. In her novel, Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan follows Jing Mei on her search for her Chinese identity an identity long neglected. Four Chinese gos have migrated to America. Each hope for their missys success and pray that they will not experience the hardships face in China. One mother, Suyuan, imparts her knowledge 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 come across her mothers culture and life lessons. Yet it is not until Jing Mei realizes that the key to apprehension who her mother was and who she is lies in understanding her mothers life. Jing Mei spends her American life stressful to pull away from her Chinese heritage, and therefore also ends up puff away from her mother. Jing Mei does not understand the culture and doe s not tone 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 neer 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, inquire her daughter Why do you think you are missing something you never had? (Tan 13) Instead of viewing the situation from her mothers Chinese-influenced side, Jing Mei takes the juvenile American glide slope 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 exsanguine mother to grasp that part of her identity. Works Cited and Consulted Gates, David. Critical Extract. Asian-American Women Writers. Ed. Har old Bloom. Philadelphia Chelsea House, 1997. 83-4. Heung, Marina. Daughter-Text/Mother-Text Matrilineage in Amy Tans The Joy Luck Club. Feminist 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. sensitive York A Division of Random House, Inc., 1991.. Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. Reading Asian American lit From Necessity to Extravagance. Princeton Princeton UP, 1993