Critical Analysis Essay of The Joy Luck Club
Migration Issues in The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan’s best-selling novel, The Joy Luck Club, is composed of four groups of short stories. Each of the section is introduced by italicized story written in pseudo-mythic style wherein characters are named as “the daughter” and “the mother.” The first group of stories is about the childhood of four Chinese immigrant women. The second group is narrated by these women’s Chinese-American daughters about their funny stories about their own childhood. The third group is about these daughters’ adulthood and romantic relationships. Finally, the last group of stories is narrated by the mothers telling about the tragic tales that happened during their adult years. America supported the Asian-Americans by prioritizing family reunification in its immigration laws. Thus, chain migration became the new pattern in Chinese communities. Families went to the United States together. Nevertheless, universal themes such as cultural conflicts, assimilation, generation gaps, and identity problems become more evident. All of these issues are addressed in The Joy Luck Club (Xing, 131).
In the beginning, there is a tale of woman and a duck, which symbolizes the many issues that are addressed throughout the book: desire to escape limitation, disappointment, loss, miscommunication, and parent-offspring relationship. The duck’s success in becoming a swan exceeds expectations, but cannot be sustained. Through the duck, the woman is warned about the danger of having impossible expectations for herself and her daughter. Regardless, the woman continues to settle to a new place that is full of expectations, until it turned out to be a place full of frustrations. This “ugly-duckling” tale has been a significant symbolism in Asian-American literature, specially, in Chinese-American accounts on migration (Bloom, 30). The immigrant is not contended with her life, and America is the dream land of opportunities, prosperity, and transformation. However, part of this dream is the painful reconciliation between Chinese heritage and American surrounding. Each character recalls this transformation. Some of them needed to go back to China to re-trace their identity.
At the conclusion of the book, Jing-mei goes to Shanghai to meet her long-lost half-sisters. This ultimately affirms that Chinese identity is bounded by blood and family. The return signifies a contrast to the opening figure which symbolizes the desire of Chinese women: to sail “across an ocean many thousands of li wide, stretching their necks toward America (Tan, 7).” Some authors argue that this plot applies to many Asian American natives who return to their Asian origin. This shows the “voluntary removal” of Asian from the United States because of its purely European American construction. Nevertheless, this does not necessarily override their reasons for make the transpacific crossing from China to America. Rather, this plot indicates the author’s attempts to access cultural knowledge by examining maternal narratives and historical interest—both of which point back to their roots, in China (Lim, 33).
Contrary to the initial belief of the characters that they have to choose between their Chinese and American identities exclusively, they have come to realize that they do not have to. With their stay in America and rediscovering the distant ancestral memory from China, the characters undergo the process of transformation involving the assimilation of American culture in their Chinese blood. Eventually, migration blurs the line between the seemingly opposite cultures of America (individualistic) and China (collectivist). In the end, the national identity of the Chinese-Americans are shaped both by their desire to have better life in America and emotional ties with their ancestral homeland. These misperception, transformation, and realization are reflected in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.
Works Cited:
Bloom, Harold. Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. New York, NY: Infobase Publishing, 2009.
Lim, Walter. Narratives of Diaspora: Representations of Asia in Chinese American Literature. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillian,
Xing, Jun. Asian American Through the Lens: History, Representations, and Identity. Oxford, OX: Rowman Altamira.