![]() In the first chapter, we find a competition between soups, an equal division of wonton, a feast, and dyansyin foods for fortune and luck – even if in a watered-down version – which formed the heart of the Joy Luck Club founded by Jing-Mei's mother Suyuan in China. ![]() It is also during this scene, at the end of the third section of the book (side note: how wonderful is the symmetry of the chapters?!), that Jing-Mei finds herself closer to her mother through shared irritation caused by a trickling sink, hostile neighbours, and a hissing tomcat.įood plays a thoughtful, if not predominant, role in this novel on many levels. It is this matter-of-fact simplicity that endeared me to this scene there are no pretences or grand attempts, and only four ingredients are mentioned. I like the smell of it: ginger, scallions, and a red chili sauce that tickles my nose the minute I open the jar. Throughout the book, I got the feeling that she wasn't particularly culinarily inclined – perhaps it was her lack of interest in (and knowledge about) the differences between black sesame seed soup and red bean soup or the way she admired Auntie An-mei's deft wonton-making or her queasiness and escape during the preparation of the crab dinner.īut I'm making this mostly because I know my father loves this dish and I know how to cook it. In.Jing-Mei's cooking is nurturing, and nostalgic, but she explains the act with humility. But the very fact of their survival is in large measure attributable to their belief that people can affect their own destinies. Personal misfortune and the effects of war have tested the women's allegiance to traditional ideas, at times challenging them to violate convention in order to survive. The mothers inherited from their families a centuries-old spiritual framework, which, combined with rigid social constraints regarding class and gender, made the world into an ordered place for them. The daughters' inability to understand the cultural referents behind their mothers' words is nowhere more apparent than when the mothers are trying to inculcate traditional Chinese values and beliefs in their children. ![]() What is needed for any accurate translation of meanings is not only receptiveness and language proficiency but also the ability to supply implied or missing context. Jing-mei, recalling that she talked to her mother Suyuan in English and that her mother answered back in Chinese, concludes that they "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" (37). Language takes on a metonymic relation to culture in Tan's portrayal of the gap between the mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club. The mothers draw on a broad experiential base for their knowledge of American patterns of thought and behavior, but the daughters have only fragmentary, second-hand knowledge of China derived from their mothers' oral histories and from proverbs, traditions, and folktales.(1) Incomplete cultural knowledge impedes understanding on both sides, but it particularly inhibits the daughters from appreciating the delicate negotiations their mothers have performed to sustain their identities across two cultures. However, there is a fundamental asymmetry in the mothers' and daughters' understanding of each other's native cultures. In all the stories, whether narrated by the Chinese-born mothers or their American-born daughters, assertions of self are shaped by the cultural context surrounding them. Clair's story "Waiting Between the Trees" chronicles how betrayal, loss, and displacement caused her to become a "ghost." Rose Hsu Jordan recounts her effort to regain a sense of self and assert it against her philandering husband in "Without Wood." Framing all the other stories are a pair of linked narratives by Jing-mei Woo that describe her trip to China at the behest of her Joy Luck Club "aunties." The journey encompasses Jing-mei's attempts not only to understand her mother's tragic personal history but also to come to terms with her own familial and ethnic identity. Lindo Jong recalls in "The Red Candle" that her early marriage into a family that did not want her shaped her character and caused her to vow never to forget who she was. ![]() Each of the eight main characters faces the task of defining herself in the midst of great personal loss or interpersonal conflict. Tan represents the discovery process as arduous and fraught with peril. A persistent thematic concern in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club is the quest for identity.
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