Cultural Crisis In Any Tan's 'The Joy Luck Club'

Kids, as they become grown-ups, gotten progressively keen to their folks. In The Joy Luck Club, the mentalities of four little girls toward their moms change as the young ladies develop and come to understand that their moms aren't so unique all things considered.

As youngsters, the little girls in this book are embarrassed about their moms and don't pay attention to them very, expelling them as idiosyncratic and odd. 'I would never tell my dad . . . How might I reveal to him my mom was insane?' (p. 117). They don't attempt to fathom their way of life, which is a major piece of understanding their customary Chinese moms. On page 6, one of the little girls states, 'I can easily forget things I don't comprehend in any case,' alluding to Chinese articulations her mom utilized. At the point when their moms show pride in them, the young ladies just show their shame. One little girl gives her disgrace when she says to her mom, 'I wish you wouldn't do that, telling everybody I'm your little girl' (p. 101). The young ladies can't identify with their moms since they were brought up in an alternate world. Regardless of how much the moms care for them or the amount they penance to improve their young ladies' lives, the little girls are oblivious in regards to their moms' torment and emotions.

Things don't actually turn out the manner in which the moms trust, however. Their deepest desires are broken when they understand their little girls' misinterpretations of them. On page 282, a mother regrets, 'When my little girl takes a gander at me, she sees a little, old woman. On the off chance that she had chuming [inside information on things] she would see a tiger woman.' One girl sees the dread of the rest of the moms after she discloses to them that she knows nothing about her dead mother that she can pass on:

They are terrified. In me, they see their own little girls, similarly as uninformed, similarly as incognizant of the considerable number of certainties and expectations they have brought to America. They see little girls who develop fretful when their moms talk in Chinese, who think they are inept when they clarify things in cracked English…They see little girls who will bear grandkids conceived with no associating expectation went from age to age. (p. 31)

This fear does not persist, however. As the daughters mature, the two generations discover that they aren’t so different after all. One mother says, “She puts her face next to mine, side by side, and we look at each other in the mirror…these two faces, I think, so much the same! The same happiness, the same sadness, the same good fortune, the same faults” (p. 292).

One daughter, after her mother’s death, sits down to play the piano that she had refused to touch before to defy her mother. Amy Tan uses the metaphor of two piano pieces to compare the mother to this daughter: “The piece I had played for the recital…was on the left-hand side of the page… and for the first time…I noticed the piece on the right-hand side…It had a lighter melody but the same flowing rhythm [as the recital piece and]…was longer but faster. And after I played them both…I realized they were two halves of the same song” (p. 155).

The daughters, as they grow to be adults, become more appreciative of their mothers. Their attitudes change over time to create an understanding and respect that hadn’t been there before:I saw what I had been fighting for. It was for me, a scared child, who had run away a long time ago to what I had imagined was a safer place. And hiding in this place, behind my invisible barriers, I knew what lay on the other side: her side attacks.

Her secret weapons. Her uncanny ability to find my weakest spots. But in the brief instant that I had peered over the barriers I could finally see what was really there: an old woman, a wok for her armor, a knitting needle for her sword, getting a little crabby as she waited patiently for her daughter to invite her in. (pp. 203-204)

In conclusion, as children, the daughters didn’t understand their mothers or their culture. The daughters were being raised in a different world. Their perceptions of their mothers changed, though, as they grew up and realized that they weren’t so different from them after all. They finally understood and respected their traditional Chinese mothers.