These three lectures analyse the interwoven stories in The Joy Luck Club. They focus on the novel’s themes of mother-daughter relationships; of Chinese women in China; and of Chinese and Chinese-American women in America.
LECTURE ONE
Citations in these lectures are to Amy Tan. The Joy Luck Club (Mandarin Paperbacks: Minerva, 1990). As well as Walter Shear’s article, I’d like especially to recommend to you an article on The Joy Luck Club by Marina Heung, in Feminist Studies, 19/3 (1993):597-616. (Details of both these articles are in “Suggested Reading” below.) The title of Heung’s article is “Daughter-Text/Mother-Text: Matrilineage in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club.” Heung approaches The Joy Luck Club through her knowledge, both of fiction and of critical writing on mother-daughter relationships. Her article offers an introduction both to this literature and to the novel’s structures and feminist concerns.
By way of placing The Joy Luck Club within modern women’s literature, we might observe Heung’s quotation from a book by Marianne Hirsch, The Mother/Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism (Bloomington, Indiana:1989), 161: “written in the voice of mothers, as well as those of daughters…[and] combining both voices [the novel] finds a double voice that would yield a multiple female consciousness.” A major way, in fact probably the major way in which a daughter knows herself is through knowing her mother and female inheritance. This has been the case for centuries, but muted in our culture, rarely discussed, and even more rarely written about, until the 1970s. Much recent writing, both fictional and non-fictional by women, has therefore been about recovering the lives and experience of mothers. In this course, we read Lady Oracle, first published in 1976, which hinges on a failed mother-daughter relationship. In Lady Oracle the mother is presented to us from the perspective of a daughter whom we know to be comically unreliable: the mother does not speak for herself. Sally Morgan’s My Place (1987) takes advantage of an advance in feminist consciousness, in that Sally allows space for the maternal Aboriginal voices of her mother and Nan to be heard. The triumph of My Place is that even Nan’s voice finally takes up its own space. Similarly, in The Joy Luck Club, two generations of women speak: mothers as well as daughters. They narrate their experience in their own voices, thereby producing a profoundly feminist text. The voices of the culturally suppressed: Chinese women in China, and Chinese women in the patriarchal Caucasian hegemony which is American society, make up the foreground.
The narratives of The Joy Luck Club interweave into a complex pattern, like the crisscrossing of the warp and weft (woof) in a piece of fabric. (This is to choose a simile appropriate to women, who spent much of their time before the Industrial Revolution spinning and weaving. Writing is not unlike this activity: the writer weaves together strings of letters and syllables to create something that is unique and new.) The interwoven pattern of The Joy Luck Club is as follows:
The Joy Luck Club: STRUCTURE
1. FEATHERS FROM A THOUSAND LI AWAY
Framing Narrative
Jing-mei Woo: “The Joy Luck Club” (The founding and tradition of the Club)
Mothers Tell Stories of Their Childhood in China
An-mei Hsu: “Scar” (Expulsion and return of An-mei’s mother, and her relationship with her mother.)
Lindo Jong: “The Red Candle” (How Lindo discovered her own worth, empowered herself, and defeated her mother-in-law, while remaining loyal to her mother)
Ying-ying St. Clair: “The Moon Lady” (How the independent and resistant Ying-ying discovered the need for family identity)
2. THE TWENTY-SIX MALIGNANT GATES
Daughters Tell Stories of Their Mothers and of Their Childhood in America
Waverly Jong: “Rules of the Game” (How Lindo empowered her daughter as a chess player)
Lena St. Clair: “The Voice from the Wall” (How Ying-ying lost a child, and Lena brought her back)
Rose Hsu Jordan: “Half and Half” (How Rose married Ted, and how An-mei lost Bing)
Jing-mei Woo: “Two Kinds” (How June refused to play the piano)
3. AMERICAN TRANSLATION
Daughters Tell Stories of Their Relationships and Marriages in America
Lena St. Clair: “Rice Husband” (Ying-ying visits Lena and Harold)
Waverly Jong: “Four Directions” (How Waverly stopped playing chess, and how she postponed her marriage to Rich because of Lindo)
Rose Hsu Jordan: “Without Wood” (How Rose took a stand during her divorce from Ted because of An-mei)
Jing-mei Woo: “Best Quality” (The crab dinner party and how Suyuan gave June a pendant)
4. QUEEN MOTHER OF THE WESTERN SKIES
Mothers Tell Stories of Their Own Lives in China and America and of Their Daughters’ Marriages and Relationships in America
An-mei Hsu: “Magpies” (How An-mei’s mother empowered her daughter by her death with her own strong spirit)
Ying-ying St. Clair: “Waiting Between the Trees” (How Ying-ying reawakened her tiger spirit and passed it to Lena)
Lindo Jong: “Double Face” (How Lindo came to America, married, had children, and lost a son)
Conclusion to Framing Narrative
Jing-mai Woo: “A Pair of Tickets” (How June returned to China and met her half-sisters; her father tells the story of her sisters’ loss.)
Each of the four interrupted mother-daughter narratives bridges the generations, and also bridges the cultural transposition of the different families from China to America. One could regard these chronological lines of development as vertical, producing the warp, or the longitudinal threads. Each of the sixteen segments of narrative, placed side by side in what might be called a horizontal arrangement or the weft (transverse threads), mutually comment on each other. Indeed, as Marina Heung observes, these narratives and their protagonists tend to merge together in the reader’s mind, to produce a generalised rather than an individualised effect, which encourages the reader’s participation. As a woman, the reader is drawn in. Her recollected experience further enriches the pattern of the fabric being woven.
Many of the narratives so complexly and evocatively arranged in The Joy Luck Club, of both mothers and daughters, but especially of mothers, involve suffering. Relationships between mothers and daughters in the book are often full of tension, as Walter Shear observes. A recurrent pattern is the loss of children by mothers. All four of the Chinese mothers lose children. In Section 2, “The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates,” the two internal stories are about the loss of sons; in Section 4, in “Double Face,” Lindo’s eldest son was killed; Suyuan lost her twin daughters. The tragedy of broken mother-daughter relationship recalls a statement by Adrienne Rich: “The essential female tragedy is the loss of the daughter to the mother, the mother to the daughter” (Of Women Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: W. W. Norton, 1976: 237). However, there is a sense in The Joy Luck Club that the overall fabric of the lives of mothers and daughters is valuable because of their very relatedness, and some of the pain of loss is purged by the story-telling. Furthermore, elements of healing, of female strength and empowerment, recur continually. The central story of Jing-mei (June) Woo and her mother, Suyuan, above all, celebrates the healing and re-making of broken mother-daughter connections, and this success casts a patina of hard-won acceptance and optimism over the whole book.
Amy Tan: The Joy Luck Club
LECTURE TWO
I’d like to proceed by tracing the vertical lines – the warps – in The Joy Luck Club. In the vertical lines, and sometimes within each story, there are twin themes, on the one hand the theme of loss and fragility in the mother/daughter connection; and on the other hand the theme of mutual empowerment, of daughters by mothers and of mothers by daughters. This is the positive theme of recovery and renewal of connection. The notion of recurrent breaking and renewal reminds me of Chodorow’s view of the difficulty daughters often have in establishing an identity separate from their mothers. The ideal, of connected separation, is attained by the four major mother-daughter relationships in this novel.
The twin theme of loss/fragility and renewal/healing is enacted in a circular fashion acorss the whole book, which begins with the loss of Suyuan Woo, Jing-mei’s mother, in death, but ends with the broken circle restored, when Jing-mei meets her half-sisters in China (287-88). The three sisters are in a way a re-embodiment of the mother whom they all have lost. The twin older sisters meet their mother for the first time in Jing-mei. Jing-mei reconnects with the Chinese self which she thought did not exist. While her mother journeyed from China to America, she has made the reverse trip, completed the circle by travelling back to the East. This is her mother’s place at the Mah-Jong table in the Joy Luck Club. It is the place of sunrise and new beginnings, which comes at the end of the book.
Circles are an important structural principle in The Joy Luck Club, as Heung observes. The circle symbolises the family circle, the breaking of hierarchy, in which no one presides, every one is equal, at a round table. It is a pattern which expunges triangular and hierarchical family structures, in which the husband presides over wives (also hierarchically arranged) and children, as in Wu Tsings family, with First Wife, Second Wife, etc. Single stories often follow circular patterns, in which the end recalls the beginning, e.g. “Magpies” ( 217, 239 and 241). This is an example of a redemptive pattern, in that the basic terms of the story, and the significance of the symbols of the birds are overturned at the end.
Suyuan and Jing-mei
Jing-mei’s stories form a framing pattern, not only at the beginning and end of the book, but also in the two central sections, “The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates” and “American Translation,” where she tells in each case the concluding story.
“Two Kinds” is a story mostly about the breaking of connection between mother and daughter. June thinks that her mother expected too much of her, that she tried to force her to be something that she wasn’t. The break comes (142) when, in a final angry outburst, Jing-mei reminds her mother of the daughters her mother lost in China. However, at the end, the mother’s gift of the piano gives healing, and her supreme faith in her daughter is clear. This faith is a barrier against June’s lack of self-confidence. It turns out that after all Suyuan was right, June could play the piano, she did learn something. At the time, June could see only the “Pleading Child” part of the song, not the “Perfectly Contented” other part (144).
By contrast, “Best Quality” is a story of empowerment and healing passed from mother to daughter, through the symbolism of the jade pendant (208). Suyuan makes it clear that Jing-mei fails to maximise her potential, because she chooses not the best quality (crab) for herself, but the worst. The idea is one of the key themes of the novel, the idea that you create your fortune by your own attitude and thoughts, and that it is important, as well as right, to value yourself highly.
An-mei Hsu and Rose Hsu
An-mei’s story, which begins by discussing her mother’s relationship with her mother, goes back furthest in time, and so it’s appropriate that it should be placed first in the book, directly following the opening frame. As you can see from the outline above, the first and fourth sections, “Feathers from a Thousand Li Away” and “Queen Mother of the Western Skies,” are stories by the mothers, “embracing” the two central sections, which are stories by daughters. The play of perspectives on the same situation by mothers and daughters is a central element in structure. The idea of distance and separation in the title to the first section, “Feathers from a Thousand Li Away,” is replaced by the triumphant title of the last section: “Queen Mother of the Western Skies.” “Western” implies a permanent placement, a homecoming, in America. The mothers’ stories in the final section give many revelatory insights into the daughters’ experiences in sections 2 and 3.
Both parts of An-mei’s story, “Scar” in Section 1 and “Magpies” in Section 4, reveal the deep bitterness of maternal loss, a loss which nevertheless leads ultimately to the empowerment of the daughter. These two stories focus on the overcoming of pain, on strong reactions to suffering, and of strength gained through suffering, as when An-Mei’s mother cuts her arm as an act of love and duty towards her dying mother, and when An-mei is scalded. The story of the turtles and the magpies (216-17, 239-41) is especially evocative: here sorrow is not just bravely borne, but in the end is transformed into joy, through an act of radical rebellion. This takes the form of an assertion of self-worth. An-mei came out of childhood with a deep knowledge of loss and strength, and of the need for strength and faith. This explains her reaction to the later loss of Bing, her youngest son, in America; her refusal to let him go, her indestructible hope and faith. (She records Bing’s death only in light pencil in the family Bible.)
In the end, An-mei is able to impart this strength, which her mother gave her through her sacrificial and highly intelligent death, to her own daughter, Rose. Rose has spent eighteen years in a marriage in which she has rejected all decision-making, living a lie. Her mother sees the weakness of this, and also the weakness of Rose’s other attempts to avoid responsibility: e.g. the psychiatrist (188). Finally, Rose takes her mother’s advice, and talks straight to her husband (193-7). An-mei has passed on her knowledge and experience of strength to her daughter, replicating the gift which her own mother gave to her.
Amy Tan: The Joy Luck Club
LECTURE THREE
In Lecture One we discussed the interweaving of vertical and horizontal narrative strands in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. The vertical strands represent generations of mothers and daughters. In geographical terms they progress from America to China and back again. The horizontal narrative strands allow contrasts and comparisons to be made among daughters and mothers who occupy more or less similar times and places. We saw that as an autobiographical novel, The Joy Luck Club focuses on the psychologically central mother-daughter relationship, and develops the key theme of loss/fragility redeemed by renewal/healing. This is enacted centrally in the framing narrative of Suyuan Woo, her twin Chinese daughters, and her American-Chinese daughter, Jing-mei. Similar successive interchanges between the double theme of loss and reconnection take place in the other vertical strands. In Lecture Two we discussed the strand of An-Mei Hsu and Rose Hsu. Today we’ll consider the remaining strands of Lindo Jong and Waverly Jong and of Ying-ying St Clair and Rose St Clair.
Lindo Jong and Waverly Jong
Lindo is a dominating figure among the Joy Luck mothers, and also in her family. She discovered her own power, her chi, years ago in China, after years of living in the unloving and unaccepting family of her husband-to-be, and before, when she was on the verge of marriage. Lindo’s discovery of her own strength and value was made while she was looking at her reflection (58). Gazing into mirrors is an important motif in this vertical strand, as it is in the whole book. In “The Red Candle” Lindo triumphantly avoids a loveless marriage and deflowering by her boy-husband. She defeats the forces of oppression, although at the cost of being for ever separated from her own true mother.
In America, Lindo passes on the capacity for empowerment to her daughter Waverly, when her advice on biting back words of desire turns Waverly into a child prodigy, a champion chess player. Later, however, when Waverly criticises her mother, Lindo turns against her, and Waverly loses the power to play chess. This was fundamentally a belief in herself. “Four Directions” shows how Lindo continues to disrupt Waverly’s orderly, successful yuppie life, possibly poisoning her first marriage, to Marvin, and certainly delaying her marriage to Rich. Many of the exchanges involving Lindo, Waverly and Rich are comic, but there’s an inner connection, a “heart” connection. The breakthrough in this section comes at pages 183-4 when Waverly lets go of her fear (born in the year of the Rabbit), and looks over the barrier to at last see her powerful mother (born in the year of the Horse) as she is.
A final resolution comes in “Double Face” in another important thematic episode based on mirror-gazing. Waverly is a reflection of her mother, just as Lindo is a reflection of her mother. Waverly is like her mother, growing into a powerful, clever and abrasive woman. These are fundamental connections, which cannot be over-ridden by distance from China or Waverly’s American lifestyle. The signs of re-connection are confirmed when, at her delayed wedding, Waverly puts her face beside her mother’s (265-66), just as, earlier, Lindo’s mother had compared her and her daughter’s faces in the mirror (256). The blending of Chinese with American is clear in the comparison between Lindo and Waverly, and both mother and daughter acknowledge it.
Deviousness is an unpleasant character-trait of Waverly’s, which Suyuan also recognises, commenting that she is “Always walking sideways, moving crooked” (208). However, The Joy Luck Club observes and fundamentally accepts the infinite range of human diversity. In this respect it’s truly humane.
Ying-ying St. Clair and Lena St. Clair
“The Moon Lady” is partly about the impossibility of escape from patriarchal culture. As a child, Ying-ying is smothered in clothing, her hair ruthlessly twisted and pinned, and she is apparently loved more by her amah (maid) than by her mother. (The amah is yet another desolate mother.) Ying-ying’s mother admonishes her not to speak her wish, or it will become a “selfish desire,” inappropriate in a girl (70). The cormorant is a symbol of frustration and powerlessness. When Ying-ying paints fish blood over her clothes, it seems to be a symbolic rejection of conformity, and a commitment to life. This symbolism is extended further in her involuntary ducking, and her rescue by the fishermen, who are of a lower social order. Water is a female symbol, a symbol of flow and change which is resistant to phallogocentric construction. However, in the end Ying-ying rejects the freedom she has accidentally obtained, and wishes to be found.
The Moon Lady mythology involves female negation and death; women are symbolically debarred from the magic peach, the peach of everlasting life (81); and in a final disillusionment the Moon Lady turns out to be a male actor.
If the different parts of Ying-ying’s story are put together, it is clear that she has lost two children: the son whom she aborted in China “Waiting Between the Trees” (248), and the son who was not born alive in America “The Voice from the Wall” (111-112). The story of the first child’s loss is told later in the book, and illuminates retrospectively Ying-ying’s distraught reaction to the loss of the second as being “the worst possible thing,” the “unspeakable,” “the death of a thousand cuts” (102-103).
Lena as a child finds the strength to bring back her mother’s ghost (115), and this is one major instance of empowerment by the daughter. The other instance in The Joy Luck Club is Jing-mei’s retrieval of her mother’s lost hopes. Jing-mei is like Lena, in that she performs a kind of resurrection of her mother.
Ying-ying and Lena are mutually life-enhancing, because Ying-ying in her turn gives her daughter the strength to speak out against her profoundly unsatisfactory, childless marriage, and also the strength to resist her husband Harold’s exploitation, which is so carefully disguised under a charade of reason and fairness. Lena takes a stand, even though she still cannot penetrate Harold’s facade. It is, I’m sure, a relief to many readers that Ying-ying has an inner recognition that the marriage will break to pieces, since Ying-ying’s intuitions of unsuccess in the past have always turned out to be correct. She has the power to see the future. The unhandy table which Ying-ying smashes is a symbol of her daughter’s and son’s-in-law awkward, fragile and artificial relationship.
The Joy Luck Club is contemporary literature, in that it privileges voices often culturally silenced and in its interweaving of stories by eight different narrators, first or second generation female migrants to America. It is also literature, meaning that it is an intricate, carefully controlled and thought out piece of writing. There is an Oriental intricacy of design. Each story is a fascinating cameo in itself, able to stand alone, but gaining immensely by the contrastive context in which it is placed. The book therefore combines the virtues of novel and short story. The language is rich and evocative, as well as an excellent narrative vehicle. Every word, every image is worthy of attention as contributing to the final effect and meaning. For example, if you have time, trace and interpret the images of mirror reflection and of tiger that run through Ying-ying’s “Waiting between the Trees.”
Amy Tan: The Joy Luck Club: Suggested Reading
Hawley, John C., S. J. “Assimilation and Resistance in Female Fiction of Immigration: Bharati Mukerjee, Amy Tan, and Christine Bell.” Rediscovering America 1492-1992: National Cultural and Disciplinary Boundaries Re-Examined. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1992.
Heung, M. “Daughter Text/Mother Text – Matrilineage in Amy Tan.” Feminist Studies 19 (1993): 597-616.
Shear, Walter. “Generation Differences and the Diaspora in The Joy Luck Club. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 34 (1993): 193-99.
Smorada, Claudia Kovach. “Side-Stepping Death: Ethnic Identity, Contradiction and the Motherland in Amy Tan’s Novels.” Fu Jen Studies. Literature and Linguistics (Taipei) 24 (1991): 31-45.
Xu, Ben. “Memory and the Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.” Memory, Narrative and Identity: New Essays in Ethnic American Literature, ed. Amritjit Singh, Joseph T Sherritt and Robert E. Hogan. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1994.