Amy Tan’s ‘The Joy Luck Club’: The Dilemma of Cultural Choice

Prof. Santoshkumar.M. Patil H.O.D. English V.N. A.S.C.College Shahada

Dist- Nandurbar 425409 (M.S) 09421485110,

Abstract

The second Asian/African immigrant generation’s white oriented approach for assimilation into main American culture has proved tempting trap. One’s cultural heritage is a base to construct own identity. In Amy Tan’s ‘A Joy Luck Club each of the major characters expresses anxiety over their failure to reconcile their Chinese heritage with their American surroundings. The four mothers and daughters face the dilemma of cultural choice either to cling assimilated culture or be pride of original cultural inheritance which is finally made up with satisfactory end.

“Identitywould seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self, in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned.”

James Arthur Baldwin

Cross cultural encounter between first and second generation Asian-American woman and their dilemma of cultural choice between assimilation into main body or safeguarding self culture as an outsider immigrant have always lured a large numbers of Asian-American writers. Although such literary work is still face the debate of whether it is a part of American literature or of outsiders. Maxine Hong Kingston a well known Chinese-American author who has written about the experiences of the Chinese immigrants living in America has shielded her American inheritance as a writer like,

“Actually I think that my books are much more American than they are Chinese. I felt that I was building, creating myself and these people as American people… Even though they have strange Chinese memories, they are American people. Also, I am creating part of American literature, and I was aware of doing that, of adding to American literature.”

(Paula Rabinowitz, 1987)

Amy Tan contemporary of Maxine Kingston was a daughter of Chinese immigrants, lived in various towns in California. Her ‘The Joy Luck Club’ Soon after its publication in1989,remained on the New York Times in bestseller list for many months. The novel won both the National Book Award and theL.A. TimesBook Award in1989. ‘The Joy Luck Club’ contains sixteen interwoven stories about dilemma of cultural choice between Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters. The novel has four pairs of Chinese-American mothers and daughters: Suyuan and Jing Mei, Lindo and Waverly, An-mei and Rose, Ying-ying and Lena. The mothers represent first generation Chinese-American mothers who immigrated to America before 1950 and daughters represent second generation Chinese-American woman born in America after 1950. A large number of Chinese were immigrated during 19th century to America for working such as cigar-making, cloth-trading, boot and shoe making, laundries, domestic work, Chinese restaurants or other merchants business. In fact Chinese were faced open racial discrimination under the Chinese Expulsion Act from 1882 till it removed in 1942. The first generation Chinese immigrant women constructed their racial identity as Chinese, but the second generation American Chinese women utterly snowed under the American culture. Even they advocate white principals and dogmas. As they were born in America they claim themselves as civilized Americans misjudging their original Chinese Racial identity. Being a ‘Melting pot’ America is a place where people of different race, colour live together sometimes cordially but sometimes discordantly. Those immigrants who dream for America as ‘Land of opportunity’ often hallucinated by political policies and social practices based on racialism, if particularly immigrant is either Asian or African.

The second generation Chinese American daughters of Joy Luck Club favor the assimilation in to main body/culture having no protestation to called American. Even speaking in English seems for these daughters as being true American. Jing Mei on one occasion scorns her mother as “These kinds of explanations made me feel my mother and I spoke two different languages, which we did. I talked to her in English, she answered back in Chinese” (JLC 23). The mothers from beginning tip off their daughters that mere thinking or claiming of assimilation into other culture is not enough to ignore their own Chinese heritage. Although by education, career and birth these daughters are American, but by appearance they are equal ‘Chinese’. These daughters carry a double overload of racial identities one is ‘Chinese’ by racial heritage and another is ‘American’ by nativity. They forget ‘Service is no heritage’ (W.S. All Well that ends well Act-I.) The mothers even if they had been living in America since long time, they still stick to their racial identity being Chinese. They have large number of Unspeakable wounds and agonies of china, yet they have proud of their own cultural heritage. They never declare themselves as American. Lindo a mother says to her daughter that “if you are Chinese you can never let go of China in your mind.”(JLC.203) Jing Mei’s Mother Suyan woo has strong lodging to go back china, despite of her thirty years of stay in America. Linda on one occasion vindicates Chinese culture to her daughter Waverly “Chinese people do many things, Chinese people do business, do medicine, do painting,. No lazy like American people.”(JLC 91)These migrant mothers are Chinese by culture, as they feel strong affection for past cultural heritage. They strongly wish that their daughters should have equal pride for their original racial heritage. The mothers struggle sturdily for how to put their Chinese heritage into their daughter’s lives.The worry of Lindo is expressed as “I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix? “(JLC289). These mothers make it very clear to their daughter that only trying for assimilation into main body’s culture by immigrants does not mean a construction of ‘New Cultural heritage’ even though they accept as true that the culture of their own ethnicity is inferior to the dominant one, that is, the American culture.


The all four mothers of Joy Luck Club want the best for their daughters. They want that their daughters should avail advantages that America has to offer, but they also want them to live their Chinese heritage, Chinese values and original culture. These mothers fear that their daughters have lost\their ways of life. Without a culture it is highly impossible to construct an identity in Diasporic sense because “ I use the term culture to refer dynamic system of social values, cognitive codes, behavioral standards, world views and beliefs used to give order and meaning to people’s lives.” (Delgado-Gaitan & Trueba 1991:17) Being born in two different cultures China and America, both Mother and their Americanized daughters seems to be poles apart in each and every likes and dislikes. Jing Mei says to her friend about her mother “My mother and I were alike, that we had the same wispy hand, gestures, the same girlish laugh and sideways look, “But she doubts” How can I be my mother at Joy Luck Club.” (JLC 27) The daughters however, are not really interested in the past and Chinese culture. Born in America, all want to minimize their Chinese appearance and heritage. Waverly, Rose, and Lena all have white boyfriends or husbands, and they regard many of their mothers customs and tastes as conventional or even ludicrous. Most of them have spent their childhoods trying to escape their Chinese identities: They all want to look like and be accepted as Americans. However they are caught in tempting trap. All daughters favor the Assimilation but American assimilation is a one way practice in which European immigrants are accepted but ethnic groups such as Asian, African are ignored. Hence a flame of longing and magnetism for own country always blaze in the inner side of Asian, African outsider. At beginning these Americanized daughters do not pay any serious attention to the hint of their mother. Jing mei rebels against her mother’s suggestions “I had new thoughts, willful thoughts, or rather thoughts filled with lots of won'ts. I won't let her change me, I promised myself. I won't be what I'm not.”(JLC134) But very soon they realize the illusion of assimilation into white culture. Gradually all daughters come to know their real identity is a Chinese-American not as an American- Chinese. As they mature, the daughters begin to sense that their identities are incomplete and rest in their Chinese heritage. They realize that they are caught in two cultures of the world. Their dilemma of cultural choice is aptly noted

“The polarity between traditional Chinese and American values is felt with particular keenness by American-born Chinese women. Unlike their mothers, such women face conflicting demands from two opposing cultures. While American-born daughters are familiar with the cultural nuances of Chinese life, their dilemmas frequently stem from having to vacillate between "Chineseness" and "Americanness."Their Chinese-born mothers, in contrast are less plagued by the complexities of being Chinese, American, and women (Ghymn, 1995:28).

These American- Chinese daughters became alien individuals who fail to find any self identity in spite of living so long in American civilized social set up. It is very hard to forget homesickness, cultural influences of birthplace which has profound bonding between blood and appearance in human life. The clashes between Chinese and American culture and the dilemma over it is a base of cultural conflicts between Mother and daughters. Hence, Jing Mei becomes ready to visit China to find out her lost step sisters. When Jing Mei arrives in china her former approach is right away changed for her own country and she experience some soothing touch as she steps her foot in her motherland. Amy Tan describes

“The minute our train leaves the Hong Kong border and enters Shenzhen, China, I feel different. I can feel the skin on my forehead tingling, my blood rushing through a new course, my bones aching with a familiar old pain. And I think, My mother was right. I am becoming Chinese.

"Cannot be helped," my mother said when I was fifteen and had vigorously denied that I had any Chinese whatsoever below my skin.

I was a sophomore at Galileo High in San Francisco, and all my Caucasian friends agreed: I was about as Chinese as they were.

"Someday you will see," said my mother. "It is in your blood, waiting to be let go."

But today I realize I've never really known what it means to be Chinese. I am thirty-six years old. My mother is dead and I am on a train, carrying with me her dreams of coming home. I am going to China. (JLC 267)

Even When Jing Mei meets her two sisters who were parted during war time, her reaction again highlights the substance of blood relations “And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood."(JLC288). The dilemma of cultural choice whether to cling Assimilated culture or to preserve own culture is somewhat cleared by each daughter at the end of the novel. The conflicts between such two cultures made them realize that they cannot realize their American dreams if they just avoid the fact that they have Chinese inheritance. It is a manifestation of the real awakening of ethnic realization.

At the end of the novel Jing Mei meets her lost sisters and even other daughters also accept the truth of their original racial inheritance. Rose, in her marriage problem, turns back to her Chinese heritage. The initial adamant behavior of these daughters is changed into rational approach to life. The dilemma of cultural choice, which their mothers faced, proves right. The crucial awareness of the balance between Original heritage and the limited periphery of American Assimilation is manifested by these Americanized daughters. Moreover they came to know how to differentiate between American- Chinese and Chinese-American. They mix both American and Chinese culture in a good sense to construct self identity. The dilemma of pursuing the assimilated culture and complete rebuff of original culture or a bewilderments of cultural choice which has been haunting millions of immigrants either by diasporic alienation or craze for multicultural behavior in this globalized world can seek a lesson or a message through’ A Joy Luck Club.’

References

1:-Ghymn, Esther Mikyung - ‘Images of Asian American Women by Asian American Women Writers’. New York: Peter Lang. 1995

2:- Rabinowitz, Paula - ‘Eccentric Memories: A Conversation with Maxine Hong

Kingston,’ Michigan Quarterly Review 26 noA: pp. 177-187 1987

3- Shakespeare Williams-‘All well that Ends Well’ Blooms Literary Criticism Newyork

2010

4:- Tan, Amy- ‘The Joy Luck Club’, Ivy Books, New York, 1989

Hon .Benjamin sir

As discussed on Mobile on 31st December 2012 i hereby submit an Article for Tjells. Sir please try your best to accommodate my Paper in coming January issue, if your peer reviewers find it apposite.

Santoshkumar. M. Patil (MA, SET): Asst. Professor, Head of the Dept.of English, SSPM’S Vasantrao Naik Arts, Science, and Commerce College Shahada Dist- Nandurbar Maharashtra 425409 (India). He is a trained facilitator for Spoken and Written English. He has been teaching English for last 14 years and has presented papers at National and International conferences in English at abroad. His area of interest is American literature, commonwealth literature and literary theories. He is a president of NGO ‘National Association for Higher Education’ which works for maintenance of quality in Higher Education

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