Miscommunications In The Joy Luck Club

In The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan are mostly about mothers and their daughters' generation gap of miscommunications and misunderstandings. Some daughters and mothers may get along, but some don’t. In The Joy Luck Club there were four Chinese mothers: Ying-ying St. Clair, Lindo Jong, An-mei Hsu, and Suyuan Woo. Also with four Chinese daughters: Rose Hsu Jordan , Jing-mei Woo, Waverly, and Lena St. Clair each all have miscommunications and misunderstandings. Throughout the novel, Lena’s mother, Ying-ying, always complain about anything Lena did. For example, when her mother is trying to make her finish her rice at dinner, Ying-ying would complain that, "future husband has one pock mark for every rice you not finish"(151). Lena's mother also accepted her American culture, she didn’t want to die without teaching her the Chinese …show more content…
Even Though Ying-ying knows that Lena don’t listen to her, but she will try her best because she loves her. This shows that even though Lena resists her mother's suggestions, but her mother will still try to teach her Chinese culture. Furthermore, Jing Mei-Woo and Waverly both have Chinese mothers that pushes them to be something that they are not happy to become. For example, Waverly’s mother, Lindo, pushing her to join the chess tournaments everytime. Also, when Waverly was nine, she had won the national chess championship, which was so obsessed with her competing in chess to where her brothers had to do the chores for Waverly so she can practice more chess. In this case, Lindo also made her stop playing with other people, suddenly, her mother starts showing off Waverly as her own pride, and Waverly said "Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don't you learn to play chess."(99) It shows that Waverly didn’t mind playing chess, until Lindo started to show her off around Chinatown and so she decided to run away from it. In Jing-mei's case it is similar to Waverly's problem, her mother, Suyuan,