The Joy Luck Club Analysis

Superior Essays
The Joy Luck Club is an interesting talk of mother daughter relationships. Four women began the club, in order to play mahjong and enjoy life. The San Franciscan club was founded by Suyuan Woo. Before the story, however, Suyuan dies of a brain aneurysm. The three other women, An-Mei, Lindo, and Ying-ying, ask Suyuan’s daughter, Jing-Mei to take her mother’s place. Jing-Mei accepts and learns more about her mother’s life in China, and the sacrifices she made to be in America. All of these mothers attempt to pass some sort of wisdom down to their daughters. In her novel, The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan reflects on multigenerational Chinese immigrants living in America to illustrate how values translate through generations.
Suyuan Woo’s childhood values are responsibility, and fortune & luck. She lived a hard life in China after the Japanese invaded Kweilin, where she lived. According to World War II Database, the
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All of the women in the story would have come to America through Angel Island where, according to Chinatown Research Guide by Elaine Joe for PBS, conditions were “harsh, families were isolated, separated, and interrogated” (Resource Guide). Many families got “coaching papers”, as well. Immigrants were treated well in San Francisco, due to the city being split into different sectors for different races. All of the women mentioned in The Joy Luck Club live in Chinatown.
San Francisco in 1950-1980s was very much like the rest of America at the time. All of the daughters went to school, and played with each other in the park. All of the people of Japanese descent were returning to cities after being released from the internment camps. However, in Chinatown, the population was packed in very tightly as, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica, it was “the highest population density in an already densely populated city” (San Francisco). There were also, crowded tenements and sweatshops in

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