The Joy Luck Club Identity Essay

To have a voice is to have a distinct identity and an expressible sense of self. This singularity is influenced by a number of factors, particularly culture. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters struggle to discover this voice amidst the societal norms imposed upon them. M. Marie Booth Foster proposes, “These feelings often are a result of male domination” (1). Chinese society is androcentric, ruled by males and masculine values. Women are expected to be taciturn and passive, yielding to the whims of the men of the family. This simultaneously impedes and aids the formation of a definitive identity. Foster further explores this idea, stating that these “hyphenated women must engage in self-exploration, recognition, and appreciation of their culture(s), and they must know their histories” in order to realize their worth (1). In the novel, the idea of the silent …show more content…
Initially, she is shocked, and stands there, “waiting and saying nothing” (Tan 239). An-mei learns to stand up to Second Wife, and by association, the patriarchy in the form of Wu Tsing. On the day of her mother’s death, An-mei declares, “And on that day, I learned to shout” (Tan 240). Her mother’s sacrifice, elicited by her oppressive domestic life, shows her both the need and a way to speak up. An-mei’s mother resorts to suicide because she “had no choice.” In those days, “They could not speak up. They could not run away. That was their fate” (Tan 241). The only way to escape her situation was through suicide, but she did so in order to provide her daughter with a voice and with strength. An-mei tells her daughter that she “was raised the Chinese way”: “I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people’s misery, to eat my own bitterness” (Tan 215). Through the sacrifice of her mother, An-mei learns to abandon these ingrained gender roles and gain her own identity (Tan