Similar Roles of Mothers and Daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club :: Joy Luck Club Essays

Similar Roles of Mothers and Daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The Joy Luck Club, a novel by Amy Tan, is structured in an unusual way.   It is divided into four different sections.   Each section has four stories told by four different women.   In the first section all the mothers, in the Joy Luck Club, talk about their childhood.   In the next two sections the daughters talk about their childhood and their experiences through life.   In the last section the four mothers speak about the stories of when they were younger, around their daughters' age.   This novel explores countless topics.   Not only does it deal with gender identity and the relationships between Chinese-American cultures, but it also deals with mother daughter relationships.   Amy Tan shows us how mothers and daughters mirror each other. Every daughter in this novel hears about their mother's life and sees some comparisons to her own life.   "All women are daughters and must resolve the conflicts inherent in the mother/daughter relationship if they are to understand themselves an ultimately to establish their own identity". (Internet 1)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   No matter how old they get, mothers and daughters play similar roles.   Even though an individual may not consciously do things that their mothers have taught/ inherit from them, they still act the same in some respects. An example of this would be   GuYing-ying (Betty) St. Clair and Lena St. Clair.   Both of these characters tell their stories.   These stories, in ways, sound very similar to each other.   Ying-ying's story is called the Moon Lady.   In this story, Ying-ying learns a truth and in some ways becomes a different person.   As Ying-ying sat on the edge of the boat the firecrackers went off.   She fell off the boat and found herself lost   in a large body of water.   She is discovered in the water and is brought to shore where she finds her family.   Later she sees the moon lady and wants to make a wish.   The moon lady is similar to a shooting star.   You only get one wish and it   only appears once in a gre at while.   However, when she sees the moon lady she discovers something.   "I could see the face of the moon lady: shrunken cheeks, a broad oily nose, large glaring teeth, and red stained eyes.   A face so tires that she she wearily pulled off her hair, her long gown fell from her shoulders and as the secret wish fell from my lips, the moon lady looked at me and became a man" (83)  Ã‚   Ying-ying discovers that things aren't always what they appear to be.