The Joy Luck Club

The fable at the beginning of the book foreshadows the mother/daughter stories to follow. The mother in the story has high hopes as she leaves China, symbolized by the duck that stretched its neck hoping to become a goose and exceeded expectations by becoming a swan. The mother wants to give the swan to her future American-born daughter as a sign that dreams can be realized: “She will know my meaning, because I will give her this swan—a creature that became more than what was hoped for” (3). However, forces intervene and leave with only a feather, a remnant of her original hopes. She waits to give this remainder to her daughter when she can explain its origins in perfect American English, but it is implied that this day will never come. As a result, there will always be a gulf between the woman’s intentions, her reality, and her daughter’s understanding. All the mothers in the story experience a lack of communication with their daughters that prevent the articulation of their good intentions.

In “The Joy Luck Club,” Jing-Mei, age 36, describes her relationship with her recently deceased mother. Throughout her childhood and adolescence, Suyuan tried to teach Jing-Mei lessons through stories about her life. One of the recurrent stories was how she founded the original Joy Luck Club in China. “Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine,” says Jing-Me (7). Suyuan eventually told her about how she fled the bombing of Kweilin, carrying infant twins she abandoned in the hope they would be taken in by another family. This story was meant to make Jing-Mei appreciate the things she had, including her mother, but its effect was to foreground an unbridgeable gulf between her mother’s trauma and her own understanding.

Jing-Mei is expected to take her mother’s place at the mahjong table, on the eastern side: “The East is where things begin, my mother once told me, the direction from which the sun rises, where the wind comes from” (23). This place of honor belonged to Suyuan because she was the founder and leader of the group, demonstrating her strength of personality which June feels unable to match.

When the Aunties tell Jing-Mei that she must tell her newfound sisters about their mother, Jing-Mei protests that she doesn’t know anything about her mother: “‘Not know your own mother?’ cries Auntie An-mei with disbelief. ‘How can you say? Your mother is in your bones!’” (33). Jing-Mei realizes that the Aunties are afraid that their own daughters don’t understand them, that barriers of language, culture, and time have prevented their daughters from truly knowing them. Jing-Mei reassures them that she will tell her sisters about their mother and the Aunties look hopeful. Jing-Mei feels she is at a beginning, sitting in her mother’s eastern place.

In “Scar,” An-Mei recalls her childhood trauma of separation from her mother. This story reminds the reader that these mothers were also once daughters with their own complicated origins. Young An-Mei suppressed her memories of her mother after her family reviled her for having brought shame to the family by becoming a concubine. This is symbolized by the scar on An-Mei’s neck, a bodily trauma that healed but changed her in the process. Popo (a diminutive Chinese word similar to “Granny”) tried to ensure that An-Mei wouldn’t follow in her mother’s footsteps by telling her cautionary stories of girls who met terrible fates for their unfilial behavior. Yet when An-Mei’s mother appears to see her own mother before she dies, something stirs in An-Mei’s memory: “And when she did, I saw my own face looking back at me. Eyes that stayed wide open and saw too much (40).

An-Mei resists opening her heart to her mother, after having suffered so greatly from their separation. This changes when An-Mei sees her mother cut her own flesh to make a curative soup for Popo: “Here is how I came to love my mother. How I saw in her my own true nature. What was beneath my skin. Inside my bones” (44). An-Mei realizes that the bond between herself and her mother extends to her essential nature. Moreover, An-Mei contends that physical pain can be necessary to remember the elemental maternal bond: “You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother before her” (45). This again demonstrates that “your mother is in your bones,” as Auntie An-Mei says to Jing-Mei.

Lindo’s story of her childhood betrothal demonstrates the pressures in China to adhere to societal norms in order to maintain family honor. She doesn’t want to marry Tyan-yu, but can’t reject her parents’ arrangement: “I was also determined to honor my parents’ words, so Huang Taitai could never accuse my mother of losing face” (54). Lindo almost loses her sense of self while attempting to become the perfect daughter-in-law. She treats Tyan-yu as as a god because everyone else in the household does so. She grows to think of Taitai as her real mother and obeys her without question. “Can you see how the Huangs almost washed their thinking into my skin?” she asks rhetorically (56). Just before her wedding, Lindo realizes her own value: ”I made a promise to myself: I would always remember my parents’ wishes, but I would never forget myself” (58). This was a radical epiphany, showing Lindo’s unique inner strength.

The daughters in the novel regard their mothers’ beliefs in the supernatural as superstition, but Lindo’s story shows the power that these beliefs had to shape real circumstance. Lindo hoped to doom her marriage by blowing out the red candle of the story’s title: “That candle was a marriage bond that was worth more than a Catholic promise not to divorce” (60). The matchmaker, in fear for her reputation, lies that the candle has burned to ashes. Lindo capitalizes on Taitai’s beliefs in supernatural signs to convince her that Tyan-yu’s life is in danger if he remains married to her. Lindo achieved the extraordinary feat of freeing herself from a traditional, restricted life without dishonoring her family.

For her part, Ying-ying recounts her childhood trauma and the silencing effect the experience had on her life: “For all these years I kept my mouth closed so selfish desires would not fall out” (70). Ying-ying had been taught how a female should behave, that women couldn’t openly express their personal desires. Ying-ying learned that girls, unlike boys, could never openly ask for what they wanted. To desire things was selfish and dishonorable. Ying-ying hears that a festival day creates as exception, allowing her to tell her “what you want but cannot ask” (74) to the Moon Lady.

When Ying-ying falls off her family’s boat and is rescued by poor fishermen, she experiences a dissociation and loss of identity. This trauma led to the loss of her memories of the incident. “For many years, I could not remember what I wanted that night from the Moon Lady, or how it was that I was found again by my family” (93). Ying-ying regains her memories and she realizes that the quest for her identity has resurfaced in the present. Ying-ying feels that Lena, whom she sees as too Americanized, has never understood her. Ying-ying longs to be “found,” to recover her sense of self. She tells Lena this story, hoping her daughter can “find” her.