Gee+Sueun

The four pairs of a mother and a daughter show varying degrees of fulfillment of the American Dream in Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club. Since all the mothers are the immigrants from China and have similar cultural background, it is easier to compare that to how much extent each family is able to achieve the American Dream throughout the novel. However, there is one factor that makes this process a little complicated; the definition of the American Dream changes between generations, the mothers and the daughters. The American Dream for the mothers is initially to give their daughters the American environment and the Chinese identity at the same time. As a result, the daughters are often troubled by their dual identity, the Chinese aspect and the American aspect. The Joy Luck Club both starts and ends by Suyuan and Jing-mei’s stories. Suyuan and Jing-mei achieve little success in America, at least until Suyuan dies before she is able to meet her lost children in China. When Jing-mei is told that she should go to China and meet her half-sisters to tell them about their mother, she’s anxious and says “What will I say? What can I tell them about my mother? I don’t know anything” (31). It perfectly expresses the lack of understanding between Suyuan and Jing-mei at this point. Throughout Jing-mei’s childhood, Suyuan constantly tries to find out the hidden potential inside Jing-mei that is yet to be discovered in order to make her a prodigy. For Suyuan, this is part of her American Dream and just the pure desire to provide Jing-mei successful life in the future. Unfortunately, Jing-mei doesn’t accept the situation in the same way. For Jing-mei, her mother’s action is just out of jealousy toward Waverly Jong, who is a chess champion as a child. As a result, whenever Suyuan tries to make her learn new things, she revolts before she even tries. The cause of the misunderstanding is the difference in their American Dream. Suyuan wants to control her daughter, not out of ill-motivation but in order to lead her daughter to success, which is common in Chinese culture. However, Jing-mei, whose American aspect is stronger than Chinese aspect, rather wants freedom and decide matters in her own. Lindo and Waverly is another pair of a mother and a daughter that appears in The Joy Luck Club. Compared to the previous mother-daughter pair, it could be said that Lindo and Waverly were able to grab some success in America. The most obvious of all, Waverly has a decent job to earn enough money. The fact that Waverly is financially more affordable than JIng-mei is is clearly shown when Waverly mentions about her hair designer to Jing-mei, “He does fabulous work, although he probably charges more than you are used to” (229). Nevertheless, it’s hard to say that Lindo and Waverly achieved the American Dream. They have similar problems to Suyuan and Jing-mei, which are misunderstandings of each other and the lack of communication. The misunderstanding starts during Waverly’s childhood in the chess incident when Waverly finally expresses her feeling to her mother that the way Lindo shows off and tries to take some credit for her daughter’s chess skills constantly irritates Waverly. In reality, however, Lindo’s action was just her way of supporting her daughter. Even when Waverly grows up, the misunderstanding continues. “In Four Directions”, Waverly falsely assumes that Lindo hates Rich, a man whom Waverly is engaged with, although that wasn’t true at all. The four pairs of a mother and a daughter all achieved their American Dream to certain extent, but no one has been truly successful as they all suffered from some hardships. As it’s observable from the examples of Suyuan and Jing-mei, and Lindo and Waverly, the cultural difference and the generation gap are the biggest obstacle between the mothers and the daughters. There isn’t a definite solution to overcome these problems, but each person has to try in his or her own way to compromise the issue.