Eddy's+Rought+Draft

In what way is a daughter the “American Translation” of her mother? Choose a mother/ daughter pair and discuss. Eddy Choi Amy Tan, the author of __Joy Luck Club__, is an Asian-American writer who tells stories of women with individual and common oppressions. She portrays a diversity of mother-daughter social bonds to emphasize the hardships of interactions between China and the United States. Tan depicts the harrowing social and emotional effects on mother-daughter relations in the different cultures of An-mei Hsu and her mother. “When I was a young girl in China, my grandmother told me my mother was a ghost” (Tan 33). An-mei’s mother is a very bold, but mournful widow in the novel. She fails to serve as a faithful wife by leaving her daughter An-mei, to become a concubine. Women are complicit in destroying An-Mei’s mother through the power arrangements of family and society. Her first impressions in the novel were like the goose that had laid An Mei who seemed to float back and forth like a ghost (Tan 37). She is known to be a traitor and never mentioned in the family circle again. “When you lose your face, the only way you can get it back is to fall in after it.” (Tan 36). She is driven out from her home and left without independent means. In the section, //__Feathers from a Thousands Li Away__//, the mothers have a moral lesson that they wish to give their daughters. In this case, An-mei’s mother meets with her daughter and tries to teach her to sacrifice herself for her family and swallow tears. “The pain of the flesh is nothing. The pain you must forget.” (Tan 41.) With her mother being unfaithful and leaving the house, Amy Tan portrays An-mei who fears and resents her mother. She grows up with stories from her grandmother that disrupt her to maintain an imaginative bond with her mother. “I felt unlucky that she was my mother and unlucky that she had left us. These were the thoughts I had while hiding in the corner of my room where my father could not watch me” (Tan 36). Many Chinese-American students feel as if they don’t belong in a certain group. They often grow up feeling isolated from everybody because vast different between the Chinese and American cultures. Popo’s stories are examples of socialization that train An-mei in to a proper Chinese daughter. Her stories often discourage her to have a good image towards her mother (Tan 33). Nevertheless, An-mei finds a way to remain as a rebellious daughter to a disliked mother to whom she still feels bonded. Despite Popo’s statement that her identity is undervalued, she learns to speak for herself and endure the pain. She has the same personality and characteristics as her mother, just that she is more open to the society. In analyzing the representations of mother-daughter relationships in her stories, it becomes clear that the interactions between mothers and daughters are complicated by broader circumstances within and between China and the United States.