The Quest for Identity in 'The Joy Luck Club' by Amy Tan

The Joy Luck Club is a novel first published by Amy Tan in 1989. The 4 mothers portray in the book have all shared painful and heartbroken memories back in the days in China during the Japanese occupation. All 4 of them fled to America some point in their life in search of hope to start over a new life and to forget the past. In 1949 the 4 mothers first met in a Baptist church and went on to play Mah Jong afterward. They started a club for them to gather to play Mah Jong and feast on foods together, which is later on known as “The Joy Luck Club”. Because they are the first generation of immigrants from China, 4 of them remain as culture aliens to this brand new society due to their lack of proficiency in speaking English. In stark contrast to them, their children are well educated in America and are proficient in speaking affluent English. Throughout their whole life, the 4 mothers try their best to ensure the ethnic continuity within their own microcultural structure of their families through the recollection of the past and the tales that they still remembered.

In an article by The New York Times where the publishers embark on a journey to study discrimination against Asian-Americans with Jennifer Lee, a professor of sociology at Columbia University and the author of “The Asian-American Achievement Paradox” and Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor of public policy and political science at University of California, Riverside, and director of the National Asian-American Survey. In the article, Asians were perceived to be “illiterate, undesirable, full of ‘filth and disease’ and unassimilable” as well as “marginal members of the human race”, leading them to be seen as “invisible and insignificant in society”.

But through the portrayal of the 4 mother-daughter pairs by Amy Tan, the book challenges these misogynistic stereotypes and showcased how the 4 mother-daughter pairs do not conform to the traditional expectations held for them, but instead, discover their true identity and worthiness in America, the land where the great American dream lies.

The Quest for Identity

One of the major aspects that the book revolves around is the quest for identity. Amy Tan presented the journey of the discovery to oneself as arduous and fraught with perils. The 8 major characters have all come to a junction some point in their life, at which they have to define themselves in the midst of great personal loss or interpersonal conflicts. It is through these harsh and painful memories that they discovered the meaning in their life and learned to fight for their rights in a patriarchal society.

In the Scar, An-Mei’s mother has been portrayed as a dishonorable widow who chose to become a rich merchant’s lowly fourth concubine rather than remaining as a widow forever. She was exiled from her family and An-Mei was taught to not grow up to be like her mother. Only later on in Magpies that we discovered An-Mei’s mother was forced into the marriage rather than by her own will. In the patriarchal society then, she has no rights to speak up for herself as a lowly widow. Despite her innocence, her beloved family members and others chose to believe in the words of the rich merchant’s second concubine. In the same chapter, she told An-Mei the same turtle that she was seeing in her mind. “ ‘Now you see,’ said the turtle, drifting back into the pond, ‘why it is useless to cry. Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else’s joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.’ ” While living with the rich merchant may seem to be wonderful, the pain and suffering that she is going through are less known to others. Just like the quote, she learned to “swallow” her own tears. Through her whole life, she lives in miseries. No one is there to share her sorrow and she is lonely. Her submissive nature resulted in her living on with her life despite the mistreatments that she was facing. She did not fight for her rights even though her status is as lowly as a servant, she even chose to remain silent when the second wife bounces her son on her own laps, telling him that she is his only mother and that he will grow up to own this household and care for her in her old age. In the end, she chose to end her own life. But in her death, she taught An-Mei what is most important. She taught her to follow her instinct, taught her to fight for what she wants and to speak up for herself. In fact, the first step she has taken to pursue what she wants is when she decides to leave his uncle’s house and to follow her mother in hope of a better life. When An-Mei’s auntie told her that “A girl is no better than what she follows! An-Mei, you think you can see something new, riding on top of a new cart. But in front of you, it is just the ass of the same old mule. Your life is what you see in front of you.” It is evident that she was treated poorly when sharing the same roof with her uncle. Her life there was never happy, she even mentioned that it was a place “full of dark riddles and suffering that I could never understand.” Hence, we can conclude that after the heartbreaking loss of her mother, An-Mei eventually found her true identity. Later on in her life, we can see how she imparted this thinking into her daughter.

At the ending of Half and Half, Rose exclaimed that “I think about Bing, how I knew he was in danger, how I let it happen. I think about my marriage, how I had seen the signs, really I had. But I just let it happen.” Ever since Rose’s brother, Bing, died when she was supposed to look after him, she has been living in guilt and self-accusation. As an adult, she is still unable to let go of the dark memory of the past. She knew when Bing died, she was watching him walking closer and closer to the edge of the cliff, but she did nothing to prevent it from happening. Due to this accident, Rose has lost faith in her fate and destiny, she lost her self-identity and stops formulating her own personal opinions. At the beginning of her relationship with her husband, Rose liked to play as the victim to her husband’s hero. She refused to make any major decisions because making decisions confuses her. She is a pushover and just like what her mother has said, a person “lack of wood”. Later on, Ted lost a case because of his malpractice. From that onwards, Ted lost his inquisitiveness and eager for his own identity because he was no longer sure of himself. He starts to force Rose to make every trivial decision in their life. And he was eventually tired of Rose’s constant indecision and deferral of opinion and wanted a divorce. Once again, she was aware of their marriage falling apart but she did nothing. She was just so caught up with Bing’s accident. She even pointed out that, “ Chinese people had Chinese opinions. American people had American opinions. And in almost every case, the American version was much better. It was only later that I discovered there was a serious flaw with the American version. There were too many choices, so it was easy to get confused and pick the wrong thing.” She thinks that because of the vast variety of choices available, the chances to make a wrong decision is much higher. Hence, in her own mind, she thinks making no decision is better than making one. She was too afraid to take responsibility, the same thing that made her lost her brother. She tried to escape from reality by overdosing herself with sleeping pills. Through this, she hopes that everything will just pass by and settle down. It was at the point of time when Rose felt that her life had hit the rock bottom that An-Mei came to lead her out of this “heimongmong” state. An-Mei was never asking for Rose to save this marriage, in fact, she is only asking for Rose to speak up for herself and fight for what she deserves. But when Rose finally realized that all Ted wants was to divorce as soon as possible, he wanted the house, and he wanted to marry someone else, Rose came into sudden realization and awaken her inner self that was deeply hidden ever since the death of Bing. She finally decides to stand up for herself against her serial-monogamist husband. And when Ted took the divorce letter without seeing if it was signed, he was assuming that Rose will not fight back as he had always taken it for granted. It was when Rose asserted that she wanted the house that Ted became dumbfounded. He does not know how to deal with her as she had always been such passive.

In conclusion, there is a lot of changes from one generation to another. An-Mei’s mother was portrayed as a typical Chinese woman, because of the expectation of a Chinese woman in the past, she was taught to be submissive and obedient. This is a typical stereotype that people have against Chinese women. However, later on, Amy Tan manages to avoid this stereotypical view of Chinese women by the strong contrast of Rose to An-Mei’s mother. In contrast to An-Mei’s mother, Rose was transformed into a non-conformist person after her broken marriage with Ted. She learned to speak up for what she wants. Her self-assertions challenges the stereotypical view of people that have already deeply ingrained into their mind.