In her The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan presents stories of four mothers and four daughters. The stories span several decades and bring together elements of Chinese and modern American culture. The depictions of mother/daughter interactions and relationships, tied together with elements of Chinese mysticism and cultural mores, are immediately engaging because we get to look into the deeper meanings of each mother/daughter relationship. In other words, Tan in interested in the deep symbolic and mystical realities of each relationship. Tan believes that the mother-daughter relationships are tested, but ultimately healed, by an acceptance of a natural, mystical force which is tied up in the Chinese identity.
While the daughters' stories usually involve their mothers, the mothers' stories tend to feature a distinct life, involving rigid family experiences in old China. The mothers have lived in two cultures, but their daughters know only America. As a result of this bicultural heritage, the mothers have a depth of understanding--a surplus of perspective--to convey to their daughters, whether the daughters are willing to accept it or not. In many cases, the daughters are not able to see through a present reality to arrive at the true significance, or deeper mystical meaning, of a situation. They are at a disadvantage of experience and understanding, and their mothers attempt to fill the void.
The major problem for the older generation has been the struggle against fate, whereas the younger generation perceives their essential difficulty to involve the making of choices. Rose Hsu Jordan, the daughter of An-mei Hsu, defines the problem as one of too many choices: "so much to think about, so much to decide. Each decision meant a turn in another direction" (214). Rose believes that the number of choices and decisions an American woman must make constitutes a flaw in the "American version" [of culture] (214), yet her mother would ...