Chinese-American author Amy Tan wrote the novel The Joy Luck Club. Tan is herself intimate with the struggle of immigrants to the U.S. to assimilate into mainstream culture while still retaining a sense of their cultural identity and heritage. This process is fraught with challenges and obstacles, but they can be surmounted through love, endurance, and determination. In the novel, we share the stories of four Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters. The story evolves around the inherent ambiguities and conflict between the patriarchal and Taoist-Confucian perspectives of the mothers, and the more Americanized, i.e., freedom-oriented, behavior and ideas of the daughters. The Joy Luck Club remains at all times the story of mothers and daughters and how they relate and do not relate in the face of such cultural conflicts. In the story of Ying-Ying St. Clair, we see that she is to learn of spiritualism and develop a worldview by observing her mother, “’What is ceremony?’ I asked…’It is a proper way to behave. You do this and that, so the gods do not punish you…You don’t need to understand. Just behave, follow your mother’s example” (Tan 66).
In Waverly Jong’s case, the mother-daughter transference of strength occurs. Waverly knows that the only rules that matter are those of her mother’s, and while she cannot understand them she understands they are powerful (she does, after all, get her salted plums). She enjoys chess because its rules of manipulation seem simple in comparison to her mother’s manipulations and rules. The main difference between the mothers and daughters is that America and its ways involve freedom of choice as opposed to the more restricted and limiting roles fashioned for women by patriarchy, Confucianism, and Taoism in Chinese culture. Despite this, the mothers remain determined to ensure their daughters will become instilled with the s
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