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“This feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions.” 

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“This feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions.” 

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The parts, stories, and parables in The Joy Luck Club, are a bildungsroman prelude of June’s  flight to China to meet her long-lost half-sisters. She is, after her mother Suyuan’s demise, appropriately the first of her generation to cross the barrier into the inner sanctum of adulthood, as she occupies the East end of the Joy Luck Mahjong weekly game. Fittingly, she is to account for her mother’s story as well as hers “The East is where things begin, my mother once told me, the direction of which the sun rises, where the wind comes from,” (33). It is where our stories’ odyssey’s begins and where it ends. The East is also symbolized by the Swan, representative of motherhood, love, wisdom, and in this saga guidance. Although, June is in her thirties, she comes of age when she decides to return to China to find her long-lost half-sisters, as the main climax of this tale, a journey that will fulfill her mother’s dream, joys, and hopes for Chwun Hwa (water), Chwun Yu (Flower), and Jing-Mei. According to Canning her father, Jing means “just pure essence” of gold purity and “Mei” means “younger sister,” when June reflects on Suyuan’s decision to name her as a tribute to her lost twins, it reconciles her to the true Chinese culture.

The instant that June touched down in Shanghai, a sense of belonging made her feel whole for the first time in her life. This connection to country, and to her mother, is like the feather making its way back to the Swan of its origin. It is made more innate when she finally meets her sisters, Chwun Hwa and Chwun Yu, as the three of them feel their mother’s quintessence in concert.   This is representative of what Chinese filial piety really means, a connection to family and a greater cultural legacy that goes beyond place and time. Amy Tan uses sacrifice, symbolism, and literary elements in The Joy Luck Club, much like Alan Patton uses the term Cry as a call to put an end to the chaos of apartheid in his beloved country of South Africa, in Cry, the Beloved Country, or  Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, use of the symbol “Las Mariposas,” which codified Maribel’s sister’s defiance of oppression. These concepts enable The Joy Luck Club’s reading audience to discover what it is like for first-generation Asian Americans, specifically the cultural differences experienced by women. Amy Tan’s novel is instrumental on illuminating how both the mothers and daughters finally learn that the only way they can communicate, function, and live in filial harmony is by striving to attain a common ground between both cultures, as is stated that “This feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions” as like all migrations, it ultimately finds its way home, unlike the proverb, “You Can't Go Home Again.

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Blog 11 - Queen Mother of the Western Skies

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Blog 11 - Queen Mother of the Western Skies

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“The women felt a deep wish stirring in her heart…Even if I could live forever, she said to the baby, I still don’t know which way I would teach you. I was once free and innocent…But later I threw away my foolish innocence to protect myself…I taught my daughter, your mother, to shed her innocence so she would not be hurt as well…was this kind of thinking Wrong?” (213). In the fourth parable, the bookend cycle comes full circle, as the young woman is now old. She reflects while playing with her baby granddaughter, if perhaps she made the right decision in favoring caution over innocence in her daughter’s education or should she have done it different with the grandchild. This is the first time the canon preceding a section of the novel questions the validity  of Chinese mothers’ passing along particular Chinese values to their daughters, and now their granddaughters. Meanwhile, the baby girl laughs at the grandmother’s trepidation, which induces the old woman to call her the “Queen Mother of the Western Skies,” as an interminable deity who knows the answer to these dilemmas. The baby in her joy appears to value hope over pessimism.  For this the grandmother expresses her gratitude to the child and asks her to teach her mother how to laugh forever too. In the first parable after the women who is immigrating has the swan taken away and left with just a feather becomes pragmatic, distrusting those in her new country in favor of her survival. Thus, she like most emigrating mothers, forgets that life is about happiness, and the greatest wisdom a deity can impart on their daughters is innocence, because they have not learned to be jaded yet. The cycle is nearing its end, as the true meaning of the title that originated with Suyuan, who has been deceased this whole time, comes to fruition. Moreover, it was she who created the Joy Luck club back in China in her stay in Kweilin during the 40s when her first husband was stationed in Chungking. Therefore, as a means of escape from the uncertainties of war, Suyuan along with three other women created the Joy Luck Club, “And at each meeting, we could hope to be lucky,” Suyuan would tell Jing-Mei/June “That hope was our only joy. And that’s why we called …our parties Joy Luck,” (25).  Therefore, in this last part of the novel after so many lessons have been passed on from mothers to daughters, and from daughters to mothers in the resolution to all their conflicts, we can surmise that there are things that mothers can learn from daughters as well.

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At this point of the novel, regardless of the genetic bonding between mother and daughter, there are other complications, aside from relationships between predestined personality types in Chinese tradition. Sometimes within a certain culture, personalities do not mesh well. Therefore, compound this with clashing cultural barriers, and, for the first time in this novel, sexism against Chinese-American women is openly connected with incompatibilities, biases, and cultural ideals. Although the daughters have been raised to be obedient as is the Chinese custom, they are not expected to endure any possible abuse by non-Chinese partners, who might misread this cultural foundation for humility.  Hence, Lena’s marriage, was based entirely on Harold’s ego, right from the offset she knew their partnership fell short of just paying half of all expenses, but she was afraid to challenge this inequity due to her cultural values. In this regard, Ying-ying steps in as the voice of reason and strength, just as the other mothers do in their daughters’ times of crisis. This is evident when Waverly mistakes Lindo’s reaction to her recent engagement to Rich, as Lindo’s reluctance to see past Rich’s cultural blindness even though he is good man inside. What Waverly didn’t realize was that this cautious  gesture was intended only for her happiness. But once Lindo lets down her guard, she realizes how similar they are, hiding behind concrete exteriors, like mother, like daughter. She also discovers that she undervalued her mother’s compassion all her life, as Chinese mothers have demonstrated so far in the novel that they all have intuitions that the daughters don’t initially trust, in part because their expressions seem outdated and out of place in modern America. Yet the mothers suggest that their sensitivities to their daughters are timeless, because they have a bond unlike anything else. Therefore, when Ted demands that Rose sign the divorce papers and cash in his ten-thousand dollar check as a settlement, because he wants to get re-married as soon as possible to a woman he’s been seeing on the side during their separation, she protests . The powerful words of An-Mei during her childhood, now give Rose her own formidable voice over Ted. She finally inherits the courage that existed through many generations of women in her family, and can voice her strength in a way often forbidden to them.

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Blog 9 - American Translation /Queen Mother Of the Western Skies

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Blog 9 - American Translation /Queen Mother Of the Western Skies

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In the opening of the subsequent parts of the novel comes this parable from part III that states, “The mother smiled, mischief in her eyes…pointing to the mirror…Look inside…In this mirror is my future grandchild, already sitting on my lap next spring…the daughter looked…and…there it was her own reflection looking back at her,” (147). The entire parable illustrates the difference in aesthetic decision-making or Feng Shui, which is representative of the gap between old-fashioned superstition and the modern value of status, with each generation believing that there is no room for compromise. This third part covers the stories of the older women’s daughters, addressing the rearing of immigrant mothers, and how their maternal wisdom, derived from Chinese tradition, shaped their  adult lives. This is exemplified in the preceding parable when Ying-ying and Lena find a middle ground as the daughter is a direct reflection of her mother, and in a transitory sense, that of her grandmother as well. The daughters finally realize that their values have been passed down through generations of their matriarchs. The mother-daughter relationships often appear strained almost as though they can only see negative forces in their lives, like Lena’s inherited anxiety. Even though mothers just want to protect their children from harm, they frequently unintentionally pass on their fears, such as Mei’s concerns over Rose’s divorce, Lindo’s over Waverley’s remarrying, and Ying-ying’s over Lena’s apathy. At this point in the novel, Suyuan has passed on and June is the first of the daughters left without a mom, while assuming her proxy as the fourth hand at the Mahjong table.

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Finally, the last story of these vignettes, Two Kinds, is June’s, which like The Joy Luck Club contains many autobiographical aspects from Amy Tan’s life. Moreover, Tan has always felt that she disappointed her mother by not becoming a doctor. Unlike Waverly, the novel’s Jing-Mei (Tan) cannot be compared to the highly competitive successful daughter of Lindo a friend of Jing-Mei's mother. In Two Kinds, June reflects that after years of bouting with her mother over piano lessons, and other goals failures, that it is time to be true to herself, thereby allowing herself the right to fall short of her expectations. She recalls how on her thirtieth birthday, Suyuan gave her a used piano, saying that June had natural talent and could have been a genius if she tried. June never imagined herself a prodigy, because it was not in her nature. Yet by not attentively bettering herself, June objectifies her fears of mediocrity. Soon after Suyuan’s passing, June gets the piano reconditioned for “purely sentimental reasons,” and discovers her old lesson books in the piano bench. She flips to “Pleading Child,” the same song she botched in the talent show, and learns that a song called “Perfectly Contented,” printed on the adjacent page, is actually the other half of “Pleading Child.” Together, they make up one complete song, ergo two kinds June/Tan.

These two first sections give a clear presentation of how mothers and daughters have very different values due to their cultural upbringings.  The ensuing parts pursue how they go about resolving their conflicts.

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In Rose’s tale Half and Half , she is resentful that her mom An-mei will tell her to try to save her  marriage even though Rose knows it is beyond saving. At first, due to Ted’s parent’s racism, Rose did not take him seriously, but following his parent’s disapproval of the relationship, out of defiance their bond strengthens and they eventually get married. Eventually, Rose’s codependence on Ted after a malpractice lawsuit, prompts him to file for divorce. Rose doesn’t feel she can talk to An-Mei. She wants to divorce her husband, Ted, because he makes her unhappy, but she’s sure An-Mei won’t approve. Although Rose is suffering in her marriage, An-mei believes some sacrifice is necessary, and there’s still a solution to the problem that doesn’t involve giving up.

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Blog 6 - The Voice from the Wall, Half and Half, and Two Kinds

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Blog 6 - The Voice from the Wall, Half and Half, and Two Kinds

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The stories, which follow are of Lena, Rose, and June, titled respectively The Voice from the Wall, Half and Half, and Two Kinds. They represent the disconnect between growing up in America belonging to a Chinese  culture. For instance, in  Lena’s story The Voice from the Wall she deliberately mistranslates Ying-ying’s pain after her baby is stillborn as a clear illustration of language alienation in the novel. After Rose who is biracial fails to inform her father that Ying-ying blames her own past for the babies loss, she instead tells Clifford that Ying-ying is looking forward in trying for another baby at which time Ying-ying is resigned that she cannot be herself with them.

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Parable of Part II,  introducing the next section’s four stories “Do not Ride your bicycle around the corner…Why not! protested the girl…you will we fall down …How do you know…whined the girl. It is in a book  The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates…the girl, jumped on her bicycle and…fell before she…reach the corner,” (87). This parable is a warning of the consequences that befall daughters who ignore their mother’s attempt to protect them by belittling the mother’s knowledge, intuitions, and  personal experiences. This stubbornness is most prominently displayed by Lindo’s daughter, Waverly Jong, in her story, Rules of the Game, which depicts the transfer of wisdom through storytelling, as it is a running theme in the novel. Waverly’s chess lessons continue this theme in a subtle way. Waverly calculates her interactions with Lindo in terms of wins and losses, rather than emotions. She cannot understand Lindo’s curt style of love as a child, and grudgingly casts her mother in the role of an opponent. This chess analogy serves not only that children should abide by the rules, but also as a symbol to those who emigrate to learn the rules of the game in their new home.

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In this “Feathers From A Thousand LI Away” opening section, Tan continues to captivate, as we learn about the other women and their difficult youths through the use of sacrifice, flashbacks, and Symbolism. They are now confronted with the generation gap, crossing barriers, and miscommunication with their daughters, because growing up in America is very different from growing up in China.

An-mei Hsu: Tan’s accounts of this member of the Joy-Club is summed up by her story’s title Scar along with the symbolism’s of ghosts and blood. The term ghost is used by Mei’s Popo (grandmother) to sever any maternal or filial identity by re-naming her daughter a “ghost,” for defying their traditions. In the process, Mei sustains a burn leaving a scar, as the reminder of  both generations’ separation. Regardless of Popo’s exile, Mei’s mother returns to her deathbed to  remedy her mother’s malady withstanding “the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain,” as a measure of the lengths that a daughter would go to honor her mother by a sacrifice of the flesh. An-mei recognizes that mothers and daughters are connected forever by blood. Mei makes the connection that ghosts, scars, and blood entail pain, but that it is a worthwhile pain, a pain that communicates love, a memory revived whenever she touches the Scar beneath her chin.

Lindo Jong: Lindo’s story The Red Candle expands further the previous theme of sacrifice, describing how she honored her parents’ arranged marriage back in China when she was two years old. However, at sixteen she marries Tyan-yu, from a wealthy family, and overbearing mother, Huang Taitai. Lindo like An-mei, defies Chinese tradition through the use of symbolism. Her rebellion against the marriage arrangement is realized by The Red Candle. According to tradition, a candle with both her name and Tyan-yu’s name, must burn simultaneously. If the candle stays lit through the night then the marriage can never be broken. Therefore, after her failed attempt to extinguish Tyan-yu’s end of the candle, she convolutes the story that Tyan-yu’s ancestors came to her in a dream, and told her that the marriage candle had gone out on their wedding night. Then, Lindo says the ancestors secretly impregnated one of Huang Taitai’s servant girls with Tyan-yu’s seed. The servant girl who was previously pregnant out of wedlock, backs Lindo’s story and becomes Tyan-yu’s wife. Lindo’s marriage is annulled and Huang Taitai buys her a ticket to America. She never suspects that it was Lindo’s ingenuity by exploiting The Red Candle’s burning out, thus foreshadowing Tyan-yu’s death if he remained in the marriage as the cause. Through superstition and bad omens, Lindo defies Chinese tradition and maintains her autonomy.

Ying-ying St. Clair:  The Moon Lady story, unlike in the prior stories of Mei’s mother’s blood sacrifice or Lindo honoring her parents prearranged nuptial, is one of self-sacrifice and in keeping with the Chinese custom that the female identity revolves around silence and secrecy, which is instilled at an early age, and so to desire something out loud is considered “selfish.”  Accordingly, she opens her narrative with, “I remained quiet for so long now my daughter does not hear me,” (67) thus, inter-mating how all those years she kept her true nature locked away. She declares this was not always so recalling a time when she was not slothfully running and shouting at The Moon Lady her secret wish to reunite her with her family. After being raised by Amah the family nanny, without much parental care, she falls overboard during a fireworks celebration. Seeking her way back to her family she encounters The Moon Lady. Ying-ying is then awestruck by the Moon Lady’s beauty and her sorrowful tale of banishment for defying her husband, the Sun. Ying-ying identifies the Moon Lady’s loss to her own loss of getting separated from her family. Ying-ying pursues the Moon Lady backstage thinking the goddess will answer her wish and reunite her with her family. But to her disbelief, the Moon Lady is actually a male actor, crushing her innocent expectations, of connecting to someone through her story, a key theme in the novel. The allure of magic the moon goddess symbolized vanished, and with it Ying-ying’s voice. Hence, Ying-ying becomes an inept mother to Lena because she never had a mother figure to give her the necessities of nurturing a child, creating a wall of silence between them. Subsequently, through the Scars, red candles, moon goddesses, and the flashbacks, sacrifice, defiance, and disillusionment they symbolize we get a foreshadowing of the dissent which will ensue.

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Blog 3 - Scar, The Red Candela's and the Moon Lady

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Blog 3 - Scar, The Red Candela's and the Moon Lady

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Shortly after Jing (June) Mei Woo’s mother, Suyuan Woo’s unexpected death, the other women asked June if she would like to take her mother’s chair at the table of their weekly Mahjong Joy Luck Club game. Out of respect for her mother, June acquiesces. The members are An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair. The four women met in a San Francisco refugee center after emigrating from China to the United States during World War II, and were brought together by their mutual angst and fortitude. Suyuan’s particular heartache related to the loss of her twin baby girls, whom she was separated from during the Japanese invasion of Kweilin. Suyuan secretly searches for her two daughters for the rest of her life, unbeknownst to June. When the game night concludes, the three older women inform her that Suyuan’s twin girls have been found as adults in China. Therefore, it is up to June to travel to China and fulfill her mother’s lifelong wish of reuniting the family. June has reservations and is unaware of her mother’s personal history to communicate with her long-lost half sisters, which the older woman  repudiates. Their denial unveils fears that their daughters would also be unable to express their Chinese heritages, if requested.

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Blog 2 - Jing-Mei Woo and The Joy Luck Club

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Blog 2 - Jing-Mei Woo and The Joy Luck Club

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The parable that commences this first section “Feathers From A Thousand LI Away,” represents the proceeding four stories that are entwined together into a larger narrative about the complex, and often misunderstood connection between immigrant Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters. To achieve this cohesiveness in all four sections, Amy Tan utilizes the literary element of bookending (the bookend device is used in magazine writing, screenwriting and novels to create a narrative structure by placing a scene, symbol, or item at the beginning of a piece and again in the resolution at the very end of the larger piece). This is akin to what author, Winston Groom did in the movie Forrest Gump when he placed the image of a white feather floating through the air, in the opening, which then comes to rest on Forrest's suitcase. The feather, at the end, floats back up into the air, helping to symbolize the “cycle” that has now been completed—the cycle of life and death, and one of new beginnings, explicitly, to this story. Likewise, the feather in the opening parable is presented in the main climax of Joy-Luck when Jing-Mei decides to return to China to find her long-lost half-sisters. It is a trip that will fulfill her mother's dream and introduce Jing-Mei to the true Chinese culture. There are additional climaxes for the other women in the book, such as when Waverly finally tells her mother that she is going to remarry. They are all resolutions to the rising actions of the four stories introduced in this first section.

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Blog 1 - Feathers From A Thousand LI Away

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Blog 1 - Feathers From A Thousand LI Away

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What makes a novel captivating, is not the words, but the ideas behind the words, such as themes, structures like the resolution of conflicts, and techniques. The last of these techniques entails the use of literary elements, dialogue, and symbolism, which my independent read of choice The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan is steeped in. The four sections of The Joy Luck Club with four stories each are respectively introduced by a parable. True to this format, section one sets the narrative off with the ancient Chinese “Feathers From A Thousand LI Away,” folktale, “The old women remembered a swan she had bought many years ago…the bird boasted the vendor, was once a duck that stretched its neck in hopes of becoming a goose, and now look!—it is too beautiful to eat,” (17). The swan it became, namely its feather will be the symbol of the development of Jing-Mei Woo’s character who, by the novel’s conclusion, then becomes like the duck—a creature more than what was hoped for a swan by bridging the cultures of America and China.

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The second half of this essay also revisits the elements of internal dialogue, and theme as in the first half, which is also that of stream of consciousness and freedom of confinement, as seen throughout this essay, in a room of her own. Woolf continues to build her argument through the use of stream of consciousness when contrasting the wealth and privilege of men’s halls of higher learning to the poverty of women’s colleges that served to restrict the feminine creative process. To those who critique her writing as juxtaposed, they should consider her mental state, as she suffered from a bi-polar disorder and was the subject of incest, child molestation, and rape. This is also compounded by the sign of the times, as this point is explored by Mary Seton, the name of the narrator's friend at Fernham. The two discuss the poverty of women, their difficulty in raising money to attend a woman's college, and to condemn their female ancestors for failing to leave them the means in this regard.

Furthermore, for the non-initiated, the inestimable thoughts and feelings that pass through the mind of a narrator, in “A Room of One's Own” such as alter ego Mary Beton can seem daunting and understandably so. This is, because Woolf does not consistently address her as Mary Beton, as the last name changes throughout the essay. As a fictionalization, the narrator is able to visit fictitious places and interact with fictional people, while speaking on behalf of Woolf as an alter ego.

Thusly, to view the late 1920’s, “A Room of One's Own,” in era where there was no such thing as feminist criticism, Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath” notwithstanding by current criteria is unfair. There was, feminist thought and writing, the suffragette movement, as the foremost expression of first-wave feminism, whose, sacrifices in late 19th and early 20th centuries, forced Britain to give women the right to vote in 1928. Woolf's work for better or worse unified early feminist ideas for the first time, exploring the differences between the two genders writing, lives and the societal reasons why they differed.

In closing, Woolf suffered sexual abuse during her childhood at the hands of her stepbrothers, and, possibly, also from her father. Therefore, it is only natural that her anger and resentment toward the patriarchy is clearly reflected in this essay, and she directed those feelings into her conviction that women were obligated to emancipate themselves from the men who restricted them. The need for economic independence, privacy, and the right to explore their own opinions was the premise for a room of one's own, as a place where women would have the autonomy to live and write in freedom. Irrespective, of feminism now and then, Virginia Woolf felt that writers who could cast off their animosity against men and achieve a genderless intellect could attain greatness in their work. As such, “Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” This is food for the soul, and it is the insight I will reflect on, regarding this essay, and not the superficial thought that “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

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In unit five there is a quote, which I am just paraphrasing that says, one does not learn from thinking, but from reflecting. Therefore, in the spirit of these words, I embark on my independent reading odyssey with the premise that learning is its own reward. This is to say that after having read Mrs. Dalloway and “A Haunted House,” that I am not a stranger to Woolf’s modernist stream of consciousness approach, like that of others of the period, such as James Joyce. The literary stream of consciousness devise is a narrative mode or method that attempts “to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind of a narrator,” that was termed so by William James in 1890.

Fittingly, after having just read the first half of Virginia Woolf's “A Room of One's Own”, I would like to impart this aspect of her thought process. I found that establishing the elemental technique of these inner dialogues whereby a reading audience who is unfamiliar with Woolf’s troubled past that eventually led to her suicide, and her thought processes, could avoid misconceptions of this work of fiction, which like others is laced with autobiographical details.

Consequently, in a condensed version following are the Haps. In the post-Victorian and Edwardian periods, in what is known as the post-WWI years, England’s mores were still very prudish. And so, in 1928, the well-established English author, Virginia Woolf, was invited to lecture on the topic of Women and Fiction at Newnham College and Girton, which are two women's colleges of England's well-known Cambridge University. The speeches she gave on this topic were revised, composed, and published in 1929, as the six-part historical fiction essay “A Room of One's Own.” This work is a combination of literary techniques—ranging from direct appeals of the audience to—a fictional alter ego. Through the British Library, Woolf builds the feminist argument,“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” This began her claim that to write, a woman must have the means and rooms to do so. Meaning it is imperative that a woman have financial independence and a private space to call her own. It is only in these confines that she can cast off the antagonism, biases, and discrimination of a patriarchalsociety, which is a culture that ostracized women socially, politically, and economically, and one that was designed by men for men. This reiterates what has been declared as the most famous lines in the essay, namely, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” As such, not to sound feminist, but anything less would be a human rights civil liberties violation in today’s politically correct landscape.

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I dedicate my independent reading blog on the short story or Essay to author, Virginia Woolf, who on March 28, 1941, packed rocks into her coat pockets and waded into the River Ouse to then drown herself. This personal act to end her life, came after a lifelong battle with a bi-polar disorder that was then termed as simply being manic depression. As a result, from the early age of thirteen, after the death of her mother, this disorder made her a victim incest, child abuse, and rape. To justify these heinous acts, her family labelled her condition as “madness.”