Chinese-American Cross-Cultural Communication Through

Contemporary American Fiction: The Joy Luck Club

as an Illustrative Example

Dr. Abdel-Rahman Husni Abu-Melhim*

1. Introduction

The Joy Luck Club is a story focusing on eight major characters-four mothers and their
four daughters. The mothers are four Chinese/American immigrants named Su Yuan, Lindo,
Ying Ying, and An Mei, and the daughters are June, Rose, Lena, and Waverly. The story
reflects the lives of the four mothers during their early adulthood and the lives of the four
daughters who are in early adulthood (Huntley, 1998). The Joy Luck Club is a friendship started
by the four mothers, spans over a 30-year period.

Set in present-day San Francisco, "The Joy Luck Club" focuses on a group of four
elegant, late-middle-aged Chinese women who, since arriving in America just after World War
II, have gathered together once a week to play mah-jongg. The philosophy behind this gathering
of survivors was to celebrate the passing of each week as if it were a New Year; to eat and laugh
and tell their best stories in an attempt to restore their spirits and resist the grip of poverty and
hardship. (Hinson, 1993) .

In the beginning of the novel June, who has just lost her mother Su Yuan to an aneurysm,
is asked by her mother’s friends to take Su Yuan’s place in their Mah Jong foursome and their
Joy Luck Club. The family is having a going away party for June who has just found out she has
older twin sisters and she is going to China to visit them.

The twin’s do not know about June. June’s mother recently died and the sisters are
unaware of her passing. Later, June accuses Su Yuan of killing her babies (the twins) in China.

*
Irbid University College, Al-Balqa' Applied University, Irbid, Jordan.

1
 The Joy Luck Club, was published in early spring in 1989 by G. P. Putnam's Sons and
presents a story of four Chinese women and their American-born daughters.

The Joy Luck Club was a critical and a popular success. Over 2,100,000 copies were sold,
Tan received $1.32 million for the paperback rights, and it has been translated into eighteen
languages--including Chinese.

The Joy Luck Club (1989) is a best-selling novel written by Amy Tan. It focuses on four
Chinese American immigrant families who start a club known as "The Joy Luck Club," playing
the Chinese game of Mahjong for money while feasting on a variety of foods.

In 1993, the novel was adapted into a feature film directed by Wayne Wang. The Joy
Luck Club, presents the stories of four Chinese-immigrant women and their American-born
daughters. Each of the four Chinese women has her own view of the world based on her
experiences in China and wants to share that vision with her daughter. For example:

The women often come across as noble, self-sacrificing victims instead of courageous and
resilient survivors. Listening to their tales of woe, you feel that they are all blameless; that their suffering
was imposed from without -- usually at the hands of men. Even if one of the mothers kills her baby, she can
take comfort in the fact that she was driven to this extreme by a brutal, philandering husband. It is in this
way that the events of the film all too often appear contrived to fit the pattern of feminist ideology (Hinson,
1993) .

The daughters try to understand and appreciate their mothers' pasts, adapt to the
American way of life, and win their mothers' acceptance. Regarding this particular issue, Hinson
(1993) states:

Through assimilation, the daughters have abandoned the traditions of their Chinese mothers. And
though set in more comfortable surroundings, the lives of the daughters mirror those of their parents. And
if the rhyming seems forced and a trifle glib, it's because it is.

The book's name comes from the club formed in China by one of the mothers, Suyuan
Woo, in order to lift her friends' spirits and distract them from their problems during the Japanese
invasion. Suyuan continued the club when she came to the United States-hoping to bring luck to
her family and friends and finding joy in that hope.

2
 Amy Tan wrote The Joy Luck Club to try to understand her own relationship with her
mother. Tan's Chinese parents wanted Americanized children but expected them to think like
Chinese. Tan found this particularly difficult as an adolescent. While the generational differences
were like those experienced by other mothers and daughters, the cultural distinctions added
another dimension. Thus, Tan wrote not only to sort out her cultural heritage but to learn how
she and her mother could get along better.

Critics appreciate Tan's straightforward manner as well as the skill with which she talks
about Chinese culture and mother/daughter relationships. Readers also love The Joy Luck Club:
women of all ages identify with Tan's characters and their conflicts with their families, while
men have an opportunity through this novel to better understand their own behaviors towards
women. Any reader can appreciate Tan's humor, fairness, and objectivity.

2. Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify the most salient issues that relate to Chinese-
American cross-cultural communication as illustrated by the different major characters in Amy
Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club. This is done based on reviewing the available literature related to
The Joy Luck Club, the novel and movie version, and based on the critical literary analysis of the
major elements of fiction as they relate to the novel.

3. Setting

Even though The Joy Luck Club takes place primarily in china town San Francisco in the
United States, much of the novel occurs in flashbacks, set in China. The serene beauty of this
Eastern country, marred by the violence of war, is evoked in the tale of Suyuan and her
daughters. During the course of the flashbacks, the cities of Hong Kong and Shanghai, and the
surrounding districts and towns, like Kweilin and Taiyuan, are portrayed in detail.

The Joy Luck Club, for which the book is named, is located in modern day china town,
where four Chinese mothers have made lives for themselves after leaving their native countries
years earlier. A miniature of the old country has been recreated in San Francisco’s Chinatown,
where most of the immigrants live in the city. Their houses are replicas of homes in the

3
motherland and are adorned with traditional Chinese furniture and decorations. Within
Chinatown, the older inhabitants continue to follow their native customs and celebrate their
important festivals.

They also gather often to enjoy each other and to eat Chinese delicacies. Although many
of the younger generation Chinese descendants still live in Chinatown, they are very different
from the older generation of immigrants. They have largely adopted the American way of life.

The novel includes anecdotes and stories from three generations of women, spanning a
period of time that is seventy years ending in the 80's, when the book was published. The novel
closes with a visit to China in the present day. This ending unifies the geographical and historical
settings of the novel in a most fulfilling way.

All the Chinese women has her own outlook of the world based on her past experiences
in China and wants to share that vision with their daughters'. The daughters understand their
mothers' pasts, and try to adapt to the American lifestyle, and win their mothers' acceptance. The
book's name, "The Joy Luck Club", was inspired by Suyuan Woo. The club continued in the
United states in order to lift her friends spirits from the Japanese invasion Peral Habor going on
at the time. hoping to bring luck and joy to her friends and family and finding joy in that hope.

Amy Tan the writer of The Joy Luck Club composed the book in order to understand her
relationship with her mother.Her parants wanted Americanized children but demanded them to
think and act like Chinese. Amy found this very difficult as a young child. Not only was there a
generation gap, but also a cultural distinctions added another dimension. Thus, Tan wrote The
Joy Luck Club not only to help her sort out her cultural heritage but to learn how she and her
mother could get along.

4. Major characters

4.1 Jing-Mei Woo:

Jing-Mei Woo is the narrator who opens and closes the novel. While she is only one of
four young women whose stories constitute the novel, the positioning of her story makes her

4
seem to be the primary character, especially since her tales strongly develop the theme and plot
of the entire book. Jing-Mei’s journeys are also complete within the novel. By the end of the
book, she comes to understand her mother and her Chinese heritage, and she travels to China to
fulfill her deceased mother’s dream. Among all the daughters in the novel, Jing-Mei is the one
who best realizes her true identity, for she retains her Chinese values along with her American
character.

As a person, Jing-Mei is simple in her tastes and manners. She is happy leading the life of
a middle class woman and pursuing the career of a copywriter. She neither aims high nor envies
others who hold high positions in life. Like her mother, she believes in “simple living and high
thinking.” She also possesses her mother’s goodness and generosity. She is courteous to
everyone and respects the wishes of her elders. When her father asks her to take the place of her
mother in The Joy Luck Club, she agrees to do so. Later, when An-Mei persuades her to
undertake the journey to China to fulfill Suyuan’s dream, Jing-Mei consents.

Although Jing-Mei is sensible, she is also sensitive. When Waverly Jong insults her in
front of every one, she is devastated and can barely hold back her tears. Later in China, when she
witnesses the reunion of her father and his aunt, she bites her lips “trying not to cry.” Then when
she meets her half-sisters in Shanghai, they laugh and wipe “the tears from each other’s eyes.”

During the course of the novel, Jing-Mei transforms herself from an immature young girl
who tries to assert her rights by defying her mother to a responsible woman who takes the place
of her mother in The Joy Luck Club. As a child Jing-Mei had rebelled against her mother, who
wanted her to be a brilliant student or a concert pianist. Jing-Mei, however, just wanted to be
herself. Although her mother saved to buy her daughter a piano, Jing-Mei refused to practice.
After she made a miserable performance at her recital, she never played the piano again. Only as
an adult does she take an interest in the piano once again.

When Jing-Mei learns that her mother had left behind two infant twin daughters in China,
she was shocked. Not understanding how much Suyuan suffered over the incident, Jing-Mei
treats the situation lightly. Later, after her mother’s death, Jing-Mei learns from the women at
The Joy Luck Club and from her father, Tin, the whole story of her mother’s sufferings in China.

5
The knowledge helps to appreciate all that Suyuan has done for her. It also teaches her to
appreciate her Chinese heritage. As a result, when she learns that the twins have been located,
she is willing to go to China and meet them in order to share Suyuan’s story with them. The
journey to her native land makes Jing-Mei proud to be a Chinese.

By the end of the book, she lives up to the meaning of her name; she has become the
“pure essence” of goodness and Chinese values that her mother had longed for her to be.

4.2 Suyuan Woo Woo:

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Suyuan lived in the Chinese town of Kweilin
(Guilin) while her husband at the time served as an officer in Chungking (Chongqing). On the
day of the Japanese invasion, Suyuan was forced to leave her house only with a bag of clothes, a
bag of food and her twin daughters. In the long trek, she was forced to abandon both bags, and
eventually abandoned her daughters as well. Her abandonment of the twin daughters will haunt
her conscience until she dies, and though she spends many years to find them back later, it is her
daughter Jing-mei who will fulfill her long-cherished wish of reuniting with the twins from her
late first husband

4.3 Lindo Jong:

Mother of Waverly, Vincent, and Winston. Wife of Tin Jong. Lindo's best friend is
Suyuan, but they fight constantly. Lindo has always tried to take credit for Waverly's success,
and because she feels close to her daughter, she tries to control her life. She gets upset when
Waverly decides to marry a white man, but when he refuses to be intimidated by her, she accepts
him. Lindo, like Suyuan, had a hard life in China--she was forced to marry a man she hated--but
she used her cleverness to escape her fate. She received enough money from her in-laws to come
to America. She is competitive and intimidating, even to her daughter and husband.

4.4 Ying-ying St. Clair:

Though she was born a rich and spoiled girl, Ying-ying ends up relatively poor and meek.
She believes her haughtiness cursed her. Because she thought she was too good for any man, she
was forced to marry a bad man. From then on, she believed that she could see things before they
happened, and she gives this power to her daughter Lena. She sees herself as still strong on the

6
inside, but knows that she has willingly given up her strength so she will no longer cause herself
such pain. She married Clifford St. Clair without really caring about him--she says she could not
care about anyone, because she has turned herself into a ghost. By the end of the book, she
realizes that she never should have done this: it has made her daughter weak as well. She decides
to show her daughter how to be strong.

4.5 An-mei Hsu:

Mother of Rose Hsu Jordan, Ruth, Janice, Mark, Matthew, Luke and Bing. Wife of
George Hsu. Mother-in-law of Ted Jordan. An-mei is a mixture of strength and weakness. Like
her own mother, who committed suicide to give her daughter a better life, An-mei sometimes
accepts her sorrows too easily. She acknowledges that she and her daughter Rose are sometimes
too easily influenced by others. But she also has a very strong faith in her ability to make things
right. When Bing dies, for a long time she fully believes she can bring him back. She learned to
have faith in herself, and to stand up for herself, from her mother, who told her to have a strong
identity.

4.6 Waverly Jong:

Unlike Jing-Mei who finds maturity and peace within the novel, Waverly constantly
struggles. As a child, she became a chess prodigy and champion, who is featured in Life
Magazine. She gave up the game, however, to spite her mother, who seemed overly proud of her
daughter’s accomplishments. Surprising, Lindo Jong does not seem to mind that Waverly no
longer wins at chess; Waverly, however, misses the game terribly and beings to play again. Once
she ceases to win all the time, Waverly finally quits the game forever.

Throughout life, Waverly has been a driven woman. Intelligent, ambitious, proud,
arrogant, and sometimes cruel, she commands attention. Because she is a successful tax
accountant, she becomes wealthy. She wears fashionable clothes and patronizes fancy salons; but
she laughs at those beneath her. She is cruel to Jing-Mei at dinner when she criticizes her hair
stylist and her copywriting skills. It is like she has to put down others to lift herself up.

Waverly always struggles with her Chinese heritage. She tries to make herself act very
American and look less oriental. She often seems embarrassed by her mother, Lindo, and refuses

7
to adopt the traits of humility and respect Lindo has tried to teach her. Concerned about
appearances, Waverly takes her mother to see Rory, her hair stylist, so that Lindo’s hair can be
properly styled when she meets the family of her fiancé, Rich Shields. At the hairdresser,
Waverly becomes upset when Rory says that she looks like Lindo, for she does not want to
appear Chinese.

Although Waverly projects a tough exterior, it is clear that she has some insecurities.
Although she constantly argues with her mother and refutes her traditional Chinese views and
values, Waverly also seeks her approval. She dreads telling Lindo that she is going to marry
Rich, but she desperately wants her mother’s blessing. When her mother gives her approval,
Waverly is greatly relieved.

Although Waverly struggles internally through most of the novel, she is developed as one
of the most powerful characters, who has a zest for living, a drive to succeed, and a commanding
personality. Completely opposite in nature from her mother, Waverly does come to understand
Lindo better and fear her less by the end of the novel. She even begins to appreciate some of the
Chinese heritage that her mother has tried to instill in her.

4.7 Lena St. Clair:

Daughter of Ying-ying and Clifford St. Clair. Wife of Harold Livotny Lena has always
known that her mother was fragile, and she spent her childhood fearing that their family could
fall apart at any moment. She thus became fragile and easily frightened herself. Today, she
allows her husband to bully her, but is slowly realizing how angry with him she is. She is
disappointed with her mother and never understood her father very well. Even though she looks
English-Irish like him, she has always felt Chinese. She seems to believe, like Ying-ying, that
she and her mother have the same spirit (Lyall, 1995).

4.8 Rose Hsu Jordan:

Wife of Ted Jordan, daughter of An-mei Hsu. Rose often feels guilty and powerless. She
sometimes thinks that she was responsible for her younger brother's death. She accepts the blame
that Ted heaps on her for the failure of their marriage. She has nightmares where a traditional
Chinese character chases her. At first, she believes that her mother does not understand her, and

8
wants her to stay in her marriage even if she is unhappy. But then she realizes that all her mother
wants is for her to be strong. She finally stands up to Ted and suddenly realizes how powerful
she really is. Then she feels connected to her mother in a way she never did before.

5. Plot summary

As the novel opens Jing-Mei "June" Woo has just lost her mother, Suyuan, to an
aneurysm. She is asked by her mother's three friends to take Suyuan's place in their Mah-Jong
foursome and their "Joy Luck Club". The novel unfolds with interspersed chapters by each of the
three remaining members of the Club and their American-born daughters. Lindo and Waverly
Jong began their war over Waverly's childhood chess stardom and the effects it has on every
aspect of Waverly's adult life. An-Mei Hsu recounts the tragedy that gave her strength, and
worries that her daughter, Rose, lacks the same determination. Lena St. Clair tries to care for her
eccentric mother, while her mother recounts a secret history that has allowed her to see more
deeply than her daughter imagines. Through it all, June Woo tries to piece together the stories
that her own mother can no longer tell, and to be faithful to her mother's memory despite their
sometimes rocky relationship.

6. Conclusions

Based on the available literature related to The Joy Luck Club, the novel and movie
version, and based on the critical literary analysis of the major elements of fiction as they relate
to the novel, the following cross-cultural issues related to Chinese-American cross-cultural
communication may be identified through the major characters in the novel:

 Jing-mei thinks of her mother's life in China as mysterious, and so removed that she
hardly even believes it was real. She always thought of it as just a Chinese fairy tale, so
she was shocked when she found out that there was still some of her mother left in China:
her two younger sisters. Her mother, however, is a master storyteller. She brings the past
to life with her words, making Jing-mei see it, even though she doesn't understand half of
it.

9
 Even though Lena looks white unless someone is looking for her Chinese features, Lena
identifies more with her mother than with her father. She views her father, in fact, almost
across the same rift as her mother does. They understand Chinese language and
superstition, he doesn't. They understand what Lena thinks of as "Chinese fears," and he
seems blind to them.

 June doesn't understand her mother's "Chinese" personality traits. She hates the way her
mother brags about her to Lindo Jong. She cannot understand why she has to be obedient
all the time. She does not want to bend to her mother's every whim. But this is exactly
what Suyuan expects from June, and she gets very angry when June doesn't listen to her.

 Lena, who has always identified with her Chinese mother more than her American father,
wonders if being Chinese has given her evil powers. She and her mother talk in ways that
Harold cannot understand, just as they used to talk in front of Lena's father. Lena believes
she has a terrible bond with her mother: they can see bad things before they happen, but
they don't know how to stop them.

 No matter how much Waverly loves Rich, and how American she is, she needs him to
understand her mother's Chinese attitude, even if she herself rejects it. Rich completely
fails at this: he doesn't understand the complex way to compliment someone, or how to
eat at dinner, or how to be polite and yet friendly. And even though Waverly dislikes
these Chinese customs, she desperately wants Rich to understand them the way she does.
Whether they like it or not, their cultural backgrounds are in conflict (Rothstein, 1991).

 Just as they were divided between American and Chinese culture, Rich, Waverly and
Lindo connect over it. The couple decides to have their honeymoon in China, and they
are even considering all going together. Lindo needed to be reassured that the American
Rich could fit into her life, and that Waverly understood her Chinese heritage. Once they
understood this, their differences began to disappear.

 Rose always thought that American ways were better than Chinese ways. But now she
realizes that sometimes Chinese opinions are less complicated and more understandable
than American opinions. Rose was always afraid of her mother and Old Mr. Chou, the
Chinese character who guarded the land of sleep. But once she realizes that she doesn't

10
 need Ted, her American husband who overly complicates things and doesn't care about
her, she begins to feel closer to her Chinese heritage.

 An-mei wonders, like her daughter Rose, whether their Chinese culture might have
created problems for them. Are they indecisive and weak because they were taught to
accept their fates, however sad, without protest? An-mei feels that their histories are
inescapable--her own mother, herself, and her daughter have all turned out this way. She
wonders if, being women in Chinese culture, they had no choice.

 An-mei draws a distinction between Western culture and Eastern culture. Americans, she
implies, use psychiatrists who encourage them to talk about their suffering as a way of
understanding themselves. Chinese people like her mother, however, suffered and cried
because they had no choice. There was nothing to understand--they could not change
their sad fates, so they cried. An-mei describes the Chinese peasants as banding together
to kill their sorrows (the birds), rather than just talking about them and allowing them to
continue.

 Lindo believes that only Waverly's physical features are Chinese: inside, she is
"American-made." Lindo even thinks that Chinese and American culture don't mix. Yet
Lindo can see how similar she and Waverly look, and she knows they have much of the
same personality traits. It's obvious even to the hairstylist, no matter how much Waverly
would like to deny it.

 Furthermore, it may be deduced from the novel as well as the movie on which it was
based that: Children in the Chinese culture show respect and loyalty to their parents
regardless of the situation and how they hold their parents in highest regards.
 The Chinese culture appears to be different in the sense that Chinese people's loyalty to
one another differs. For example, when An Mei’s mother dies and her vow to avenge her
family. In addition, when An Mei’s grandmother dies and An Mei’s mother cuts her arm
to honor her mother in order to make amends with her before her death. The loyalty also
reflects in Rose who is so unusually submissive to her husband and feels she has no
worth at all.

11
  The characters world perspective is unique in the sense of how they believe life is so
great in America. For example, the swan feather and how it represents hope passed down
and good intentions for June. Su Yuan signifies the feather as a goose stretched-neck and
flying to America on a journey. Su Yuan hopes her daughter will have a life full of
prosperity without any sorrow. It may also be concluded that the American audience was
generally impressed with the movie which was based on Tan's novel. This is very clear
in Ebert's remarks that "The Joy Luck Club is like a flowering of talent that has been
waiting so long to be celebrated. It is also one of the most touching and moving of the
year's films" (1993).

Ebert also adds that:

"The Joy Luck Club comes rushing off the screen in a torrent of memories, as if its characters
have been saving their stories for years, waiting for the right moment to share them. That moment comes
after a death and a reunion that bring the past back in all of its power, and show how the present, too, is
affected - how children who think they are so very different are deeply affected by the experiences of their
parents" (1993).

Expressing his opinion about the movie, Ebert considers it as abridge between the past
and present saying that: "The Joy Luck Club moves effortlessly between past and present,
between what was, and how it became what is" (1993). This goes in line with what the author
of the novel herself expresses in a personal interview stating that:
Some of my past remarks about my discomfort with labels in literature had to do with what was
happening fifteen to twenty years ago. There was American Literature, which consisted mostly of books by
dead white males, and there was Women’s Literature, Black Literature, and Multicultural Literature, which
was also called “required reading.” The labels were there because those books had not been included in
the regular canon of literature. Here’s an example of how things have changed. In the past, The Joy Luck
Club was included on required reading lists because the stories were different from the mainstream and
thus would give young readers exposure to another culture. Those were in the days when communities were
not that diverse. The irony today is that educators select my book so that young readers can identify with
the story. The student population is multicultural and the same books once selected to understand others
are now chosen to understand ourselves. What is in the canon of American literature now includes many
different voices, reflecting that America includes many different voices (Tan, 2006).

In conclusion, it might be safe to claim that the very nature of contemporary American
fiction has certainly changed. Asian-American literature along with other kinds of ethnic

12
literature have become a fundamental part of general modern American literature. This has
recently been encouraged by efforts to promote cross-cultural awareness in light of modern
advances in technology and under the world-wide spread of globalization.

13
 References

Ebert, R. (1993). Review. Washington Post, September 17.

Hinson, H. (1993). Review. Washington Post, September 24.

Huntley, E.D. (1998). Amy Tan: A Critical Companion. London, Greenwood Press.

Lyall, S. (1995). At Home with Amy Tan: In the Country of the Spirits. New York Times Book
Review, December 28.

Rothstein, M. (1991). A New Novel by Amy Tan, Who's Still Trying to Adapt to Success. New
York Times Book Review, June 11.

Tan, A. (1989). The Joy Luck Club. New York: G.P, Putnam's Sons.

Tan, A. (2006). a conversation with Amy Tan, November 7.

14