I
I. INTRODUCTION
The topic of “Chinese-American culture clash“ is very broad and can be differently examined, so I decided to take the novel “The Joy Luck Club“ as a starting point to get a first impression of what kind of problems are likely to occur and then to go further and relate these findings to the general situation.
I want to begin this research paper with a biography of the author to make it possible to understand why Amy Tan wrote this kind of novel and how everything fits together. Then I will give an outline of the plot of “The Joy Luck Club” focusing on the family Jong who will be the family I concentrate on.
In the following, I try to show how a culture clash gets visible, which means what kind of conflicts appear and then why these difficulties occur.
To understand this complex system of immigration better, that primarily caused the situation of living in a country with foreign-born parents, I explain why people leave their country and how Chinese immigration took and still takes place.
To sum everything up, I will add my personal reflections on the topic, will try to make clear why I was interested in “The Joy Luck Club” and how I finally coped with it. I also put a few statistics in the appendix to make it possible to the reader to enlarge his knowledge if needed.
II. THE JOY LUCK CLUB
1.The Author
On February 19, 1952, Amy Tan is born in Oakland, on the eastside of San Francisco Bay. Her parents both emigrated to the USA from Shanghai, China, in 1949.
Her father became an electrical engineer and later a Baptist minister.
Being Asian-American, Tan wants to conform to American culture as much as possible during her teens: “I used to think I had come down the wrong chute, out of the wrong womb. I was supposed to have been born into a nice Caucasian family on the East Cost.”1
Her parents put high pressure on her, which is not always easy to cope with for the young girl: “So I grew up thinking I would never, ever please my parents. [..
.]It’s a horrible feeling, especially when you experience what you think is your first failure and you think your life is over.”2
After the death from brain tumours of both her father and her older brother, the family moves to Europe, where Tan completes her secondary schooling in Montreux, Switzerland.
She returns to the USA for university and after changing college five times, mainly because of arguments with her mother, she finally graduates with a degree and an MA in Linguistics from San José State University. She meets Louis De Mattei there, who she marries in 1974.
Although her parents always wanted her to become a neurosurgeon and a concert pianist by hobby, Tan instead starts her career as a freelance business writer in 1983 to work for companies such as IBM and Apple Computer.
Also being a consultant to programs for disabled children, as well as a reporter and an editor, she eventually discovers her passion for fiction writing. Her first story “Endgame” wins her admission to the Squaw Valley Writer’s workshop, the story appears in several magazines. A literary agent discovers Tan’s abilities and encourages her to complete an entire volume of stories.
At about this time, however, Tan’s mother falls very ill and makes her daughter promise her a trip to China in case of recovery. So the two depart for China in 1987 after the mother regained her health. Finding new inspiration through this trip and the close contact to her mother, Tan finishes The Joy Luck Club, which instantly climbs all best-seller lists.
Into this novel, she weaves her mother’s stories and her own impression of her mother’s country, saying:
“I wanted her [my mother] to know what I thought about China and what I thought about growing up in this country [the USA].”3
Her following books (The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Moon Lady, The Chinese Siamese Cat and The Hundred Secret Senses) only confirm her good reputation by enjoying excellent sales.
Today, Amy Tan is one of America’s most popular novelists and lives with her husband in San Francisco.
2.1.The Plot
Amy Tan’s first novel – The Joy Luck Club – was published in 1989.
It consists of a collection of interrelated stories and deals with the history and experiences of four Chinese mothers who immigrate to the USA and their four American-born daughters.
The stories are placed in four sections of four stories each: the first set is told by the mothers, followed by two by the daughters and a last one by the mothers. It has been argued that this carries great symbolic weight, since in Taoism these numbers are important (see also www.mindspring.com for further information), but in any case, it makes it possible to show two different perspectives of one and the same topic mixed closely together.
Although the mothers come from very different backgrounds and areas in China, fate has been unkind to all of them in its special way and has finally led to the immigration.
In the US, they get to know to each other and meet on a regular basis to play mah jong together in the “Joy Luck Club”, where the title of the book is to be found. The name of the club, however, dates back to one of the mothers, who founded it many years before in wartime China “in order to transmute the painful history of women like herself into a communal expression of defiance and hope”4. At first, the club maybe stands for similar values in America as well, but later, as everybody gets better integrated, it is rather a meeting of good friends than a help to survive.
The mothers tell their history from their childhood to the current situation in the US, whereas the daughters’ stories mainly deal with their present lives. The reader, however, is also presented a new perspective of how they were raised in America and obtains a new kind of view on the mothers, who are not always regarded kindly by their progeny. One gets to know the conflicts between mother and daughter resulting of the opposing mentalities they have and we finally understand why each one is the way she is (see also chapter III.
and chapter IV.).
In the end, in all cases, mother and daughter are reunited and will be able to bear their problems much better because they gained understanding of each other and also know now why their counterpart acts the way she does.
2.2.Family Jong
Lindo Jong grows up in a modest family in China who betroths her at the age of two to an even younger boy.
Her parents give her to his family when she turns twelve, since they have to leave the region because of a disastrous flood that destroyed their house.
Four years later, after great humiliation by her mother-in-law, Lindo finally has to marry, but never gets the child she is expected to have because her husband refuses to sleep with her. This, although it is not her fault, brings her in bad trouble, but she arrives to make the marriage declared broken and is therefore able to turn away from her husband and his cruel family. Which is important, however, is that Lindo never breaks the promise given to her mother that she would never bring shame on her family, but that she gets away from the marriage with the help of a cunning trick without disgracing her family’s reputation.
Lindo immigrates to San Francisco, where she gets to know Tin, who she marries in order to get a child to be allowed to stay in the US. She even finds love in this marriage and the they have two sons and a daughter, Waverly, who tells the other stories in the novel.
Waverly grows up in Chinatown playing in the streets like all the other children, but then spends her youth playing chess until she becomes a national chess champion at early age. Despite her talent, she cannot win any more after a serious argument with her mother and she stops playing altogether.
The relation between Lindo and her daughter never gets relaxed again (see also chapter III. about the problems they have), and when Waverly falls in love with a boy at High School, she runs away with him. She even gets a daughter, Shoshana (the only third-generation character in the novel), but the marriage quickly leads to a divorce because her mother makes Waverly see everything negative in the man she loves.
Soon, she gets to know to Rich Shields and the two plan to marry.
Nevertheless they do not dare tell Lindo, who seems to disapprove of Waverly’s husband. In the end, however, the daughter finds out that her mother would never want to destroy her love, but that she always tries to give her child the best possible. They stop arguing, because Lindo and Waverly have gained understanding of each other and they plan to visit China together. It remains uncertain to the reader, if they really do this, but one has nevertheless understood that a balance between mother and daughter has finally been achieved after all those years of problems.
III.CULTURE CLASH
1.
1.Problems within the Jong family
Within family Jong, the atmosphere is not always relaxed, but there are some rather heavy conflicts between mother and daughter. These problems do not only arise from the normal generation gap that exists in most families, but they are even more intensified by the different background they grew up in and the different education they received.
Because of the two different perspectives that Amy Tan offers the reader, we are probably the ones who can best understand both mother and daughter, and are able to see through their misunderstandings better than the characters themselves ever could. In the following, I will show some examples of the distorted mother-daughter relationship, and try to explain why Lindo and Waverly always tend to argue.
Looking at the conflict from the daughter’s point of view, one understands that it is not easy for her to fulfil all the high expectations Lindo has.
She never seems to be satisfied with Waverly, even when her daughter wins a chess tournament: “Next time win more, lose less.”(p.88)5
Waverly would like to be praised, but her mother would never do this in public because she is proud of her “Chinese humility”(p.87)5. This often stands in contrast to Waverly’s wants and needs, in one case those of an eight-year-old child who would love to play with the chess set given as a Christmas gift from an old lady (p.83)5, which is absolutely natural.
Waverly certainly thinks that she cannot do anything on her own without being watched and critically judged by her mother. When she plays chess and the press arrives, she has to take on the poses Lindo showed her (p.90)5 and when she is older and eats at a restaurant with her mother, she still gets embarrassed because of the steady complaints her mother always pronounces.
Waverly aims to live her own life despite Lindo who seems to control everything. During the first time of Waverly’s relationship to Rich, Waverly criticises her mother’s behaviour: “When I was first married, she used to drop by unannounced, until one day I suggested she should call ahead of time”(p.162)5.
This leads to the situation that Lindo never comes to her daughter’s flat unless she receives an invitation, which naturally minimalists the contact between mother and daughter and does not help them to understand each other better.
This same behaviour of both mother and daughter can already be seen in the beginning of the book, for example when Waverly criticises that Lindo always diminishes the worth of things Waverly has done and that she tries “to take all the credit”(p.164)5. Here, Waverly feels left over and expects a good word from her mother who does not seem to care for her daughter’s feelings. This emotion builds up until Waverly shouts at her mother who is very hurt and stops talking altogether with her daughter. Waverly remembers: “It was as if she had erected an invisible wall”(p.
167)6 and she cannot stand this situation because – as she mentions, “My mother knows how to hit a nerve.”(p.164)6.
From Waverly’s point of view, Lindo uses her enormous power to destroy all her daughter’s hopes or achievements, as she also destroys Waverly’s first marriage. Neither does Lindo appreciate her daughter’s boyfriends, nor their presents: “This is not so good.[.
..]It is just leftover strips.”(p.163)6. Waverly would like to fight against this, but – as she tells a friend – she “can’t stand up to [her] own mother”(p.
167)6. Although she wants to make Lindo “shut up”(p.168)6, she does not dare do this because she has learnt Chinese politeness from her parents.
From Lindo’s perspective, however, everything looks different. She has difficulties dealing with her daughter who does not entirely follow her Chinese ways, but who wants to integrate in American society without being steadily regarded as a second-generation Asian immigrant. This does not imply that Lindo did not adapt herself to the new culture (she talks about her two faces, for example, and she gave her children English names), but it is clear that she will never be all-American no matter how hard she tries.
It must be difficult for her to see that she has not succeeded in giving her children “the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character”(p.252)6.
Lindo also fears that she loses her daughter one day, which is why she named Waverly after the street they live in. As she mentions, “I wanted you to think, This is where I belong. But I also knew if I named you after this street, soon you would grow up, leave this place, and take a piece of me with you.”(p.
265)6. This might be a fear existing in most mothers, but I think that Lindo tends to exaggerate it because of her roots and her early loss of mother. When she worries that her grand-child will “forget that she had a grandmother”(p.41)6, this fear gets obvious again and it is revealed that she considers Americans as people who do not always say what they really mean and whose family bonds are not very strong.
These are mostly conflicts arising from the generation gap between mother and daughter, but Amy Tan offers the reader also an insight into the differences between American and Chinese values. This gets most obvious when Lindo looks at her daughter in the hairdresser’s mirror and realises that Waverly’s nose is not straight but slightly crooked.
She takes this for a bad sign, because her grand-mother always measured a person’s fortune by looking at their face. American-born Waverly, on the other hand, likes her nose because of the “devious” look it gives her, which the mother cannot understand either.
Another problem between the two is that Waverly does not value promises as much as Lindo does who almost sacrificed all her life not to break the promise made to her mother, which was very natural in China at this time. So she says, “to you promises mean nothing. A daughter can promise to come to dinner, but if she has a headache, if she has a traffic jam, if she wants to watch a favourite movie on TV, she no longer has a promise.”(p.
41)7.
Despite all these conflicts – I could only name a few here – Waverly and Lindo get together in the end and although they will always fight a little bit, they have finally gained mutual understanding so that both can avoid these arguments as much as possible in the future. Because the misunderstandings are finally solved, they will never feel something as strong as hatred or jealousy again and they have succeeded in bridging the gap existing between them.
1.2.Problems in immigrant families in general
Children of immigrants often encounter serious problems in their family life, of which I have already described various while naming the troubles within family Jong in The Joy Luck Club.
There are some more conflicts, however, that I would like to mention, first of all the problem of language that I consider as particularly important.
In immigrant families, parents do not always teach their children their native language, which brings along the danger of misunderstanding. The parents cannot master English perfectly and so they cannot express themselves in a proper way, whereas the children do not know their parents’ language, let alone the writing (esp. in Chinese or Japanese families), which again leads to a bigger gap between the two sides.
This happens because an identification with the parents’ culture must fail, if the children do not read literature in their parents’ language, or are not able to speak it themselves. So the second generation cannot appreciate the traditional values their parents still possess and conflicts between them are unavoidable.
In The Joy Luck Club, this is presented to the reader in a very direct way, when Lindo talks about Chinese places and Waverly cannot even differentiate between the pronunciation of Taiwan and Taiyuan. For the mother, these two things are so opposing that she almost feels personally insulted by her daughter’s ignorance.
Another problem could be that immigrants tend to be over-protectors towards their children, as seen in The Joy Luck Club as well. They often experienced tragedies and as a consequence, they do not want their progeny to have to bear similar circumstances. Besides, most parents had to leave everything behind in their home country, so a new experience of terrible loss would be unendurable to them, even more than to other parents.
This, however, makes these parents hard to satisfy, for they expect their children to achieve very high goals because of the good circumstances they were born in.
It is certainly clear to everyone that nearly no child is able to fulfil all these expectations. Amy Tan herself experienced something similar to this, she remembers: ”My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten."8 She also says that she felt “wounded and frightened”8 when her mother asked her why she did not achieve the best possible and it left her in a peculiar relationship to her parents.
In an article about discrimination of Chinese Americans, it is stated that “for most Chinese the problem is not so much physical barriers, as it is for blacks, as it is a question of identity. Who are you as a Chinese in the United States?”9 This seems to be quite true and can be proved for the parents as well as for the second generation.
It might be even the most difficult for the children, since hardly any identification to the parents’ country is existent, although others see them as foreigners or immigrants. In the New York Times Article already quoted, the author comments on this argument: “It is particularly difficult for the younger people who have grown up in the United States, still having an Oriental face but not even speaking their parents’ language.”10 The children mostly feel American, but they are considered Oriental by the others.
Parents often do not understand this difficult situation and want their children to keep their traditions and not to adapt to American culture instead. In an article about Italian immigrants, for example, the parents are described the way that “they want their daughter to grow up in the traditions of their own youth. She must associate only with Italians [.
..]. She must live in the way that her mother enjoyed as a girl.”11 For immigrant children, this is just not possible because of their American friends and their American surroundings.
A similar image is presented in another article about Italians in the U.
S.: “[The daughter] is confused by the conflicting signals given to her by [her parents]: ‘Get an education, but don’t change’, ’go out in the larger world but don’t become part of it’”12 Here, it gets obvious again, that the family does not want their child to become part of the American society, but to stay with them instead.
These are only few examples of problems occurring in immigrant families, but I think they make already clear that this belonging to two different worlds and cultures at the same time brings huge difficulties to both parents and children and that they have to put all effort into their living harmoniously together. This does not imply, of course, that there cannot be any exceptions, any families living together in harmony, but it is still more likely for immigrant families to encounter these kind of problems than it is for families already living in the U.S. for many generations.
2.Reasons for the occurrence of the culture clash
It is no question that in the case of family problems, there exist millions of reasons why the members do not get along with each other as they should. Since the same applies to immigrant families, I will try to point out just a few more reasons that I have not already mentioned in part IV and that are typical of immigrant families.
First of all, we will certainly recognise that many immigrant parents cannot adjust to society as their American-born children can. In the article already quoted about the Sicilian girl, the author notes that “the friction in Concetta’s home is caused by the reluctance and inability of her parents to accept the conditions of their adopted land.”13 They try to preserve their own culture and by doing this, they prevent their children from integrating into American society, or it eventually leads to a conflict between the two parts.
M. Heung calls Waverly Jong “the product of two cultures” and adds that it is “unlikely that mother and daughter can achieve perfect identification” because “the burden of differences in personal history and cultural conditioning is too great”14. It is easy to agree here because one understands quickly that Lindo and her daughter have experiences far too different to make it possible to Waverly to become the ‘younger self’ of her mother.
Whereas Waverly feels at ease in modern American society, Lindo still criticises American behaviour, which can be seen in particular in the scene at the hairdresser’s when Mr. Rory talks about Lindo as if she would not understand him, but to Waverly, he acts in a normal way. Lindo does not like the indirect regards her daughter and Mr.
Rory exchange in this “American” superficial way.
The mother has a completely different understanding of family and general morality, which gets a lot clearer if one knows a text by L. Tutang, which was written at the time of Lindo’s birth and is about the Confucian family system in China: “We knew the family only as the basis of human society. The system colours all our social life. [..
.] It keeps our young in the places. It overprotects our children, and it is strange how few children rebel and run away. [...
] It makes it rude for a young couple to close the door of their room in the family house in daytime, and it makes privacy an unknown word in China.15”
This explains easily, why Waverly complains about the steady protection by her mother, whereas Lindo considers it as something absolutely natural. The daughter is not only annoyed, but she is even embarrassed: “The mother doesn’t behave the way a white mother behaves, not knowing any better, so she is a source of humiliation for the daughter.”16 Here, we can see that even if the mother tries very hard to please her daughter, she will not always achieve this, because she does not know the ways she would have to do this.
The examples of reasons mentioned make clear that the culture clash is often unavoidable, and that it might only be possible to soothe it by trying to gain better knowledge of the others.
IV.
REASONS FOR IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES
1.Reasons for immigration
In many cases, the reasons for the immigration were similar, no matter where the people came from. They all wanted to start a new life in the US and had hopes that are closely linked to the theme of the ‘American Dream’, which could be defined by the three expressions of “equality”, “liberty” and “pursuit of happiness”.
As John F. Kennedy put it: “There were probably as many reasons for coming to America as there were people who came. It was a highly individual decision.
Yet it can be said that three large forces – religious persecution, political oppression and economic hardship – provided the chief motives for the mass migrations to our shores.”17
People saw the United States as a country where everything was possible, where they could achieve all aims and where no social or racial barriers would ever prevent them from success. Especially during the time of the gold rush around 1848, people dreamed that it was very easy in the US to get rich quickly, and I think this hope still lingers today, just mentioning the idea that one can rise from “rags to riches” and that you have the possibility to make it “from the log cabin to the White House”. Although many immigrants were left disappointed after the arrival in America, the dreams could not be diminished in their home countries and many followed.
Others were politically or religiously persecuted and saw their own chance to survive in coming to the United States, where they were offered a place to start a new life.
At the beginning of the immigration waves, it often occurred (esp.
within Chinese families) that the men migrated on their own and left their wives and children at home. This lead to a new increase of immigration numbers, since the families eventually joined their relatives.
Speaking directly of Chinese immigration, one can say that life was not easy in the Oriental states during the beginning of the 20th century, since civil war (1917), the rise of communism and the fight against it by the Kuomintang (nationalist party; 1928) made people suffer a lot. Between 1931 and 1945, China was under Japanese occupation, which increased poverty and political persecution.
Others, like women, had to suffer because of unequal rights that were not bearable any more, as M. Heung explains: “women in the Chinese family are regarded as disposable property or detachable appendages.
[...]The marginal status of Chinese women shows itself in their forced transfer from natal families to other families through the practice of arranged marriage, concubinage, adoption and pawning.”18. They were badly treated by their husbands or even their mothers and sought refuge in the more modern American society, even if equal rights for women were not fully achieved there either at the first half of the 20th century.
In The Joy Luck Club, we are shown different examples of reasons for immigration. Lindo Jong, for instance, has to leave the country to get away from her broken marriage and her husband’s unfair family in the hope of being able to start all over again in America.
All in all, considering the examples above, one can say that there exist a clear connection between most immigration cases, since the immigrants all hoped to get away from the problems in their country to lead a better, free and successful life in the United States.
2.History and present of Chinese immigration
The Pioneers: 1785-1848
The first Chinese immigrants were recorded in 1785, but this small group only followed few people so that up to the mid-19th century, no more than 30 Chinese lived in the United States.
Unrestricted immigration: 1848-82
The discovery of gold in California attracted many Chinese and the number increased to about 100,000 people in 1880.
Many of them went to the mining areas, but a lot of them also settled in Hawaii to work in the sugar or the trade business.
At the end of the 1850s, when the gold fever subsided, Chinese helped to build the western sections of the transcontinental railroads, which lead to Chinese people spreading all over the United States because they often followed the railroads. California, however, remained the centre of Chinese population, and 25% of its labour force was made up of Chinese, although they were only a tenth of the total population. This can be easily explained if one knows that immigrants consisted mostly of young men who were able to work hard. They remit funds to their family in China and dreamed of returning to their country after having accumulated enough savings. This aim, however, was not often achieved, and most of them stayed in the United States.
Women were not very numerous at this time, they were mainly wives of merchants, but a lot of them worked as prostitutes as well.
The 1870s with its economic depression marks the begin of an anti-Chinese movement and finally lead to the 1st exclusion act in 1882. The entry to the US of Chinese labourers was banned, exempting only diplomats, tourists, merchants, students, and the like (see also statistic in the appendix).
Exclusion:1882-1943
Because of the exclusion act, influx of Chinese immigrants was reduced, but many still found a way round the laws. So policies became stricter and interrogations at the entry ports common practice. Still known today is Angel Island, a detention facility near San Francisco, where many arriving immigrants were kept, often for a long period of time.
The popularity declined, with its anti-climax in 1920, but this also normalised the men-women ratio, also because of the new American-born generation. From a high 2,679 men to 100 women-ratio in 1890, it dropped to a 285:100 in 1940. This made the former bachelor society change into one based on family and Chinese culture became more and more apparent. Chinese-language press appeared and a Chinatown subculture developed, mixing features of Chinese and Western societies.
Many employers, however, refused to hire Chinese labourers who therefore concentrated on the service industry to become domestics or laundrymen or to start a restaurant business.
Restricted immigration:1943-65
During World War II.
, the wartime labour shortage forced employers to seek for labourers, and the perspectives for Chinese got better. Many of them also served in the American armed forces, which, together with the Chinese resisting to Japanese occupation in China, helped to improve the picture of Chinese in the US. Congress repealed the exclusion acts in 1943 and war veterans could bring their wives to America. The immigration quota remained at 105, but the Chinese were given the right of naturalisation.
Immigration on an equal basis: after 1965
In 1965, Congress finally passed another Immigration Act, which guaranteed equal treatment for applicants from all nations with a quota of 20,000 each. The number of immigrants from mainland China, however, did not greatly increase until the late 1970s when the relations between the two countries normalised and China changed its emigration policy.
From the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, the Chinese population eventually grew to an estimated two million, making it the largest Asian group in America.19
V.FINAL REFLECTIONS ON THE TOPIC
It is not easy to sum up everything mentioned in this research paper, but I think that it is important to hold on to the revelation that immigrants do not always live an easy life in the United States and that the ideal of the American Dream cannot be achieved in the majority of cases. We have to remind ourselves that the problems described in chapter III. existed fifty years ago and still exist today. There might be a relaxation of the situation, since discrimination of foreigners has become less over the years, but the problems resulting of different backgrounds still occur.
Maybe it is now the Hispanics or other immigrant groups who are mainly concerned, because the number of Chinese immigrants has diminished, but wherever they come from, they still have similar kinds of problems.
I found it interesting to read The Joy Luck Club, because it showed different cases of immigration and one can understand the whole situation much better than if it was written in a history book. The novel by Amy Tan does not only give example of historical events, but it also makes us think about relationships within a family and why arguments occur, which a very important aspect to me.
VI. REASONS FOR CHOOSING THIS NOVEL AND HOW I COPED WITH IT
First of all, I want to say that I am very happy with my decision to take The Joy Luck Club because I really liked the novel and I found it very interesting to read. I have been curious of Oriental culture for a longer period of time and to be honest, I did not want to take an entirely American-based topic because I preferred to examine the American Dream in a critical way from the point of view of an ‘outsider’.
At the beginning of writing this research paper, I did not quite know where to start, but then I discovered that the table of contents helped me a lot to put my ideas together and bring them into shape.
During my work, I sometimes had to find out that it takes longer than one thinks to put all the collected information together and to summarise it in a short text. I could have written much more than the 16 pages and it was a challenge to keep it short.
I must mention that it was not too difficult to find the information I needed, and after consulting several libraries, I possessed more than I could even utilise. In the internet, however, I had some problems to find the right web pages, because I had to find out that some of them did not contain more than pure nonsense. Another difficulty was that no book dealt extensively with The Joy Luck Club, but that only a chapter or only a few lines were important for my work, and it was not always easy to find those.
All in all, I can say that it was interesting to write this research paper, and I think that I learned a lot about the topic I dealt with, but nevertheless, the limitation of time and of pages helped to reduce the joy I had with it and put a lot of pressure on me.
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