FREE ESSAY ON AMY TAN

AMY TAN

Kaitlin Sump 
Amy Tan was born in 1952, in Oakland, California to Chinese immigrants John and Daisy
Tan. Her family eventually settled in Santa Clara. When Tan was in her early teens, her
father and one of her brothers died of brain tumors within months of each other. During
this period Tan learned that her mother had been married before, to an abusive husband in
China. After divorcing him, her mother fled China during the Communist takeover, leaving
three daughters behind who she would not see again for nearly forty years.
After losing her husband and son, Daisy moved her family to Switzerland where Tan
finished high school. During these years, mother and daughter argued over what Tan should
do in college and afterwards. Tan eventually followed a boyfriend to attend college in
San Jose, where she earned Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English and linguistics,
despite her mother's wish that she study medicine.
After Tan married her boyfriend, Lou DeMattei, she began to pursue a Ph.D. in
linguistics, but she abandoned this endeavor to work with developmentally disabled
children. Later, Tan struck out as a freelance business writer. Although she was
successful, writing for corporate executives did not fulfill Tan. She began to write
fiction as a creative release.
Meanwhile, her mother suffered a serious illness. Tan resolved to take a trip to China
with her mother if she recovered. In 1987, after Daisy Tan returned to health, they
traveled to China to visit the three daughters that Daisy had not seen for several
decades and the three sisters Tan had never met. The trip provided Tan with a new
perspective on her mother, and it proved to be the key inspiration for her first book,
The Joy Luck, a collection of sixteen interlocking stories about the conflicts between
Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-raised daughters. Soon after its publication
in 1989, The Joy Luck Club garnered enthusiastic reviews, and it remained on the New York
Times bestseller list for more than six months. It won both the National Book Award and
the L.A. Times Book Award in 1989.
Tan continues to publish popular works. She often emphasizes that she writes primarily to
create a work of art, not to portray the Chinese-American experience, that her bicultural
upbringing is the source of inspiration for her work, not the end product.
Kaitlin Stump Contemporary Literature 
Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club
The Joy Luck Club contain stories about conflicts between Chinese immigrant mothers and
their American-raised daughters. The book mainly talked About Jing-mei's trip to China to
meet her half-sisters, Chwun Yu and Chwun Hwa. Jing-mei's mother, Suyuan, was forced to
leave her twin babies on the roadside during her flee from the Japanese invasion of
Kweilin. Suyuan intended to recover her children, but she failed to find them before her
death. Finally, a after her mother's life long search her mother received a letter from
the two lost daughters. After Suyuan's death, her mothers' three friends in the Joy Luck
Club, a weekly mahjong party that Suyuan started in China and later revived in San
Francisco, urge Jing-mei to travel to China and tell her sisters about their mother's
life. But Jing-mei wonders whether she is capable of telling her mother's story. Lindo,
Ying-ying, and An-mei, members of The Joy Luck Club, do fear that Jing-mei might be right
and that their own daughters may not really know them either.
The book tells different stories of each characters life, and in each story teaches a
lesson or tells of the Chinese culture. For example, Chapter Two talks about An-mei's
grandmother raising her because she disproved of An-mei's mother becoming a concubine.
When Popo, An-mei's mother is on her death bead, An-mei's mother makes a soup and cuts a
chunk of her skin off her arm and mixes it in with the soup out of respect for her mother
although they didn't get along. In Chapter Three it speaks of how Lindo was promised in
marriage to Huang Tyan-yu when she was only two years old. They married when Lindo was
sixteen years old, but the candle that is supposed to stay lit all night in order to
symbolize lifelong loyalty even if her husband were to die was distinguished during the
night so they were able to annul the marriage.
The book also shows how things that happen in childhood effect adult life. For example
Rose, An-mei's daughter was always responsible to care for her little brothers growing
up. At the beach one day three of her brothers were fighting so she was told to break it
up, but at that same time her youngest brother, Bing fell into the water without a trace.
They looked everywhere for him but they gave up. They ended up finding Bing's body the
next morning. Later in her life Rose came to her mother telling her that she and her
husband Ted were getting a divorce. They dated for many years before resulting in the
both of them clinging to each other. Ted made all the decisions, but after he lost in a
lawsuit he started to push Rose to make some of the decisions and said that she resisted
in taking on any responsibility and blame. Her marriage was a result of her brother's
death and thinking although it was not her fault that it was her fault. Also another
example of this is that Suyuan pushed her daughter, Jing-mei to become things that she
was not. She wanted Jing-mei to become a pianist so she made her take lessons but
Jing-mei never practiced. Suyuan and the piano teacher entered Jing-mei in a talent
contest, but Jing-mei did very bad. As a child Jing-mei felt that she could never live up
to her mothers high expectations. Suyuan did not realize how much her disappointment
affected Jing-mei as a child. The book also speaks about how children take after their
parental figures and internalize, even without meaning to, what their parent has taught
them. An example of this is that Lena, Ying-Ying's daughter has been married to her
husband Harold for eight years and they split the cost of everything equally, although
Lena consumes far less than Harold. Lena got Harold to open his own business and worked
there as a project coordinator. She also gave him the idea of opening up a restaurant.
When Ying-ying goes to visit them she notices the list of shared items on the
refrigerator has ice cream on it. She also knows that Lena does not like ice cream and
tells Lena that they must not share ice cream, so Lena tells Harold that and he agrees,
but Lena picks a fight anyway. During the fight Ying-ying breaks a vase on the table and
asks Lena why she didn't stop it. Lena is silent in her marriage because she saw her
mother silent in hers. Ying-ying tires to teach her daughter that expressing her wishes
is not selfish on her visit because she does not want her daughter to make the same
mistake she did. Another example of this is that a few months before her death, Suyuan
cooked a crab dinner for the Chinese New Year. There was eleven people coming, but Suyuan
hadn't counted one. The guests chose the best crabs, and when Jing-mei went to choose a
crab she was going to pick the one with a missing leg, but her mother insisted that she
choose the better of the remaining two. This shows that Jing-mei is different than the
others, but the others had to have the best just like their mothers.
Another part of the book touches on how the mother shows her daughter how to grow beyond
her innocence without losing hope. It also shows how when a mother learns from her
mistakes how she tries to teach her daughter without having to make the same mistake.
Also this book demonstrates that the older generation can and does learn from the younger
generation. An example of this is that due to Lena's marriage trouble it forces Ying-ying
to confront her painful first marriage.
Another major point this book touches upon is the fact that the American-raised daughters
are Chinese not just through genes, but in personality, culture, loyalty, and respect. As
a teen, Jing-mei refused her Chinese heritage and didn't even want to believe she was
Chinese at all until she went to China after her mothers death to meet her half sisters.
While in China Jing-mei finds out that she did appreciate her mother although she was
worried that she didn't and knew nothing about her. She also realizes that she did not
have to prove her Chinese identity to her two half sisters, that she belongs to their
family automatically because of Suyuan. After her trip to China she found her mother and
stops feeling doubt of her and Suyuan's relationship with each other.
In The Joy Luck Club each mother and daughter learned different things from each other.
Also, it talks about the transition from China to America and how the Chinese raised
mothers must raise their daughters in America but keep their Chinese values. Jing-mei's
story represents her mother to her two half sisters as well as the struggle of
relationships between mother and daughter.