Review on Joy Luck Club
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THE JOY LUCK CLUB contains sixteen interwoven stories about conflicts between Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-raised daughters. From the story we see the mothers and daughters go through a journey of self discovery and struggles with their beliefs and cultures. Eventually, all the characters reconcile with the oppositions in their lives between past and present, between cultures, and between generations.
Themes
The central theme of this book is the mother and daughter conflicting relationship. This theme is explored through examination of reasons such as miscommunication and lack of communication.
From the title “The Joy Luck Club”, we have a perception that it has something to do with Chinese cultures, emphasizing on the belief in attaining happiness and good fortune. Although it does not contribute much to the understanding of the central theme, it gives us a preview that this book is one that dealt with Chinese culture and heritage.
Themes like expectation between mother and daughter, discovery and selfhood, straddling cultures and blood ties are explored in the book. The author uses several ways to support the main themes. One of them is the narration of the mothers past encounters in China.
Target Audience
The audience targeted for this book is mainly woman. Values like Chinese tradition of respecting the elders; the changing viewpoints of woman from being submissive to being independent and self sufficient were discussed. We do not deemed them as being extreme, as the values and views are typical in our culture. As descendants of migrant Chinese, we can relate to some of the values and views discussed. However they are a bit stereotypical as we find that the mothers in the stories seems to have some tragic story behind them, which we feel that not all migrant Chinese or woman in China gone through that.
Presentation of values/viewpoints
The values and viewpoints in this book are mainly discussed in Chinese cultural context. However, we do not deemed them as purely Chinese context, as there are influences of the American culture. One of which to look into is superstition. From this, we see the difference in the inculcation of the Chinese cultures with comparison to the American cultures.
Characters