American Perspectives of Chinese Culture in Amy Tan’s the Joy Luck Club

Abstract

The novel The Joy Luck Club was writtenby Amy Tan, an American author of Chinese Heritage. The novelwas published in 1989. The novel tells the stories of four Chinese immigrant women who met in San Francisco and formed a club known as The Joy Luck Club where they play a game called Mahjong and dine together. It is structured as four parts which is divided into four sections and each section consists of four stories in it, totally sixteen interlocking chapters. Each section starts with a parable which relates the theme of the four stories in that section. The novel mainly focuses on the story of four Chinese mothers and American born daughters. The protagonist of the novel is Jing-Mei woo daughter of late Suyuan-woo who is the founder of The Joy Luck Club. The first part explains the story of four mothers past lives, the second section tells the daughter’s childhood, third section is about the daughter’s adulthood and the fourth section narrates the story of the mother’s adult lives. The protagonist Jing Mei narrates the whole story on behalf of others. Thus the novel explains the conflicts between American born daughter’s and Chinese mothers. Amy Tan has written this novel in the American perspective daughters focus on the Chinese folklore.