Honors Blog 2

Quote

"I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?" (254)

Throughout the story, June doesn’t know if she could consider herself Chinese because she knew little of the culture. She lived in The U.S. her entire life and didn’t know how to deal with Chinese cultures, this made her nervous about meeting her half sisters for the first time since her sisters have lived in China their entire life. I chose this quote because it represents June’s desire to be part of both cultures but she doesn’t seem to think it is possible by using her daughter as evidence of that.

Connections:

One thing that I this book reminded me of was of a movie I saw which was called the Last Emperor, the reason that I thought of this movie was because the emperor in the movie had two wives, somewhat similar to An Mei’s mother who was married to a man with four other wives, the mother had killed herself hoping that the husband would take better care of the children. It wasn’t just the fact that the two people both had multiple wives but because of the way some wives were treated compared to others, the emperor showed less affection to her second wife similarly to An Mei’s father who had treated her mother differently.

The quote that I put up reminded myself of what my parents wanted for me, I think that they wanted me to have a good American life but have the characteristics of a Chinese person but I think that I have definitely strayed off from what my parents have wanted me to be and when I think about how I’ve turned out I get sad to think that I’ve become more American than Chinese but just like June I realize that it’s in my blood and my family that I will always be Chinese.

One connection that I made which I chuckled a bit at was on page 109 when the family had moved to a new house. Waverly’s mother was talking nonsense in the new house but her father replied “‘Your mother is just practicing her nesting instincts,’”(109). The father continued talking about the mother’s preparations for a baby as if she was a bird that is what I kept thinking of whenever the father said nesting.

Visual Representation

I chose this visual representation of the Joy Luck Club because this is what I imagine June and the other Chinese women would be doing except in a room. I wanted to find a better picture but there are few pictures of people playing Mahjong in a room. During the first couple of chapters right before they start a game of Mahjong, An-mei said that the Joy Luck Club started investing in stocks because “‘You can’t have luck when someone else has skill. So long time ago, we decided to invest in the stock market. There’s no skill in that. Even your mother agreed’”(30) The picture is a visualization of how the club members probably played their Mahjong games although these people were probably playing for fun.

Discussion Questions:

The members of the club send messages through their stories instead of just saying them, what difference does it make to tell a story and have a moral instead of making a statements directly?

Why do you think the club was named Joy and Luck?

Why did the remaining Joy Luck Club members pay for June to meet her half sisters?

What seems to be the difference between the characteristics of the Chinese women in this book and American women?

How does Mahjong embody the Joy Luck Club’s members’ experiences?

Reflection:

This was an amazing book and was extremely easy for me to read, I highly recommend it to others. It accurately captures the way some women in China act but can also be too stereotypical at times but it is definitely a way for others to get a better insight into Chinese culture. The story had a lot of touching moments and the article that my teacher, Kelly Williams gave us of Amy Tan’s influence on the book from her mother could be connected back into the book. I might be a bit bias coming into this book because it is written by a Chinese author and that automatically made me like it a little bit but the many things that Amy stated in the book that I understood made me happy to know that a book about Chinese women and family was so popular back in the time.