The Joy Luck Club Cultural Analysis

As seen by the mothers’ and daughters’ behavior towards each other in The Joy Luck Club, it is difficult to preserve one’s culture when one is exposed to a new environment or country. With a difference of two distinct generations between them, the four main pairs often come across cultural collisions. Other than facing the age gap, these mothers and daughters also have to deal with a language and communication barrier. Already, at the beginning of the story, Jing-Mei Woo is able to understand how the mothers of the “Joy Luck Club” are displeased with their daughter’s rejection of their Chinese culture. She speaks to herself, admitting that “they are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America.

The daughters are “ignorant,...unmindful of all the truths and hopes” that their mothers have brought to America. Complaining about the way their mothers are not able to understand much about the new culture they are living in, the daughters dismiss their traditional Chinese ways as “stupid,” letting the mothers think there will be no hope for the Chinese traditions to be “passed from generation to generation.” There is an indirect collision between the mothers’ generation and the generations in the future; Suyuan Woo and her friends will no longer have an effect and be valued by those generations. Daughter Rose Hsu Jordan also comes across conflicts with her husband’s Ted Jordan’s mother before the couple gets married. Ted mother’s explained to Rose that “he needed to concentrate on his medical studies before he could even think about