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Jenna Rock
Ms. Albrecht
Advanced Composition
4/24/15
The Literary Influences of a Chinese-American Lifestyle
Amy Tan is a Chinese-American author whose writing was greatly influenced by her
parents strong Chinese background and her own American upbringing. In her early life, she
struggled greatly to find a balance between these two opposite cultures that were heavily
enforced on her in different ways. Though she had difficulty in finding her identity, her
background ultimately led her to write The Joy Luck Club, a best-selling novel that thoroughly
explores the difficulties of intertwining a strict, superstitious Chinese culture with a more laidback, lenient American lifestyle. Tan wrote The Joy Luck Club as a fictional story, but portions of
her own life and her parents lives were used as pieces of a puzzle that would ultimately reveal
incredible truths about the heartbreak, despair, and family pressures that consumed her identity
as a she tried to find her place in society.
As a child, Tan constantly felt the pressures of her parents expectations. Her mother and
father, who both fled to America from communist China, dreamed that she would be a concert
pianist or that she would go to medical school and become a doctor. Being raised in such a strict
manner while having outside influences of free, accepting American culture only drove Tan to
defy her parents and secretly pursue art and reading-- the two topics that helped her escape her
circumstances. Tans family belonged to a social group of other Chinese immigrants called the
Joy Luck Club, where they attempted to meddle with the American Dream by playing the stock
market. At the age of fifteen, both Tans brother and father died of brain tumors (Amy Tan 1).

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After both tragedies happening only six months apart, Tan reached a dangerously low point in
her life. She and her mother moved to Europe in an attempt to escape from the burden of their
losses, and Tan began to experiment with drug usage. The strongest influences on her life came
from her suicidal boyfriend and hippie friends, but when she was arrested for drug possession at
sixteen and let off with a warning, Tan decided it was time to turn her life around. She enrolled in
Linfield college and attended a myriad of colleges afterwards to earn Bachelors and Masters
degrees, while her Doctorate came from the University of California-- Berkeley in the area of
linguistics. In the early 1980s, Tan worked as a freelance writer for telecommunication
industries, but the job left her wondering whether or not she had pursued the correct career. In
order to find more meaning in life, she began to write fiction in 1985. The Squaw Valley
Community of Writers held a writing workshop that Tan attended, whereupon she received a
piece of advice from the acclaimed author Molly Giles about story structure that led her to write
her most famous work, The Joy Luck Club (About Amy Tan).
Revolving around the lives of four Chinese- American girls from youth to adulthood, Tan
perfectly describes the odd, unfitting mixture of Chinese and American cultures, and the effects
of both growing up and parenting in such a difficult combination of lifestyles. By centering the
story around The Joy Luck Club, Tan takes an essential, true part of her life and creates more
characters and stories that, while they arent factual or existent, certainly could be. Perhaps the
most important and influential part of The Joy Luck Club, though, is how Tan appeals to an
American audience by using the perspectives and linguistics of the country which she is native
to, but also uses her unique Chinese upbringing and background to take an in-depth, close-up
look at a culture that is often stereotyped and misrepresented. This technique not only gives

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audiences a more truthful idea of a Chinese way of life, but it also helps display how Tan felt
drawn to both sides of herself and struggled to identify where she truly belonged.
Even though The Joy Luck Club switches narrators at every chapter, the tone and style
stay the same throughout. Tan often uses many Chinese phrases and words, which the reader
becomes familiar with so that no explanation is necessary. The daughters references to the
mixed cultures all seem to be in agreeance that the Chinese lifestyle is too harsh and superstitious
in comparison with Americas free, accepting one, but the mothers, whose native countries are all
China, only see lazy American ways, and they want their daughters to become smart, successful,
honorable women. This is the main conflict within the book, and tones of bitterness, jealousy,
and resentment are found frequently from both the daughters and mothers. Stylistically, each new
narrator lets the reader see a new truth behind how the others have described them. Because
Chinese culture often makes individuals come across as guarded, unemotional, and goaloriented, the audience gets to see two completely different sides of the narrators; they are
described by the others, but then take readers to a deep, unseen part of themselves as they reveal
how they truly feel about their circumstances and treatment.
In the end, the reader has a greater understanding that the mothers are deeply hurt by their
daughters yearning to change who they are and how they are raised. The pushing, practicing,
and studying come only out of love, as no mother wants to see her child go out into the world
unequipped with what one needs to become a successful, self-supporting individual. On the other
hand, the relatable daughters display that they are tired of striving for acceptance, and would
rather pursue their own dreams. As the daughters grow older, though, they start to have a better
understanding of how they were raised, and why their mothers had just as difficult of a time as

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they did. The final chapters of the book leave the reader with the realization that both parties
were misunderstood in their intentions.
Tan describes the lives of a prodigal chess player, a piano student who fell below
expectations, a child desperate to meet her long-lost twin sisters in China, and another who strays
from her familys wishes and falls in love with an American man. Though Tans own childhood
did not include any of these happenings, she used fictional failures to show how she felt when
her own aspirations did not match up with the medical and piano dreams her parents had already
dreamed for her. She uses these made-up circumstances to describe how distant she felt from her
own mother, which creates a lost, misunderstood sense. As children, the daughters seem to be
ashamed of their mothers, and it is obvious that they dont understand their upbringing. I could
never tell my father . . . How could I tell him my mother was crazy? (Tan 117). They dont try
to comprehend their culture, which is a big part of understanding their traditional Chinese
mothers. When their mothers show pride in them, the girls only show their embarrassment. One
daughter shows her shame when she states, I wish you wouldnt do that, telling everyone Im
your daughter, as her mother proudly brags about her daughters intellectual abilities to anyone
who will listen (Tan 101). The girls simply cannot relate to their mothers because they were
raised in a different world. No matter how much the mothers care for them or how much they
sacrifice to make their girls lives better, the daughters are blind to their mothers pain and
feelings.
All four of the Joy Luck mothers have a great hope that their daughters will flourish
and bring pride to their families: In America I will have a daughter just like me . . . over there
nobody will look down on her . . . and she will always be too full to swallow any sorrow! She
will know my meaning because I will give her this swan . . . it carries with it all my good

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intentions (Tan 3-4). However, as emotional distance grows with time, the mothers see their
mistakes. I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and
Chinese character. How could I know these two things do not mix? (Tan 289). And though it
seems throughout the book that the mothers are far too expecting of their daughters, a different
tone is felt by a mothers confession, I am ashamed she is ashamed. Because she is my daughter
and I am proud of her, and I am her mother but she is not proud of me (Tan 291).
As time goes on and the daughters embark on their own, independent journeys with
their own families, they slowly start to understand the difficulties their mothers went through.
They find, though, that time has separated them so much, that it is merely impossible to fix the
broken relationships that are all they have ever known. It is not until the final pages when one of
the daughters finally understands her Chinese-American identity as she meets her Chinese sisters
for the very first time and sees traces of her mother, who recently passed away, in their faces.
And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our
blood. After all these years, it can finally be let go (Tan 331).
This powerful look at the true feelings of both mother and daughter in challenging
situations lets readers see that, though words and actions may lead one to think otherwise, both
parties only want to feel loved and understood. Tans extremely emotional account of how life
can be for Chinese-Americans reflects her own difficulties as she grew up struggling to find a
common ground with the two opposite cultures that influenced her life.
Works Cited
About Amy Tan. Amytan.net. Amytan.net, N.D. Web. 20 April 2015.
Amy Tan. Achievement.org. Achievement.org, 7 November 2013. Web. 20 April 2015.
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York City: Ballantine Books, 1989. Print.

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