Hundreds for Pennies

Hundreds for Pennies

Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club is a series of mnemonic stories about the relationship between four Chinese mothers to their four Chinese-American or America-raised daughters. These are the characters in the story, as written in this order mother’s name and daughter’s name: Suyuan Woo and Jing-mei “June” Woo, Lindo Jong and Waverly Jong, An-mei Hsu and Rose Hsu Jordan, and lastly, Ying-ying St. Clair and Lena St. Clair. The novel begins with June Woo retelling her mother’s story about her life during the Chinese-Japanese war, and the symbolism about the duck that became a swan – which tells the lesson that no matter how bad things get as long as you hold on to your hope and faith, you will flourish and be your dazzling you, and the logic behind the mah jong club’s name: The Joy Luck Club. June Woo claims that she never understood her mother, so when she passed away, June seeks for her mother from the stories of her three close friends as she is appointed to fill her mother’s spot in the mah jong table. From their stories, we can see that there is an apparent awareness of social and economic forces that affect the relationship between these families and between these mothers and daughters.

The relationship between Suyuan and June is faulty because they are lost in translation. At a young age, June Woo and her mother, Suyuan, always bicker because she wanted her daughter to be a prodigy but June, at a young age, learned to listen to her own self. When Suyuan witnessed a young Chinese girl on TV playing piano so gracefully she enrolled June to their neighbor who happened to be a deaf pianist in exchange for home cleaning services. June reluctantly takes the lessons but instead of being invested in it, she realized that her mentor can only give praises, not exactly an effective learning curve (136-138). Suyuan speaks little English, while June understands little Chinese. Suyuan was not able to convey what her true intentions are, and June never tried to understand because she always manage to hate her mother’s way. Another reason why their relationship is faulty is because they are lost in cultural differences. In Asian culture, as I experience it first hand, mothers always want their children to be the best that they could be even if that means pushing them to their limits. And in the American culture, as I see on TV and observe in my surrounding, Americans let their children explore their own capacities which sometimes leads to the children giving up because they get bored easily and their parents end up encouraging them to do something else. This has been June’s way of thinking when she laments, “Why don’t you like me the way I am? I am not a genius!” but Suyuan replies in her English unreachable to June’s understanding, “Who ask you be genius? … Only ask you be your best. For your sake. You think I want you be genius? Hnnh! What for! Who ask you! (136)” Later, when June performs for a recital, her performance was horrifying, so much so that it dented her social (and in the long run) economic relationship with her childhood friend, Waverly Jong, while Suyuan continued to mask her embarrassment, she developed social awkwardness toward her friend, Lindo Jong.

June and Waverly’s relationship began to get sour when Waverly becomes a chess prodigy and brings hope tons of trophies whilst June is not able to perform gracefully with her piano on stage. Waverly tells June, “You aren’t a genius like me (140)” and that made June think that she’s incapable. But although Waverly is a genius as she can gauge, her relationship with her mother is more sour than it is with June. Same as Suyuan’s and June’s relationship, Lindo and Waverly are lost in cultural differences which enable their relationship to be dysfunctional. Like any mother, Lindo feels the need to boast about her daughter’s achievement but Waverly gets embarrassed about it.

Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York: Putnam's, 1989. Print.