Jing mei woo character traits archive#

I would never feel the need to sulk for anything (p. “In all my imaginings, I was filled with a sense that I would soon become perfect. In the beginning, June is excited and dreams of what she will become. Her mother’s name, Suyuan, meaning, “long cherished wish” speaks of this hope for Jing-Mei, whose name means “the pure younger sister (p322-3)”. Jing-Mei Woo, who is called June in America, represents her mother’s hopes and dreams. This gap between each mother and daughter is described in later chapters.

(p31)” In these quotes, Jing-Mei perceives the gap that occurs between the mothers and daughters.

Then it occurs to Jing-Mei that “they are frightened” because in her they see “their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. Jing-Mei replies, “What will I say? What can I tell them about my mother? I don’t know anything. In the beginning of the story, the mothers who play Mahjong tell Jing-Mei to see her long lost sisters and tell them of their mother. Suyuan and Jing-Mei Woo are mother and daughter, respectively, who are characters that illustrate the conflict between the two cultures. Orientalism, Western feminism, American Dream, and multiculturalism are some of the major discourses whose truthfulness and serenity are shown to be precarious and open to questioning, hence the recuperation of the subaltern’s voice through this contrapuntal reading.Throughout the book, the conflict between the mothers, their Chinese tradition, and language and the daughters, their American tradition, and language are evident.

Jing mei woo character traits archive#

Thus, exploring the discursive fissures and ideological ruptures inscribed in the novel, the authors seek to bring to fore how the very mainstream accounts of Chinese culture and orientalist archive of knowledge in which the work is embedded are contested in the third-space enounters between subjects of different cultures.

It is argued that Tan’s novel is implicated in unexpected forms of resistance as a result of its placement in the borderland of cultures. This paper sets out to investigate Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, a liminal work written in-between cultures, in the light of Homi Bhabha’s concept of the third space as a site of transformation and transvaluation. The present paper is an attempt to explore how the Chinese mothers resolve the friction caused by dual identities with the assistance of space- geographical, social, cultural, spiritual and personal. The novel divided into sixteen interwoven stories describes the complex relationship between four sets of mothers and daughters, Suyuan Woo and Jing-mei Woo Lindo Jong and Waverly Jong An-mei Hsu and Rose Hsu Jordan and Ying Ying St.

The novel explains not only the difficulties enfolding dual cultural identities, specifically Chinese-American but also transcends cultural conflicts by depicting the generational conflicts between mothers and daughters. Her first novel The Joy Luck Club is a bestseller and has garnered her Commonwealth Club Gold Award for fiction, the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award for fiction, The American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Through the richness of her artistic innovation and crafting, Tan has explored a new possibility for fiction writing and has enriched the literary tradition in the genre of novel writing in Chinese American literature. Amy Tan warrants a unique place in Chinese American literature as a result of her intriguing storytelling, which enriches the genre of fiction in its explorations of the connection between past and present and her characters’ struggles over family relations and identity construction.