Analyzing Short Stories
...between mothers and daughters in the book, The Joy Luck Club. We start this story with a mother, a Chinese immigrant to the United States, telling her American born daughter, Jing-mei, at a very young age that she can become anything she wants to become in America; more specifically, a prodigy of some sort. We witness the mother's search for what kind of prodigy she will turn her daughter into and at the same time we see the sorts of tests she puts her daughter through in her quest to make something of her. Jing-mei quickly grows tired and annoyed with her mother's judgmental pursuits to turn her into something she is not. Regardless, her mother persists and finally decides that her daughter will become a famous pianist. Jing-mei is immediately put into lessons and the family purchases a used piano. All of this comes to an ugly head when, after months of "practicing," her mother signs Jing-mei up for a talent show competition and to her mother's embarrassment Jing-mei shows once and for all that she is no child prodigy. This particular story deals with a mother's struggle to come to terms with her own Chinese heritage at the same time as she attempts to instill certain values in her American daughter. The central idea is that with the inherent differences between an immigrant parent and their first generation American child, can come friction between their thinking.
The main character in this story is the daughter, Jing-mei. Other than that, her mother and her piano teacher, Mr. Chong, are the only other characters with large enough roles to merit discussion. Jing-mei is the narrator of the story and we learn a lot about her, her mother, and their relationship through her account of their interaction when she was young. We learn about Jing-mei through indirect presentation because we are not told specifically about her traits but rather learn about her...
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