The Joy Luck Club
...Asian American literature there seems to be a struggle between the Asian culture and American culture. More specifically, there is a struggle between Asian women and their Asian American daughters, and what it means to be feminine, and how a woman should act. The main struggle is between how the American woman should act and how the Asian woman should act. However, the behavior of the Asian woman seems to be dominant through out the story because although the daughters and the mothers may not get along all of the time, the mothers to receive a lot of respect from their daughters. Therefore, the mother's opinion on how they should act, which is behaving like the Asian woman, is most evident. This is the case in The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan and also in the short story "Waiting for Mr. Kim," written by Carol Roh-Spaulding. These two stories have very different meanings, however they are similar in the aspect that they are all Asian women with Asian American daughters trying to get their daughters to keep and use their Asian heritage. There are certain behaviors that Asian women are expected to have, and the mothers feel that their daughters should use these behaviors. In The Joy Luck Club, the novel traces the fate of the four mothers-Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair-and their four daughters-June Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Waverly Jong, and Lena St. Clair. Through the experiences that these characters go through, they become women. The mothers all fled China in the 1940's and they all retain much of their heritage. Their heritage focuses on what is means to be a female, but more importantly what it means to be an Asian female. In the short story "Waiting for Mr. Kim," the main female character Gracie understands what it means to be an Asian female, but she does question the meaning because of her sisters. Her sisters ran away from...
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