Terrifying Past Joy Luck Club
In the novel The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, four of the main characters have a secret in their past that haunt them constantly. Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair all have terribly bad experiences in China. These women try to escape their past by moving to America, but their memories still disturb them .Not only does it plague their own minds, but it also affected their daughters' lives and the way they were raised. Each of these women experienced terrible events in their lives that effected them and the following generation. Suyuan Woo has one main focus in her life, to find her two lost baby daughters in China. "Your mother was a very strong woman, a good mother.....and that's why you can understand why a mother like this could never forget her other daughters. She knew they were alive and before she died she wanted to find her daughters in China" (Tan 29). Everyday she felt guilty for abandoning these two helpless children and desperately tried to find them in everyway possible. June Woo, Suyuan's daughter, was also affected by this constant search. When her mother dies, June goes to China to find her long lost sisters. June says " I look at their faces again and I see no trace of my mother in them..
. and now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is our blood. After all theses years, it can finally be let go" (331). This event in June's life helps her find her true Chinese identity and solve the mystery that plagued her and her mother's life for so long. Lindo Jong was abandon by her mother at a very young age. Because of their poverty, Lindo's mother thought it would be best for her to marry into wealth; her mother spoke to her as if she was someone else's child. Lindo said, " Because I was promised to the Huangs' son for marriage, my own family began treating me as if I belong to somebody else" (45). The absence of Lindo's mother left a hole in her heart. When Lindo has a daughter, she tries to be the mother she never had. Unfortunately she was so proud of her that she showed her off to much. Waverly said " Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don't you learn how to play chess?" (101). Lindo was drastically hurt because she never wanted anything but the best for her daughter. From that moment on, Lindo never showed off her daughter again and their relationship was strained for years to come. In The Joy Luck Club the four mother figures are intertwined by a connection. Each of them has an incident in the past they would like to forget. These incidents not only affected their o
Some common words found in the essay are:
Woo Suyuan's, St Clair, Lindo Jong, Jordan An-Mei's, Luck Club, StClair Ying-ying's, Suyuan Woo, China Tan, Amy Tan, spirit weak, , joy luck club, lindo daughter, daughters china, lindo jong, st clair, mother's spirit, spirit rose, lindo's mother, suyuan woo, mother dies,
Approximate Word count = 925
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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