Amy Tan

A detailed Summary of Amy Tan

In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan explores the different mother-daughter relationships between the characters, and at a lower level, relationships between friends, lovers, and even enemies. The mother-daughter relationships are most likely different aspects of Tan's relationship with her mother, and perhaps some parts are entirely figments of her imagination. In this book, she presents the conflicting views and the stories of both sides, providing the reader--and ultimately, the characters--with an understanding of the mentalities of both mother and daughter, and why each one is the way she is.

The book is organized into four sections, two devoted to the mothers and two devoted to the daughters, with the exception of June. The first section, logically, is about the mothers' childhoods in China, the period of time during which their personalities were molded, giving the reader a better sense of their "true" selves, since later in the book the daughters view their mothers in a different and unflattering light. Tan does this so the reader can see the stories behind both sides and so as not to judge either side unfairly. This section, titled Feathers From a Thousand Li Away, is aptly named, since it describes

The fourth and final section wraps up the book with the mothers' stories of what happened after their childhood. The title, Queen Mother of the Western Skies, signifies that the mothers were the Queen Mothers of the daughters, and that they were the mystical wise ones whom their daughters should have heeded. Here, the mothers conclude their stories and the daughters finally realized the pain, heartaches, and happiness of their forbears, and that they should have revered their mothers from the beginning as the traditional Chinese would have revered the Queen Mother. As the story in the beginning of the section suggests, the mothers watch as their daughters grow, feeling the desire to protect them, to teach them "how to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever." To the mothers, the daughters are themselves reborn, a chance for the mothers to give them a better life than they had had in China.

The second and third sections are about the daughters' lives, and the vignettes in each section trace their personality growth and development. Through the eyes of the daughters, we can also see the continuation of the mothers' stories, how they learned to cope in America. In these sections, Amy Tan explores the difficulties in growing up as a Chinese-American and the problems assimilating into modern society. The Chinese-American daughters try their b

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Approximate Word count = 922
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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Amy Tan

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