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I. INTRODUCTION

The topic of “Chinese-American culture clash“ is very broad and can be

differently examined, so I decided to take the novel “The Joy Luck Club“ as

a starting point to get a first impression of what kind of problems are likely

to occur and then to go further and relate these findings to the general

situation.

I want to begin this research paper with a biography of the author to make it

possible to understand why Amy Tan wrote this kind of novel and how

everything fits together. Then I will give an outline of the plot of “The Joy

Luck Club” focusing on the family Jong who will be the family I

concentrate on.

In the following, I try to show how a culture clash gets visible, which means

what kind of conflicts appear and then why these difficulties occur.

To understand this complex system of immigration better, that primarily

caused the situation of living in a country with foreign-born parents, I

explain why people leave their country and how Chinese immigration took

and still takes place.

To sum everything up, I will add my personal reflections on the topic, will

try to make clear why I was interested in “The Joy Luck Club” and how I

finally coped with it. I also put a few statistics in the appendix to make it

possible to the reader to enlarge his knowledge if needed.

II. THE JOY LUCK CLUB

1.The Author

On February 19, 1952, Amy Tan is born in Oakland, on the eastside of San

Francisco Bay. Her parents both emigrated to the USA from Shanghai,

China, in 1949. Her father became an electrical engineer and later a Baptist

minister.

Being Asian-American, Tan wants to conform to American culture as much

as possible during her teens: “I used to think I had come down the wrong

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chute, out of the wrong womb. I was supposed to have been born into a nice

Caucasian family on the East Cost.”

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Her parents put high pressure on her, which is not always easy to cope with

for the young girl: “So I grew up thinking I would never, ever please my

parents. [...]It’s a horrible feeling, especially when you experience what you

think is your first failure and you think your life is over.”

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After the death from brain tumours of both her father and her older brother,

the family moves to Europe, where Tan completes her secondary schooling

in Montreux, Switzerland.

She returns to the USA for university and after changing college five times,

mainly because of arguments with her mother, she finally graduates with a

degree and an MA in Linguistics from San José State University. She meets

Louis De Mattei there, who she marries in 1974.

Although her parents always wanted her to become a neurosurgeon and a

concert pianist by hobby, Tan instead starts her career as a freelance

business writer in 1983 to work for companies such as IBM and Apple

Computer.

Also being a consultant to programs for disabled children, as well as a

reporter and an editor, she eventually discovers her passion for fiction

writing. Her first story “Endgame” wins her admission to the Squaw Valley

Writer’s workshop, the story appears in several magazines. A literary agent

discovers Tan’s abilities and encourages her to complete an entire volume of

stories.

At about this time, however, Tan’s mother falls very ill and makes her

daughter promise her a trip to China in case of recovery. So the two depart

for China in 1987 after the mother regained her health. Finding new

inspiration through this trip and the close contact to her mother, Tan finishes

The Joy Luck Club, which instantly climbs all best-seller lists.

Into this novel, she weaves her mother’s stories and her own impression of

her mother’s country, saying:

1

Andrews, Richard, The Joy Luck Club (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),

p.290

2

www.achievement.org

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“I wanted her [my mother] to know what I thought about China and what I

thought about growing up in this country [the USA].”

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Her following books (The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Moon Lady, The

Chinese Siamese Cat and The Hundred Secret Senses) only confirm her

good reputation by enjoying excellent sales.

Today, Amy Tan is one of America’s most popular novelists and lives with

her husband in San Francisco.

2.1.The Plot

Amy Tan’s first novel – The Joy Luck Club – was published in 1989. It

consists of a collection of interrelated stories and deals with the history and

experiences of four Chinese mothers who immigrate to the USA and their

four American-born daughters.

The stories are placed in four sections of four stories each: the first set is

told by the mothers, followed by two by the daughters and a last one by the

mothers. It has been argued that this carries great symbolic weight, since in

Taoism these numbers are important (see also www.mindspring.com for

further information), but in any case, it makes it possible to show two

different perspectives of one and the same topic mixed closely together.

Although the mothers come from very different backgrounds and areas in

China, fate has been unkind to all of them in its special way and has finally

led to the immigration. In the US, they get to know to each other and meet

on a regular basis to play mah jong together in the “Joy Luck Club”, where

the title of the book is to be found. The name of the club, however, dates

back to one of the mothers, who founded it many years before in wartime

China “in order to transmute the painful history of women like herself into a

communal expression of defiance and hope”

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. At first, the club maybe

stands for similar values in America as well, but later, as everybody gets

better integrated, it is rather a meeting of good friends than a help to

survive.

3

Julie Lew, How Stories Written for Mother Became Amy Tan’s Best Seller, interview

with Amy Tan (New York Times, 4 July 1989)

4

Heung, Marina, Daughter-Text/Mother-Text: matrilineage in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck

Club (Feminist Studies, 19, 3, Fall 1993), p.608

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The mothers tell their history from their childhood to the current situation in

the US, whereas the daughters’ stories mainly deal with their present lives.

The reader, however, is also presented a new perspective of how they were

raised in America and obtains a new kind of view on the mothers, who are

not always regarded kindly by their progeny. One gets to know the conflicts

between mother and daughter resulting of the opposing mentalities they

have and we finally understand why each one is the way she is (see also

chapter III. and chapter IV.).

In the end, in all cases, mother and daughter are reunited and will be able to

bear their problems much better because they gained understanding of each

other and also know now why their counterpart acts the way she does.

2.2.Family Jong

Lindo Jong grows up in a modest family in China who betroths her at the

age of two to an even younger boy. Her parents give her to his family when

she turns twelve, since they have to leave the region because of a disastrous

flood that destroyed their house.

Four years later, after great humiliation by her mother-in-law, Lindo finally

has to marry, but never gets the child she is expected to have because her

husband refuses to sleep with her. This, although it is not her fault, brings

her in bad trouble, but she arrives to make the marriage declared broken and

is therefore able to turn away from her husband and his cruel family. Which

is important, however, is that Lindo never breaks the promise given to her

mother that she would never bring shame on her family, but that she gets

away from the marriage with the help of a cunning trick without disgracing

her family’s reputation.

Lindo immigrates to San Francisco, where she gets to know Tin, who she

marries in order to get a child to be allowed to stay in the US. She even

finds love in this marriage and the they have two sons and a daughter,

Waverly, who tells the other stories in the novel.

Waverly grows up in Chinatown playing in the streets like all the other

children, but then spends her youth playing chess until she becomes a

national chess champion at early age. Despite her talent, she cannot win any

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more after a serious argument with her mother and she stops playing

altogether.

The relation between Lindo and her daughter never gets relaxed again (see

also chapter III. about the problems they have), and when Waverly falls in

love with a boy at High School, she runs away with him. She even gets a

daughter, Shoshana (the only third-generation character in the novel), but

the marriage quickly leads to a divorce because her mother makes Waverly

see everything negative in the man she loves.

Soon, she gets to know to Rich Shields and the two plan to marry.

Nevertheless they do not dare tell Lindo, who seems to disapprove of

Waverly’s husband. In the end, however, the daughter finds out that her

mother would never want to destroy her love, but that she always tries to

give her child the best possible. They stop arguing, because Lindo and

Waverly have gained understanding of each other and they plan to visit

China together. It remains uncertain to the reader, if they really do this, but

one has nevertheless understood that a balance between mother and

daughter has finally been achieved after all those years of problems.

III.CULTURE CLASH

1.1.Problems within the Jong family

Within family Jong, the atmosphere is not always relaxed, but there are

some rather heavy conflicts between mother and daughter. These problems

do not only arise from the normal generation gap that exists in most

families, but they are even more intensified by the different background

they grew up in and the different education they received.

Because of the two different perspectives that Amy Tan offers the reader,

we are probably the ones who can best understand both mother and

daughter, and are able to see through their misunderstandings better than the

characters themselves ever could. In the following, I will show some

examples of the distorted mother-daughter relationship, and try to explain

why Lindo and Waverly always tend to argue.

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Looking at the conflict from the daughter’s point of view, one understands

that it is not easy for her to fulfil all the high expectations Lindo has. She

never seems to be satisfied with Waverly, even when her daughter wins a

chess tournament: “Next time win more, lose less.”(p.88)

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Waverly would like to be praised, but her mother would never do this in

public because she is proud of her “Chinese humility”(p.87)

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. This often

stands in contrast to Waverly’s wants and needs, in one case those of an

eight-year-old child who would love to play with the chess set given as a

Christmas gift from an old lady (p.83)

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, which is absolutely natural.

Waverly certainly thinks that she cannot do anything on her own without

being watched and critically judged by her mother. When she plays chess

and the press arrives, she has to take on the poses Lindo showed her (p.90)

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and when she is older and eats at a restaurant with her mother, she still gets

embarrassed because of the steady complaints her mother always

pronounces.

Waverly aims to live her own life despite Lindo who seems to control

everything. During the first time of Waverly’s relationship to Rich, Waverly

criticises her mother’s behaviour: “When I was first married, she used to

drop by unannounced, until one day I suggested she should call ahead of

time”(p.162)

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. This leads to the situation that Lindo never comes to her

daughter’s flat unless she receives an invitation, which naturally minimalists

the contact between mother and daughter and does not help them to

understand each other better.

This same behaviour of both mother and daughter can already be seen in the

beginning of the book, for example when Waverly criticises that Lindo

always diminishes the worth of things Waverly has done and that she tries

“to take all the credit”(p.164)

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. Here, Waverly feels left over and expects a

good word from her mother who does not seem to care for her daughter’s

feelings. This emotion builds up until Waverly shouts at her mother who is

very hurt and stops talking altogether with her daughter. Waverly

5

Tan, Amy, The Joy Luck Club (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)

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remembers: “It was as if she had erected an invisible wall”(p.167)

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and she

cannot stand this situation because – as she mentions, “My mother knows

how to hit a nerve.”(p.164)

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.

From Waverly’s point of view, Lindo uses her enormous power to destroy

all her daughter’s hopes or achievements, as she also destroys Waverly’s

first marriage. Neither does Lindo appreciate her daughter’s boyfriends, nor

their presents: “This is not so good.[...]It is just leftover strips.”(p.163)

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.

Waverly would like to fight against this, but – as she tells a friend – she

“can’t stand up to [her] own mother”(p.167)

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. Although she wants to make

Lindo “shut up”(p.168)

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, she does not dare do this because she has learnt

Chinese politeness from her parents.

From Lindo’s perspective, however, everything looks different. She has

difficulties dealing with her daughter who does not entirely follow her

Chinese ways, but who wants to integrate in American society without

being steadily regarded as a second-generation Asian immigrant. This does

not imply that Lindo did not adapt herself to the new culture (she talks about

her two faces, for example, and she gave her children English names), but it

is clear that she will never be all-American no matter how hard she tries. It

must be difficult for her to see that she has not succeeded in giving her

children “the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese

character”(p.252)

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.

Lindo also fears that she loses her daughter one day, which is why she

named Waverly after the street they live in. As she mentions, “I wanted you

to think, This is where I belong. But I also knew if I named you after this

street, soon you would grow up, leave this place, and take a piece of me

with you.”(p.265)

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. This might be a fear existing in most mothers, but I

think that Lindo tends to exaggerate it because of her roots and her early

loss of mother. When she worries that her grand-child will “forget that she

had a grandmother”(p.41)

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, this fear gets obvious again and it is revealed

that she considers Americans as people who do not always say what they

really mean and whose family bonds are not very strong.

6

Tan, Amy, The Joy Luck Club (op.cit.)

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These are mostly conflicts arising from the generation gap between mother

and daughter, but Amy Tan offers the reader also an insight into the

differences between American and Chinese values. This gets most obvious

when Lindo looks at her daughter in the hairdresser’s mirror and realises

that Waverly’s nose is not straight but slightly crooked. She takes this for a

bad sign, because her grand-mother always measured a person’s fortune by

looking at their face. American-born Waverly, on the other hand, likes her

nose because of the “devious” look it gives her, which the mother cannot

understand either.

Another problem between the two is that Waverly does not value promises

as much as Lindo does who almost sacrificed all her life not to break the

promise made to her mother, which was very natural in China at this time.

So she says, “to you promises mean nothing. A daughter can promise to

come to dinner, but if she has a headache, if she has a traffic jam, if she

wants to watch a favourite movie on TV, she no longer has a

promise.”(p.41)

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.

Despite all these conflicts – I could only name a few here – Waverly and

Lindo get together in the end and although they will always fight a little bit,

they have finally gained mutual understanding so that both can avoid these

arguments as much as possible in the future. Because the misunderstandings

are finally solved, they will never feel something as strong as hatred or

jealousy again and they have succeeded in bridging the gap existing

between them.

1.2.Problems in immigrant families in general

Children of immigrants often encounter serious problems in their family

life, of which I have already described various while naming the troubles

within family Jong in The Joy Luck Club. There are some more conflicts,

however, that I would like to mention, first of all the problem of language

that I consider as particularly important.

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Tan, Amy, The Joy Luck Club (op.cit.)

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In immigrant families, parents do not always teach their children their native

language, which brings along the danger of misunderstanding. The parents

cannot master English perfectly and so they cannot express themselves in a

proper way, whereas the children do not know their parents’ language, let

alone the writing (esp. in Chinese or Japanese families), which again leads

to a bigger gap between the two sides.

This happens because an identification with the parents’ culture must fail, if

the children do not read literature in their parents’ language, or are not able

to speak it themselves. So the second generation cannot appreciate the

traditional values their parents still possess and conflicts between them are

unavoidable. In The Joy Luck Club, this is presented to the reader in a very

direct way, when Lindo talks about Chinese places and Waverly cannot

even differentiate between the pronunciation of Taiwan and Taiyuan. For

the mother, these two things are so opposing that she almost feels personally

insulted by her daughter’s ignorance.

Another problem could be that immigrants tend to be over-protectors

towards their children, as seen in The Joy Luck Club as well. They often

experienced tragedies and as a consequence, they do not want their progeny

to have to bear similar circumstances. Besides, most parents had to leave

everything behind in their home country, so a new experience of terrible

loss would be unendurable to them, even more than to other parents.

This, however, makes these parents hard to satisfy, for they expect their

children to achieve very high goals because of the good circumstances they

were born in. It is certainly clear to everyone that nearly no child is able to

fulfil all these expectations. Amy Tan herself experienced something similar

to this, she remembers: ”My parents had very high expectations. They

expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten."

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She

also says that she felt “wounded and frightened”

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when her mother asked

her why she did not achieve the best possible and it left her in a peculiar

relationship to her parents.

8

www.achievement.org

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In an article about discrimination of Chinese Americans, it is stated that “for

most Chinese the problem is not so much physical barriers, as it is for

blacks, as it is a question of identity. Who are you as a Chinese in the

United States?”

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This seems to be quite true and can be proved for the

parents as well as for the second generation. It might be even the most

difficult for the children, since hardly any identification to the parents’

country is existent, although others see them as foreigners or immigrants. In

the New York Times Article already quoted, the author comments on this

argument: “It is particularly difficult for the younger people who have

grown up in the United States, still having an Oriental face but not even

speaking their parents’ language.”

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The children mostly feel American,

but they are considered Oriental by the others.

Parents often do not understand this difficult situation and want their

children to keep their traditions and not to adapt to American culture

instead. In an article about Italian immigrants, for example, the parents are

described the way that “they want their daughter to grow up in the

traditions of their own youth. She must associate only with Italians [...]. She

must live in the way that her mother enjoyed as a girl.”

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For immigrant

children, this is just not possible because of their American friends and their

American surroundings.

A similar image is presented in another article about Italians in the U.S.:

“[The daughter] is confused by the conflicting signals given to her by [her

parents]: ‘Get an education, but don’t change’, ’go out in the larger world

but don’t become part of it’”

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Here, it gets obvious again, that the family

does not want their child to become part of the American society, but to stay

with them instead.

These are only few examples of problems occurring in immigrant families,

but I think they make already clear that this belonging to two different

9

“Orientals Find Bias Is Down Sharply in U.S.” in Shenton, James P., Ethnic Groups in

American Life (New York: Arno Press, 1978), p.361

10

“Orientals Find Bias Is Down Sharply in U.S.” in Ethnic Groups in American Life

(op.cit.), p.361

11

“Our Second Foreign-Born Generation” in Ethnic Groups in American Life

(op.cit.), p.308

12

“Twenty Million Italian-Americans Can’t Be Wrong” in Ethnic Groups in American Life

(op.cit.), p.325

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worlds and cultures at the same time brings huge difficulties to both parents

and children and that they have to put all effort into their living

harmoniously together. This does not imply, of course, that there cannot be

any exceptions, any families living together in harmony, but it is still more

likely for immigrant families to encounter these kind of problems than it is

for families already living in the U.S. for many generations.

2.Reasons for the occurrence of the culture clash

It is no question that in the case of family problems, there exist millions of

reasons why the members do not get along with each other as they should.

Since the same applies to immigrant families, I will try to point out just a

few more reasons that I have not already mentioned in part IV and that are

typical of immigrant families.

First of all, we will certainly recognise that many immigrant parents cannot

adjust to society as their American-born children can. In the article already

quoted about the Sicilian girl, the author notes that “the friction in

Concetta’s home is caused by the reluctance and inability of her parents to

accept the conditions of their adopted land.”

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They try to preserve their

own culture and by doing this, they prevent their children from integrating

into American society, or it eventually leads to a conflict between the two

parts.

M. Heung calls Waverly Jong “the product of two cultures” and adds that it

is “unlikely that mother and daughter can achieve perfect identification”

because “the burden of differences in personal history and cultural

conditioning is too great”

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. It is easy to agree here because one understands

quickly that Lindo and her daughter have experiences far too different to

make it possible to Waverly to become the ‘younger self’ of her mother.

Whereas Waverly feels at ease in modern American society, Lindo still

criticises American behaviour, which can be seen in particular in the scene

13

“Our Second Foreign-Born Generation” in Ethnic Groups in American Life

(op.cit.), p.308

14

Heung, Marina (op.cit.), p.603

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at the hairdresser’s when Mr. Rory talks about Lindo as if she would not

understand him, but to Waverly, he acts in a normal way. Lindo does not

like the indirect regards her daughter and Mr. Rory exchange in this

“American” superficial way.

The mother has a completely different understanding of family and general

morality, which gets a lot clearer if one knows a text by L. Tutang, which

was written at the time of Lindo’s birth and is about the Confucian family

system in China: “We knew the family only as the basis of human society.

The system colours all our social life. [...] It keeps our young in the places.

It overprotects our children, and it is strange how few children rebel and

run away. [...] It makes it rude for a young couple to close the door of their

room in the family house in daytime, and it makes privacy an unknown word

in China.

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”

This explains easily, why Waverly complains about the steady protection by

her mother, whereas Lindo considers it as something absolutely natural. The

daughter is not only annoyed, but she is even embarrassed: “The mother

doesn’t behave the way a white mother behaves, not knowing any better, so

she is a source of humiliation for the daughter.”

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Here, we can see that

even if the mother tries very hard to please her daughter, she will not always

achieve this, because she does not know the ways she would have to do this.

The examples of reasons mentioned make clear that the culture clash is

often unavoidable, and that it might only be possible to soothe it by trying to

gain better knowledge of the others.

IV.REASONS FOR IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES

1.Reasons for immigration

In many cases, the reasons for the immigration were similar, no matter

where the people came from. They all wanted to start a new life in the US

and had hopes that are closely linked to the theme of the ‘American Dream’,

15

Yutang, Lin, My Country And My People (London: William Heinemann, 1936), p.168

16

Ghymn, Esther M., images of Asian American Women by Asian American Women

Writers (New York: Many Voices, 1995), p.31

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which could be defined by the three expressions of “equality”, “liberty” and

“pursuit of happiness”.

As John F. Kennedy put it: “There were probably as many reasons for

coming to America as there were people who came. It was a highly

individual decision. Yet it can be said that three large forces – religious

persecution, political oppression and economic hardship – provided the

chief motives for the mass migrations to our shores.”

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People saw the United States as a country where everything was possible,

where they could achieve all aims and where no social or racial barriers

would ever prevent them from success. Especially during the time of the

gold rush around 1848, people dreamed that it was very easy in the US to

get rich quickly, and I think this hope still lingers today, just mentioning the

idea that one can rise from “rags to riches” and that you have the possibility

to make it “from the log cabin to the White House”. Although many

immigrants were left disappointed after the arrival in America, the dreams

could not be diminished in their home countries and many followed.

Others were politically or religiously persecuted and saw their own chance

to survive in coming to the United States, where they were offered a place to

start a new life.

At the beginning of the immigration waves, it often occurred (esp. within

Chinese families) that the men migrated on their own and left their wives

and children at home. This lead to a new increase of immigration numbers,

since the families eventually joined their relatives.

Speaking directly of Chinese immigration, one can say that life was not easy

in the Oriental states during the beginning of the 20

th

century, since civil

war (1917), the rise of communism and the fight against it by the

Kuomintang (nationalist party; 1928) made people suffer a lot. Between

1931 and 1945, China was under Japanese occupation, which increased

poverty and political persecution.

Others, like women, had to suffer because of unequal rights that were not

bearable any more, as M. Heung explains: “women in the Chinese family

are regarded as disposable property or detachable appendages. [...]The

17

Kennedy, John F., A Nation of Immigrants (New York: Popular Library, 1964), p.24

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marginal status of Chinese women shows itself in their forced transfer from

natal families to other families through the practice of arranged marriage,

concubinage, adoption and pawning.”

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. They were badly treated by their

husbands or even their mothers and sought refuge in the more modern

American society, even if equal rights for women were not fully achieved

there either at the first half of the 20

th

century.

In The Joy Luck Club, we are shown different examples of reasons for

immigration. Lindo Jong, for instance, has to leave the country to get away

from her broken marriage and her husband’s unfair family in the hope of

being able to start all over again in America.

All in all, considering the examples above, one can say that there exist a

clear connection between most immigration cases, since the immigrants all

hoped to get away from the problems in their country to lead a better, free

and successful life in the United States.

2.History and present of Chinese immigration

The Pioneers: 1785-1848

The first Chinese immigrants were recorded in 1785, but this small group

only followed few people so that up to the mid-19

th

century, no more than

30 Chinese lived in the United States.

Unrestricted immigration: 1848-82

The discovery of gold in California attracted many Chinese and the number

increased to about 100,000 people in 1880. Many of them went to the

mining areas, but a lot of them also settled in Hawaii to work in the sugar or

the trade business.

At the end of the 1850s, when the gold fever subsided, Chinese helped to

build the western sections of the transcontinental railroads, which lead to

Chinese people spreading all over the United States because they often

followed the railroads. California, however, remained the centre of Chinese

population, and 25% of its labour force was made up of Chinese, although

they were only a tenth of the total population. This can be easily explained if

18

Heung, Marina (op.cit.), p.601

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one knows that immigrants consisted mostly of young men who were able

to work hard. They remit funds to their family in China and dreamed of

returning to their country after having accumulated enough savings. This

aim, however, was not often achieved, and most of them stayed in the

United States. Women were not very numerous at this time, they were

mainly wives of merchants, but a lot of them worked as prostitutes as well.

The 1870s with its economic depression marks the begin of an anti-Chinese

movement and finally lead to the 1

st

exclusion act in 1882. The entry to the

US of Chinese labourers was banned, exempting only diplomats, tourists,

merchants, students, and the like (see also statistic in the appendix).

Exclusion:1882-1943

Because of the exclusion act, influx of Chinese immigrants was reduced, but

many still found a way round the laws. So policies became stricter and

interrogations at the entry ports common practice. Still known today is

Angel Island, a detention facility near San Francisco, where many arriving

immigrants were kept, often for a long period of time.

The popularity declined, with its anti-climax in 1920, but this also

normalised the men-women ratio, also because of the new American-born

generation. From a high 2,679 men to 100 women-ratio in 1890, it dropped

to a 285:100 in 1940. This made the former bachelor society change into

one based on family and Chinese culture became more and more apparent.

Chinese-language press appeared and a Chinatown subculture developed,

mixing features of Chinese and Western societies.

Many employers, however, refused to hire Chinese labourers who therefore

concentrated on the service industry to become domestics or laundrymen or

to start a restaurant business.

Restricted immigration:1943-65

During World War II., the wartime labour shortage forced employers to

seek for labourers, and the perspectives for Chinese got better. Many of

them also served in the American armed forces, which, together with the

Chinese resisting to Japanese occupation in China, helped to improve the

picture of Chinese in the US. Congress repealed the exclusion acts in 1943

and war veterans could bring their wives to America. The immigration

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quota remained at 105, but the Chinese were given the right of

naturalisation.

Immigration on an equal basis: after 1965

In 1965, Congress finally passed another Immigration Act, which

guaranteed equal treatment for applicants from all nations with a quota of

20,000 each. The number of immigrants from mainland China, however, did

not greatly increase until the late 1970s when the relations between the two

countries normalised and China changed its emigration policy.

From the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, the Chinese population eventually

grew to an estimated two million, making it the largest Asian group in

America.

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V.FINAL REFLECTIONS ON THE TOPIC

It is not easy to sum up everything mentioned in this research paper, but I

think that it is important to hold on to the revelation that immigrants do not

always live an easy life in the United States and that the ideal of the

American Dream cannot be achieved in the majority of cases. We have to

remind ourselves that the problems described in chapter III. existed fifty

years ago and still exist today. There might be a relaxation of the situation,

since discrimination of foreigners has become less over the years, but the

problems resulting of different backgrounds still occur. Maybe it is now the

Hispanics or other immigrant groups who are mainly concerned, because the

number of Chinese immigrants has diminished, but wherever they come

from, they still have similar kinds of problems.

I found it interesting to read The Joy Luck Club, because it showed different

cases of immigration and one can understand the whole situation much

better than if it was written in a history book. The novel by Amy Tan does

not only give example of historical events, but it also makes us think about

19

cf. Pan, Lynn, The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas (Richmond: Curzon Press,

1999)

17

17

relationships within a family and why arguments occur, which a very

important aspect to me.

VI. REASONS FOR CHOOSING THIS NOVEL AND HOW I COPED

WITH IT

First of all, I want to say that I am very happy with my decision to take The

Joy Luck Club because I really liked the novel and I found it very

interesting to read. I have been curious of Oriental culture for a longer

period of time and to be honest, I did not want to take an entirely American-

based topic because I preferred to examine the American Dream in a critical

way from the point of view of an ‘outsider’.

At the beginning of writing this research paper, I did not quite know where

to start, but then I discovered that the table of contents helped me a lot to put

my ideas together and bring them into shape.

During my work, I sometimes had to find out that it takes longer than one

thinks to put all the collected information together and to summarise it in a

short text. I could have written much more than the 16 pages and it was a

challenge to keep it short.

I must mention that it was not too difficult to find the information I needed,

and after consulting several libraries, I possessed more than I could even

utilise. In the internet, however, I had some problems to find the right web

pages, because I had to find out that some of them did not contain more than

pure nonsense. Another difficulty was that no book dealt extensively with

The Joy Luck Club, but that only a chapter or only a few lines were

important for my work, and it was not always easy to find those.

All in all, I can say that it was interesting to write this research paper, and I

think that I learned a lot about the topic I dealt with, but nevertheless, the

limitation of time and of pages helped to reduce the joy I had with it and put

a lot of pressure on me.