Mother-Daughters

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan seemed to basically revolve around the four pairs of Chinese mother-daughter relationships. Each chapter of the story focuses on one of the eight characters. I found each point of view to be very interesting. Although the characters all came from somewhere in China (or have a background of it) and immigrated to San Francisco, California, they each have a different story to share. No two stories were completely similar. Each character had own perspective of things. I’ve come to realize that most pairs of mother-daughter correspond with each other. For example, in Ying-ying St. Clair’s story, she mentioned how deaf her daughter is to the world at the beginning of her chapter. In her daughter, Lena St. Clair’s chapter, Lena mentioned how her mother slowly broke apart. It’s particularly interesting to see both of their views.
One flaw I found, however, is that there were so many characters that it was hard to keep track of who is who. I forget who the character in the chapter was because it was always written in first person point of view and doesn’t mention many names. Mostly, they referred to other characters as “aunties”, “the daughter of auntie”, “daughter”, or “mother”, never specifying which character it was. I found that very hard to keep track of.