Chinese Character

I felt somewhat connected to The Joy Luck Club when I read the Chinese portions included in the text. I speak mandarin myself, so I can pronounce some words included in the story, and it would make perfect sense in mandarin. However, I found the way she use the English-pronunciation Chinese somewhat strange. She didn’t use accents on the letters, so it took some effort to make sense of what she’s trying to imply in Chinese. Sometimes, the words I manage to pronounce in Chinese didn’t seem to fit the English translation she gave. Those translations came out funny as well. For example: gwan deng shweijau. She translated it to close light sleep, which was what it literally meant. I supposed one way she may have wanted the readers to have the authentic translation, but it gets to be confusing. If I didn’t understand the Chinese meaning, I would’ve been stomped for sure. Although “close light sleep” is what it literally meant, it actually implies turning off the light and going to sleep. I’m not sure if everyone else understood that by the three simple words.

In any case, that’s only one example. There are other parts that have similar cases. It seemed as if she is writing it down as she pronounced the words, you don’t see those formation of letter in official Chinese using English letters nowadays. I’ve read that Amy Tan speaks in broken Chinese and can neither read nor write Chinese. Yet for her to incorporate so many Chinese phrases/words in her books is a truly incredible task.

Chinese Character for "Man" (Or "Person")

Parallel Mixes

I was surprised to see the mentioning of Lena St. Clair and Waverly Jong’s names in one of the chapters of the Joy Luck Club. It was in the “Without Wood” chapter in Rose Hsu Jordan’s point-of-view, specifically on page 211. In previous chapters, the characters usually mention only one or two other main characters (with the exception of the first chapter) It’s usually either the daughter or mother of the character. I thought it was interesting that the two other characters that Rose Hsu Jordan was taking the opinions of Waverly and Lena because those two characters's lives seemed to be parallel to Rose's.
It's because that most of the characters' lives never interact that I've come to realize that I've made many mistakes of mixing one character for another. It took me a few more chapters to realize that I often switch the experiences of one character for another, and post my reaction up on the blog. It really is difficult to keep track of them all of the time. I had many reactions of reading to a part and it suddenly hit me that I mixed two characters up. This is probably the most difficult task when reading The Joy Luck Club.

Parallel Illusion

"In this illusion, called the Herring Illusion, the center lines are perfectly straight, though they appear to bulge out in the middle."

Quote

After reading about halfway through The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, I came back to the previous chapters where I had found a quote that I specifically liked:

"That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain" (P.40)

This quote intrigued me especially because of the way it spoke about wounds and pains. I feel that I could understand the mothers’ situations clearer with this quote. They’ve all been through tough experiences during their life in China. I thought they were strong. They faced hardships and endured through them. However, at the same time, they forget some aspects of their experiences. They remembered their pain, but started to forget the exact cause.

The mothers are very determine and only wanted the best for their daughters. Like the mother in the first parable, they all wanted to pass their experiences to their children. However, they sometimes failed to see some points in their daughters’ lives that were similar to their own. On the other hand, they remembered their feelings as they made it through their hardships and were able to grasp the flaws in their daughters’ lives.

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.

Point-of-View

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan was entirely written in the first person point of view (with exception of the beginning of the story [P.3 & P.4]) However, the story is composed of chapters that are written in different characters’ point-of -views.
I found it an interesting way to write a story. The characters in each chapter are connected, but doesn’t seem to be one big plotline that all of them followed. Other books are often told only through one person’s point-of-view throughout the entire story or switching with characters but still focusing on one main event. This story, however, seemed to weave through different characters’ lives. Not only the thoughts of the characters were given, but their experiences and feelings as well. I could really relate to these characters more by reading their views as well as looking at their experiences. For example, in the first chapter through Jing-Mei Woo’s point of view, I thought Auntie An-Mei was an indecisive worrywart. However, in the next chapter I learned about An-Mei’s life and how she carried it out, being separated from her mother by her protective Popo. From her perspective of her story, I saw her as a strong person who endured her hardships.

The Joy Luck Club

When I first heard of the title: The Joy Luck Club, I thought the story would be about some teenagers’ club. The title also reminded me of four-leaf clovers because of the word “luck”. That was why I was surprised to find that The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan had more of a Chinese background. It had been out of my expectation that the book would be about Chinese immigrants in America. The “luck” had been about the chances of winning over the game of mah jong.
However, it did make sense that the book would contain the Chinese cultural background if thinking back to the “Writer’s On Writing” article, in which I had coincidentally chose Amy Tan’s “Family Ghosts Hoard Secrets That Bewitch the Living.” Even in her article, she mentioned about the mysteries of her family, specifically her mother and her half-siblings that she did not know about. Her life was a story of its own with details and complex puzzles behind it. Therefore if I connect her story and her life together, I would find that she leaked many of her life aspects into the book she wrote.

William Butler Yeats: The Second Coming

"The Second Coming"
-William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand;
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries
of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

This is the poem that contributed to Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Chinua Achebe also got the name of his book from the poem. Specifically the excerpt of the poem was in the beginning of Things Fall Apart.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;,
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

I feel that this poem is very deep and thoughtful. The things that this poem consists of are not simple words on paper. It goes in depth of describing the darkness of the word using symbols, imagery, and personification. This poem expresses its ideas with the actions of symbolic things, for example “reel shadows of the indignant desert birds”. The readers are put to the spot of trying to picture everything the poem says and understanding the meaning behind every item. There is no one meaning behind the verses of the poem. It may be interpreted in many ways, but I think that’s what the author wanted his readers to do, to analyze the poem and figure out the meaning behind each symbol that he laid out. In the end, his poem is multi- dimension with many hidden meanings encrypted within it.