Joy Luck Club Analysis
- Submitted by: nandos928
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- Category: English: Novels
- Date Submitted: 10/11/2013 12:03 AM
- Pages: 5
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Joy Luck Club - Analysis
About the Author
- What I believe my books are about is relationships and family.
Approaching the Text
-It is easy to see that The Joy Luck Club began as a series of short stories which Tan has collected and integrated to form a novel because of the elements and qualities that its four sections and various sub-sections have in common.
-The most obvious of these are considerations of Chinese American life, the interaction (often troubled) of relationships with men (fathers and lovers)
-Issues of belonging
-The interaction between two cultures (two different languages) speak, and thereby, shapes the relationships with others.
-The novel is both biographical and auto-biographical based on the experiences of Daisy and Amy Tan and of the other women the writer has known and whose stories have captured her.
-Also a social and historical document, drawing upon the turbulent events in the history of China in the earlier 20th century, located in well-defined places and situations.
-More than biography and autobiography, a social and historical study, or even a sequence of narratives.
Feathers from a Thousand Li Away
- The story of the swan introduces the tone of regret which underlies the several stories of dispossession and failure of belonging both culturally and in relationships.
-Irony to the title too - there is little joy in these narratives and much depends on fate which is more than not unlucky in its effects on humans
- The old woman's desire to tell her story when she could so 'in perfect American English' also brings into focus Tan's close concentration on different levels of language in the novel.
-The mother's sense of her inadequacy, is contrasted with a daughter who was "swallowing more Coca Cola than sorrow."
-Jing-Mei Woo both opens and closes the novel making her its most important narrator.
-In the midst of war and disease Jing-Mei's mother founded the original Joy Luck Club, establishing fellowship and...
About the Author
- What I believe my books are about is relationships and family.
Approaching the Text
-It is easy to see that The Joy Luck Club began as a series of short stories which Tan has collected and integrated to form a novel because of the elements and qualities that its four sections and various sub-sections have in common.
-The most obvious of these are considerations of Chinese American life, the interaction (often troubled) of relationships with men (fathers and lovers)
-Issues of belonging
-The interaction between two cultures (two different languages) speak, and thereby, shapes the relationships with others.
-The novel is both biographical and auto-biographical based on the experiences of Daisy and Amy Tan and of the other women the writer has known and whose stories have captured her.
-Also a social and historical document, drawing upon the turbulent events in the history of China in the earlier 20th century, located in well-defined places and situations.
-More than biography and autobiography, a social and historical study, or even a sequence of narratives.
Feathers from a Thousand Li Away
- The story of the swan introduces the tone of regret which underlies the several stories of dispossession and failure of belonging both culturally and in relationships.
-Irony to the title too - there is little joy in these narratives and much depends on fate which is more than not unlucky in its effects on humans
- The old woman's desire to tell her story when she could so 'in perfect American English' also brings into focus Tan's close concentration on different levels of language in the novel.
-The mother's sense of her inadequacy, is contrasted with a daughter who was "swallowing more Coca Cola than sorrow."
-Jing-Mei Woo both opens and closes the novel making her its most important narrator.
-In the midst of war and disease Jing-Mei's mother founded the original Joy Luck Club, establishing fellowship and...