Postmodern Literature
THE JOY LUCK CLUB
The Joy Luck Club is a book about an annual game of Mahjongg where family members, mainly the women and their daughters, all come together and reminisce about the past. The book is told from many different point of views; both the mothers and daughters relate stories from their childhood. Throughout the book the characters would each tell their stories and the struggles they experienced while they were growing up and trying to mesh with both the American culture and the Chinese culture and having parents who didn't understand the American Culture, but only the Chinese culture.
The Joy Luck Club was written in the Post Modern Era. The dates throughout the book were the 1920’s to the 1980’s. During this time there was a lot of Japanese immigration in America. It was a struggle for them and their children to try and live in a different culture when they grew up knowing nothing but their own. In this story we see the struggle of the Chinese immigrants children, and the problems they faced. They didn’t know where they belonged growing up in America with their family having the Chinese culture. Because of the different style of narration it fit very well into the post modern era style of writing. It also got the point of the story across to the reader better than a different style of writing.
Amy Tan uses her book, The Joy Luck Club, to display the struggle of transitioning into a new culture and how it differs from generation to generation. Because of the great difference in culture, the women in this book exemplify the struggles to maintain first generation culture and the internal fight for the second generation to identify themselves both individually and with their mother’s culture.