JLC post: Tan Vs. Chua

In the book “The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan, I saw many similarities between the book and the article that was about over obsessive Asian mom's parenting that we had to read awhile back. One similarity that I saw is the high expectations of the mothers in the book compare to the one in the article. In the story “Two Kinds”, Jing-Mei Woo has a mother that has huge expectation for her:

“'Of course you can be prodigy too,' my mother told me when I was nine. You can be best anything. What does Aunt Lindo know? Her daughter she is only best tricky” (Page 132)

This show that competition has a lot to do with a mother's nature of parenting. The competition between Wavery's mother and Jing-Mei's mother is a competition to show whose daughter is better and is more successful. They use their daughter to represent themselves and show off. This is what I probably guess the main reason why Asian mothers act the way they do toward their daughters.

Another example of a similarity that I saw in both the book and the article is the relationship between the daughter and the mother. I think the daughter is tire of the mother's way of raising her which have been shown in the book numerous times. In the “Rules of the Game”, there was an argument between Wavery and her mother:

"'I wish you wouldn't do that, telling everybody I'm your daughter.' My mother stopped walking...'Aiii-ya. So shame be with mother?' She grasped my hand even tighter as she glared at me." (Page 99)

This show that even though being a chess champion makes her mother really happy, Wavery is finally fed up with her mother always rubbing her accomplishments in other people's faces. This kinf of similarity also showed in the story “Two Kinds”, Jing-Mei gave out actions of defiant toward the way how her mother is parenting her:

“She yanked me by the arm, pulled me off the floor, snapped off the TV. She was frighteningly strong, half pulling, half carrying me toward the piano as I kicked the throw rugs under my feet."
(Page 141)

In conclusion, the “Joy Luck Club” expresses pretty well the overall strictness and over demanding parenting from the mothers toward their daughters.