Feminism

Feminism

The Chinese Mothers and Their Daughters

The Chinese mothers of all generations, used to identify themselves with their daughters. Jing-mei constantly had uneasy relationship with her mother Suyuan. When her mother died, Jing-mei had to deal with her frustration, grief in addition to her many questions. She could not tell the reason as to why her mother was never satisfied with her. Jing-mei never knew the complete story of her mother's earlier life in China. She never used to speak Chinese fluently, thus this is the reason why she tried to reject Chinese culture and even, for a while, she believed that she was not Chinese any way. After the death of her mother, she began to see that the history of her mother was part of her and at the same she started to appreciate the fact that China was part of her identity. At the time she met the other daughters of her mother, she finally felt like her mother was back. This is the moment she began to see that despite the fact that they often fought and rarely saw each other eye to eye; indeed her mother loved her and understood her well, sometimes, even better than Jing-mei understood herself (Rozakis 87).

Culture is the way of life that a set of people has developed and passes on from one generation to the subsequent. The mode of communication used is one way of understanding the difference that existed in the Chinese and American culture. The Chinese culture is categorized as a high-context culture and the American culture as a low-context culture. In the high-context culture, individuals acquire information about the culture and meaning from obeying the authority, through makings observations and imitating.

The mothers in The Joy Luck Club expected their daughters who were Americanized to obey their elders and hence learn through obedience, observation and by imitation as they used to do in China. All the Chinese mothers of all generations, used to identify themselves with their daughters. Although, Jing-mei constantly had uneasy relationship with her mother; after she died, she began to see that the history of her mother was part of her and started to appreciate that China was part of her identity. After meeting with the other daughters of her mother, she felt that despite the differences they had, her mother loved her and understood her better.

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