The Joy Luck Club 1051the first time in China that Jing-mei finally accepts
that her Chinese self is more than genetics, it is
her family and, thus, the source of her identity.
Therefore, by abandoning her urges to reject her
mother’s Chinese heritage, Jing-mei, and perhaps
the other Joy Luck daughters, can find peace.
Carman Curton
Gender in The Joy Luck Club
At the end of the first chapter of The Joy Luck Club,
the three surviving mothers of the club give Jing-
mei ( June) Woo $1,200 to travel to China; meet her
two half sisters for the first time; and tell them about
their mother, Suyuan, who was forced to abandon
the twin sisters during the Japanese invasion of
China in World War II. When she learns what the
Joy Luck mothers want her to do with the money,
Jing-mei protests that she does not know what to
tell her sisters. She cries out that her mother, who
died two months before, was “only” her mother, that
she does not know anything about her. The moth-
ers—Lindo Jong, Ying-ying St. Clair, and An-mei
Hsu—are appalled and bombard Jing-mei with
advice about what to say. One mother says that her
mother is “in [her] bones,” and another asserts that
part of her mother’s mind has become Jing-mei’s
own mind—sentiments that both mothers express
again later in the book. During the course of the
novel, the four daughters and the three remaining
mothers all learn a similar lesson about gender:
Mothers and daughters share a spiritual connection
that goes beyond family ties or even love.
Even before Jing-mei learns of the other moth-
ers’ travel plans for her, she reveals how well she
believes she knows her mother. When she is asked
to take her mother’s place playing mah-jongg, she
says that she knows without asking that her mother
sits at the East, the direction of beginnings. Another
daughter in the novel, Waverly Jong, tells of how
she lost her almost effortless ability to win chess
tournament after chess tournament the moment her
mother withdrew her cultish adoration of Waverly’s
skill and the trophies and newspaper clippings it
produced. In the same chapter, Waverly fears she
has killed her mother simply by wishing she would
leave her alone. After an argument, when Waverly
tells her mother that she does not share her mother’s
superstitions, that she is her own person, Lindo
thinks, “How can she be her own person? When did
I give her up?”
Remembering her own childhood, An-mei tells
of watching her mother add a slice of her own flesh
to a pot of soup, invoking ancient magic that she
hopes will cure An-mei’s dying grandmother. Later
that year, An-mei loses her mother as well, and,
standing over the body, she believes her mother still
sees her. Then An-mei speaks to her mother’s soul
with her “heart,” telling her she has learned the les-
sons her mother died to teach her.
Perhaps the most troubled mother-daughter
relationship in The Joy Luck Club is between Ying-
ying St. Clair and her daughter, Lena. Ying-ying is
emotionally absent during much of Lena’s child-
hood, having been clinically depressed and, possibly,
suffering from postpartum depression. As an adult,
Lena is involved in a painfully literal “partnership”
with her husband and boss, a relationship in which
expenses are allotted in a seemingly fair fashion, but
love and appreciation for each other’s accomplish-
ments are not. When she is young, Lena fantasizes
about forcing Ying-ying to face her own pain. Lena
wants to help her see that she has already survived
the worst, and to murder her, metaphorically, with
the “death of a thousand cuts.” However, it is not
until years later that Ying-ying sees Lena’s own
sense of helplessness, her realization she is caught in
a loveless marriage, and recovers enough of her old
spirit, her chi, to help her daughter. At the end of the
chapter entitled “Waiting Between the Trees,” Ying-
ying says that she will give her daughter her spirit, to
help Lena become strong enough to demand what
she needs of her marriage and her husband. Ying-
ying reveals that she knows recovering her own
spirit and giving it to her daughter will be painful,
but she says she is willing to face the pain because
that is how mothers love their daughters.
For Tan, then, gender is not a biological determi-
nation of sex or even a cultural construction defining
the public and private roles of men and women. In
The Joy Luck Club, gender is a metaphysical connec-
tion between mothers and daughters. Their bond
allows them to share not only one another’s pain but
also each other’s strength.
Carman Curton