The Power of Storytelling in The Joy Luck Club

Want to read the rest of this paper? Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay and over 50,000 other term papers

a child chess prodigy while also bringing Lindo to become a very proud mother. Lindo shows Waverly off in public at any chance she gets and hovers over her daughter while she practices her chess strategies. Waverly feels like her mother is taking credit for her own achievements and misinterprets her mother's actions. She wants to feel like chess is her own personal achievement, giving her an identity seperate from her mother's identity. This also relates with Waverly's American identity and Lindo's Chinese identity, Waverly wants to be very independant, like her mother Lindo is. Waverly eventually lashes out at her mother for showing her off: "Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don't you learn to play chess?" (Tan 99). Later in the novel Waverly discovers her mother's invisible support was there all along and that she had misinterpreted her mother's pride and love for her after hearing about Lindo's past life from her personally. Lindo ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays. Write better papers. Get better grades. Already a member? Login

child in the servant girl's stomach because she was his true spiritual wife. After escaping, Lindo immigrated to America. Both mother and daughter use the wind as an example of their invisible strengths throughout the novel and their stories are meant to be alike for thematic purposes. Waverly did not realize her power came from her mother until her mother decided storytelling of her past life in China was the only way to get her daughter to fully understand, which it did.
Another mother in the joy luck club, is Suyuan Woo, who is actually the founder of "the joy luck club". Suyuan teaches her daughter Jing-Mei about the chemistry of people, the elements of life and the need for ...

Succeed in your coursework without stepping into a library. Get access to a growing library of notes, book reports, and research papers in 2 minutes or less.

CITE THIS PAGE: