On Chinese Culture and the Problem with The Joy Luck Club
By ALLISON CAO ‘22
Originally published in 1989, Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club centers around the lives of four Chinese mothers who immigrated to America to raise their four respective daughters, chronicling formative moments for the eight women. A central theme of The Joy Luck Club, the dissonance between Chinese and American cultures, leads to antagonistic mother-daughter relationships, identity crises, and lifelong emotional damage for all women involved. Upon its release, the novel was lauded by audiences for offering insight for non-Chinese Americans into the unique circumstances of Chinese immigrants. At first, Tan’s complex portrayal of all eight characters, as well as how thoroughly she integrated their culture into the plot, amazed me—never before had I found a novel with such a comprehensive outlook on Chinese heritage. Yet as I continued, I found that the version of Chinese culture the novel portrayed was something that neither I nor my parents recognized.
Initially, I attributed my lingering discomfort with The Joy Luck Club to the thirty years that separated me from it, but when I reread the book for my sophomore English class, I realized why it had always troubled me. The book’s disparaging portrayal of the mothers’ beliefs, especially compared to the daughters’, irked me; the daughters’ “American opinions” were portrayed as “better” than the mothers’ “backwards...Chinese superstitions.” In my first reading, I had registered how this comparison had implied the inferiority of Chinese culture while suggesting the superiority of American culture.
When I first heard about The Joy Luck Club’s success, I was pleasantly surprised. I hadn’t thought that it would have appealed to a larger audience, especially given that it focused on a historically underrepresented minority. I initially attributed the book’s popularity to its prose and characterization, but I then realized how other factors beyond Amy Tan’s literary merit were involved. The exoticism of the book’s culture presented a particular appeal to non-Chinese audiences: dazzling The Joy Luck Club with obfuscating cultural references to “[swan’s] feathers” and “malignant gates”—neither of which figure prominently in Chinese culture—Tan consistently affirmed the western image of China as stereotypically foreign. White Americans could marvel at China’s intriguing “otherness” while being assured of their own cultural superiority.
Despite its author’s Chinese heritage, The Joy Luck Club actually codifies Orientalism. Continually fabricated by Western creators ever since they encountered the East (generally comprised of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East), Orientalism depicts Eastern culture as an exotic, foreign “other” in a manner that reaffirms the comparative supremacy of Western culture. The Joy Luck Club fits this definition: Cultural myths and expressions are presented as “mysterious” to the audience—even the daughters fail to “understand” or explain them— reducing their nuance to contrast them with white American culture.
After its publication, The Joy Luck Club was lauded by both audiences and reviewers, spending nine months on the New York Times bestseller list, becoming a finalist for the National Book Award, and even inspiring a commercially successful movie adaptation in 1993. This acclaim helped establish its lasting legacy, which has played a definite role in creating a niche for books centralized around the Asian American experience. However, its impact cannot be separated from the negative ideas it perpetuates; it was successful primarily because it enforced Chinese stereotypes instead of challenging them.
In hindsight, I have to thank Milton’s English department for teaching The Joy Luck Club; my second reading finally revealed to me why my first impression was so uneasy. Yet I also question if such a flawed novel belongs in the sophomore English curriculum. When my English class discussed The Joy Luck Club’s ideas, we assumed that they were accurately depicted—we failed to consider the degree of truth in the book’s representation of Chinese values. If I hadn’t grown up surrounded by Chinese culture, I would have believed that the book’s harmful stereotyping was a forthcoming depiction of Chinese heritage—not what Milton, as an advocate for diversity, should be encouraging. After all, the book isn’t a faithful characterization of its heritage. Instead, by yielding to Orientalist stereotypes about China and its inhabitants, The Joy Luck Club has betrayed Chinese culture in the most damaging way possible.