Cultural Incoherence Exposed In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

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The cultural incoherence presented within the mother daughter pairs, in The Joy Luck Club, originates from a barrier of miscommunication and misunderstanding which consequently generates conflict in the relationships and lives of each family; however, Amy Tan uses the method of storytelling to rectify the relationships and problems recounted in the narratives. In Jing-Mei’s narrative, Suyuan Woo wants her daughter to become a prodigy but Jing-Mei is unable to live up to her mother’s expectations, which causes tension and frustration in the relationship.June Woo is left in a disoriented state of ambition due to her mother's misunderstood encouragement. The narratives open as June Woo inherits her recently deceased mother’s place in the Joy Luck …show more content…
Suyuan Woo, June’s mother, constantly looks for ways to make June the best at and the most famous at whatever activity she discovers. The discovery of a ‘talented’ deaf piano teacher next door, made it so that Suyuan set out to make June the best piano player in the state. June went to her lessons and practiced ardently, striving to make her mother proud and to redeem herself for her failures. However, at the recital when it was time for June to show off skills at the piano, she fails miserably, “and after seeing my mother’s disappointed face once again, something inside of me began to die... I saw what seemed to be the prodigy side of me -because I had never seen that face before” (Tan 134). This was a defeat for June that she could never overcome in the years that followed, “ I failed her so many times, each time asserting my own will, my right to fall short of expectations” (Tan 142). This was the mindset that June had set for herself because of the small miscommunication errors with her mother that occurred in her childhood. However, that is not what Suyuan wanted Jing-Mei to understand, “The bilingual conversation turns into a game