STUDY GUIDE
INTRODUCTION
The Joy Luck Club is a
powerful and moving story
of four extraordinary
women who leave their
homeland behind and migrate to America full of
hopes and dreams. The film
explores each of the mother’s lives in China and their
relationships with their four
daughters in America.
The film is based on
Amy Tan’s brilliant first
novel, the Joy Luck Club, and
clearly reflects the author’s
own experiences as the
American-born daughter of
Chinese immigrant parents.
When Amy visited China in
1987, she found that, “as
soon as my feet touched
China, I became Chinese.”
One of the powerful themes
of the film is the exploration
of how much the cultural
identity of parents can influence the lives and values of
the next generation.
The “club” was formed
by Suyuan after the four
women met in church, and decided to
meet weekly to play mah jong, tell stories and laugh together. At the same
time they boasted about their children,
tried to outdo each other cooking special Chinese dishes, and shared in the
common elements of their culture and
the tragedies of their past. Each week
period from the 1930s in
pre-revolutionary China to
downtown San Francisco in
the 1970s.
Students in secondary
schools who are studying
themes and concepts including:
•
cultural identity
•
gender
•
personal identity
•
roles
•
families
•
marriage
•
mother/daughter relationships
•
celebrations
•
generations
•
customs
•
change and continuity
•
superstition
•
the impact of the past
•
tradition
•
revolutionary China
•
beliefs
will find that the film
provides rich material for
discussion and further investigation
The film will be relevant
to students of English, History, Social Studies, Cultural
Studies and Asian Studies.
Australian Studies students
should find the film useful
for comparison of multi-cultural issues.
As the film progresses
you are introduced to the
stories of:
they hoped to be lucky but the Joy Luck
Club was more about sharing hopes for
the future than luck or joy.
The film begins soon after the death
of Suyuan when June, her daughter, is
invited to join the Joy Luck Club. It
continues with multi-generational
stories cutting back and forth over the
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The Mothers
Suyuan Woo
An-mei Hsu
Lindo Jong
Ying-ying St. Clair
The Daughters
Jing-mei “June”
Woo
Rose Hsu Jordan
Waverly Jong
Lena St. Clair
STUDIES OF SOCIETY
SECTION
Before Watching the Film
It will be worthwhile for you to
think and talk about some of the following questions before you watch the
film, and then discuss the same issues
after the film. Try to decide if your
ideas have changed or if any of your
opinions are different.
Cultural Identity
Culture can be defined as a total way
of life which is formed by your past,
your family, where you live, the language you speak, the way you celebrate
stages of life and the impact of your
socio-economic position. Suggest
other factors which can influence your
own cultural identity.
•
If your parents have an immigrant background, how strong has
the influence of their homeland culture
been on the development of your cultural identity?
•
What aspects of your parents’ cultural identity do you think you
share?
•
What aspects of your cultural identity are different? What factors have caused the differences?
Mothers and Daughters
1.
What hopes and dreams do
you think your mother has for you?
2.
Do you think your mother
fully understands you and do you understand her?
3.
What aspects of your lifestyle disappoint your mother and cause
conflict?
Historical Background
Each of the mothers lived through
the long period of revolution in China
and a series of wars.
Find out more about the following
events in China:
1911 - 1916
The end of the rule of
the dynasties. The
rule of Yuan Shikai and
the Chinese Republic.
1919 - 1928
The triumph of the
Nationalists.
The emergence of
Communist forces.
1928 - 1937
The rule of the
Nationalists.
1927 - 1938
Mao Zedong and
Peasant Communism.
The Long March.
2
1946 - 1949
Civil War and
the Communist victory.
An excellent reference for
researching China during this
period is Terry Buggy, The
Long Revolution, Shakespeare
Head Press, 1988.
After Watching the Film
1923 - 1927
Tradition
1934 - 1935
Every family has their own traditions, some which are based on ethnicity or the family’s origins,
Religion
List
others which are associexamples of
ated with religion, beliefs
Traditions
or other factors.
eg. arranged
•
In a class or
marriage
small group discussion
make a list of traditions
you observe.
•
Copy
and
complete the following
chart to gather your data
on Tradition.
Tick which category
the tradition has formed
or been influenced by:
1937 - 1945
The Japanese
invasion and the Sino - Japanese war
1939 - 1945
World War 2
•
After watching The Joy Luck
Club draw up another chart which lists
and explains traditions shown in the
film.
•
After watching the film, note
down evidence you saw of the effects
of continual warfare on:
- China in general
- civilians
- characters in the film
•
What kinds of tragedy did
the wars cause?
Family
Customs
Philosophy
Superstitions
National
Characteristics
✓
✓
✓
✓
Other
The beginning of the film
The Joy Luck Club begins with the
preface of the book which tells the story
of the beautiful swan which Suyuan
Woo carried onto the ship which sailed
a thousand li to America. She cooed to
the swan:
“In America I will have a daughter
just like me. But over there nobody will
say her worth is measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch. Over there
this means and decide if you agree or
not.
•
Did you enjoy the film?
Why or why not?
•
Do you think that this is a
film which is appreciated differently by
male and female audiences?
Discuss this question with other
members of your class.
Exploring Some of the
Themes in The Joy
Luck Club
Mother/daughter
relationships
Each mother has very
strong traditional Chinese values and had some kind of communication problem with her
daughter.
nobody will look down on her, because
I will make her speak only perfect
American English. And over there she
will always be too full to swallow any
sorrow! She will know my meaning,
because I will give her this swan … But
when she arrived in the new country,
the immigration officials pulled her
swan away from her, leaving the
woman … with only one swan feather
for a memory …”
Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club,
Minerva, 1990. You may like to read
the full preface in the book.
•
Why do you think that
Suyuan would have clutched onto the
swan on the journey?
•
What aspects of Chinese culture was she glad to leave behind?
•
What hopes did she have for
her daughter?
•
Suggest why Suyuan never
gave her daughter June the feather
while she was alive?
•
Do you think that June attached any significance to the feather?
Your Immediate Reactions to
the Film
•
It could be said that the
viewer experiences “catharsis” watching The Joy Luck Club. Find out what
•
To what extent do you
think the problems were based on
cultural differences?
•
What other reasons can
you suggest for conflict in their relationships?
Obedience
Obedience is depicted as a virtue for Chinese daughters and
wives.
•
What beliefs do the
mothers have about obedience with
respect to their daughters in
America?
•
How do the daughters
feel about obedience?
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•
Is obedience an issue in your
household?
Showing off
Each mother wants to be proud of
her daughter and has high aspirations
for her. They also show-off their cooking skills, their possessions, their skills
on the stock market, etc.
•
Try to recall and explain the
examples of showing off you see in the
film, e.g. Waverly with her chess,
Suyuan’s attempt to turn June into a
child prodigy, etc.
•
Do you think that these Chinese mothers were especially keen to
boast about their daughters, or is this a
universal theme common in other cultures?
Marriage
• Lindo Jong’s marriage in
China is arranged by a matchmaker at a very young age. What
explanations can you give for why
this has been common practice in
many cultures in the world?
• How did Lindo cleverly plot
to escape her unhappy marriage?
• Organise a mini-class debate
or group discussion on the topic,
“Arranged marriages are better
than love-matches”.
• How influential do you think
An-mei is in saving Rose’s marriage to Ted?
• What factors made it difficult for Lindo to accept Dick?
(Reflect back on the
scene when Dick has dinner with the Jongs.)
•
What factors
make marriages succeed
or fail?
Racism
Mrs Jordan’s warning
to Rose to stay away from
her son Ted is a clear example of racism.
•
What is racism?
•
What do you
think Mrs Jordan’s fears
were based on?
•
Is racism a
strong theme in the film? Explain your
answer.
Investigating the Individual
Characters
Form eight small groups, and divide
up the characters or choose one individual to work on the following activities. (Note: reading from the novel will
give you more detailed perspectives.)
•
Read the data which follows
and discuss the questions.
•
Jot down all that you can recall about each character.
•
Perform a role play where
eight class members tell the stories and
comment on their relationship with
their mother or daughter.
OR • Read the information in
the DATA BOX and try to extend each
profile on the individual.
Looking at the End of the
Film
In this film, the four mothers show
their wisdom and pain, experience and
love to their daughters, who in turn
come to better understand and value
their parents.
June tries in the end to live up to
her mother’s hopes and expectations,
and finally goes back to China to meet
her twin sisters. What does she discover about herself when she meets
them? Do you think that the end of
The Joy Luck Club does, as the producer
Wayne Wang says, “complete the cycle”?
own families before viewing this film.
Suggested areas of discussion include ...
• Describe your parents to someone who has never met them. What are
their main personal characteristics?
What do you regard as their special
strengths?
• Research your discussions by interviewing your parents. Ask them
about their hopes for you. What do
they think are their responsibilities to you?
What do they expect
from you? What have
been their most difficult decisions? Have
their lives included significant moments that
have taught them lessons they wish to pass
on to you?
•
How close
are you to your parents? Do you often talk
together about personal thoughts and
feelings? Do you feel
the weight of their expectations and hopes? Are you like your
parents in temperament and attitude?
The Film’s Structure
The Joy Luck Club is a very complex story. It cuts back and forth across
historical periods and across generations. This would have made adapting
the novel to film very difficult.
Suyuan Woo
Jing-mei “June” Woo
In the film we see more of her past in
China. Abandoning her baby
daughters while escaping the Japanese
is her great tragedy.
Why did she do this?
June Woo never really understands her
mother while she is alive and doesn’t
find her own identity.
Lindo Jong
She does finally realise that her
mother really loved her and she
treasures the jade pendant her mother
gave her.
Waverly Jong
The film traces how Lindo was forced
as a teenager into an unhappy
marriage.
“Waverly is as bossy and opinionated
as her mother.”
Do you agree?
How is Lindo’s strength as an
individual shown in the film at
various ages?
An-mei Hsu
Why is the scene in the hairdresser’s
an important moment in their
relationship?
Rose Hsu
The story of An-mei’s own mother is
tragic.
Rose gave up her art career for her
husband. She denies her own identity
until her mother forces her to confront
what she really wants.
Is she proud of her own daughter?
What happens and why does she take
her own life?
An-mei was taught to “desire nothing
and swallow other people’s
littleness,” but she wants her daughter
to fight for what she wants.
Ying-ying St. Clair
Why do you think her marriage is
saved?
Lena St. Clair
Ying-ying is the daughter of an upper
class family. Her disastrous marriage
to a prominent playboy ends in
tragedy. Why?
Lena spends her childhood caring for
her mentally unstable mother. She is
lonely and fearful and ashamed of her
mother’s customs.
Before Viewing the Film
This tragedy leads to terrible
depression and despair.
She longs for freedom of expression.
Students will benefit from open and
honest group discussions about their
What events break the cycle of
despair?
ENGLISH SECTION
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Does she finally gain wisdom?
Producer-writers Ronald Bass and
Amy Tan wanted to include all the stories of the mothers and daughters in the
film.
• Examine how this has been
achieved. What is the advantage of using many voice-overs in the film? What
kinds of moments has the film included,
when flashing back to the Chinese experiences of the elder women? Have
the flashbacks themselves been confusing? Have the scenes been connected
smoothly without affecting the flow of
the film?
Bass claims that “all the mothers’
and daughters’ stories are facets of the
same experience. Put together, they
formed a mosaic.”
• What does this mean? What is
a mosaic? What do you think each of
the stories has in common? What
emerges for you as the main focus or
message of the film?
• What is the structural importance of the scenes at June’s home,
where the families have gathered to
farewell her, prior to her leaving for
China to be reunited with her sisters?
What is the mood of the party? How
are both eastern and western cultures
evident?
• Why do you think June has been
used as the initial narrator? Do you
think she is given special prominence?
Is there a reason for this?
Responding to the Film’s
Text
Mothers and Daughters
Suyuan and June
• What is June’s perception of her
mother? Why does she feel pressure
from her mother? What is the significance of Suyuan’s secret about her
abandoned babies in her relationship
with her daughter June?
In an early scene, the child June is
listening to The Monkees and refus-
ing to practise her piano lessons. She
shouts to Suyuan... “I’m not a slave.
This isn’t China ... you can’t make me.
I’ll never be someone I’m not.”
• Is this simply the child being
disobedient and rebellious? Does a
child growing in a culture different
from the parents’ experience special difficulties?
In a later scene, the adult June confesses to Suyuan that she had never felt
capable of fulfilling Suyuan’s expectations. Suyuan replies that she had
hopes, not expectations.
• What is the difference?
What has shaped Suyuan’s hopes
for her daughter? What is the significance of the swan feather that
June’s father offers her at the end?
June confesses to her “aunts”
that she can tell her sisters in China
nothing about their mother, because she didn’t know her.
• Why has June never been
close to her mother? Why did
• We are shown the child Waverly
as a precocious chess prodigy. Compare
her embarrassment at Lindo’s show of
pride in her talents, with June’s defiance of her mother’s orders to practise
the piano, mentioned earlier. “If you
want to show off,” Waverly shouts,
“play chess yourself.” What did you
think of the way Waverly’s parents handled this tantrum?
Lindo rebukes her daughter, saying
“you think it ... (life) ... is so easy ... so
fast…” and later she is unimpressed by
Waverly’s material wealth, the devotion
of her friend, Rich, her
d a u g h t e r ’ s
“Americanness”.
• Is Lindo a hard
and heartless mother? Is
the film asking us to
judge whether the
mother or daughter is
“in the right” in a scene
such as the one in
Waverly’s flat, or in the
Suyuan “transfer all her
hope” to June, the day she
was born? What opportunity exists for Waverly,
Lena and Rose, that is
now lost for June? How
does the final scene serve
as an alternative reconciliation for June? What does
she feel as she embraces
her sisters on the dockside?
Lindo and Waverly
• What do we learn of Lindo’s
character after seeing her experience as
a child bride, a victim of the Matchmaker tradition in Chinese culture?
What is Lindo’s abiding memory of her
own mother? What is going through
Lindo’s mind as she offers scant regard
for Waverly’s new fur coat, the latest
gift from her boyfriend?
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hair salon?
Waverly is clearly frustrated by her
mother. She tells Rich when he comes
to dinner that Lindo “would rather
have rectal cancer,” than talk about the
prospect of their wedding. Yet she loves
Lindo dearly, confessing as a child that
her “loss of power” to play chess was
“not all my mother’s fault. I did it to
myself.” Now, as a beautiful and professionally successful woman, Waverly
accuses Lindo in the hairdressing salon… “Nothing I do can ever please
you… You don’t know the power you
have over me.”
• Yet what happens between them,
the moment these words are uttered?
• This may be a good point at
which to try some writing of your own.
Have you experienced a similar point
of frustration with a parent which has
produced such an explosive expression
of both anger and love? Could you
laugh about it at the time? Afterwards?
Ying-ying and Lena
Ying-ying seems the saddest, most
troubled of the mothers. Her seduction
and rejection by an unfaithful husband
had led her to kill her infant son. “My
baby’s spirit had flown away. He took
mine with him and I had none to give
you,” she tells Lena.
• What kind of a character is
Lena? Why is she so afraid? What does
she think of her mother’s customs?
• Describe Lena’s marriage
with Harold in the million dollar
apartment “with crooked walls.”
What does Ying-ying recognize in
her daughter’s marriage? What
does Ying-ying mean in the powerful scene at Lena’s apartment
when she says, “I waited like a tiger in the trees to cut loose her
(Lena’s) spirit.” What advice does
she give her daughter?
• Do you think that we often
unconsciously mirror our parents’
attitudes and behaviour as we grow
older? Is this a good thing? How
do you decide when to accept advice from a parent? What is Yingying trying to give Lena?
Lindo tells Waverly she must
understand her own worth. Now Yingying tells Lena she must tell her husband what she wants from him. Similarly, An-mei tells her daughter Rose
not to accept her divorce without a
fight, but to “shout ... refuse to allow
him to take any part of you.”
• What is the real value of the advice these older women are offering?
Is it advice particularly shaped by their
Chinese culture? There is very little
room for men in this film. Are Harold
and Ted painted as responsible for Lena
and Rose’s misery?
An-mei and Rose
Rose’s mother An-mei seems most
encumbered by the worst of her Chinese cultural experience. An-mei’s
mother died before “knowing her true
worth” yet her suicide, to give An-mei
“a strong spirit and power over my enemies” signalled the day that An-mei
“learned to shout.”
• What does this mean?
An-mei had been taught to desire
nothing for herself, “to swallow other
people’s misery and eat my own bitterness.”
• Why is she so upset by Rose’s
impending divorce? What mistake has
Rose made? How does the scene in
which Rose first meets Ted’s mother,
help explain the difficulties that children of immigrant parents can face?
• In what ways does Rose seem to
have made the most conscious efforts
to assimilate into western culture?
What does she think of her Chinese
cultural inheritance? What advice does
An-mei offer her? Is she successful? Describe Rose from her husband Ted’s
point of view.
Writing Tasks Responding
to the Text
Amy Tan believes the film of her
novel illustrates that her story is “about
hope ... about finding that quality of
hope that allows you to survive, be
strong, deal with whatever you need to
do with your life...”
• Do you think The Joy Luck Club
provides this feeling of hope?
•
The film portrays each
character struggling to find her
own identity. Do you think each
is successful?
•
“Parents need to feel they
have a special magic to offer their
children. Children need parents to
be extraordinary and powerful.”
Does the film mirror these sentiments?
Personal Writing
In Summary ... consider
• The characters are almost all
women. Their culture is Asian and
Asian-American. Does this limit the appeal of the film?
The postwar generation that includes June, Waverly, Lena and Rose,
has never known the degree of turmoil
and pain that their mothers experienced. It is helpful for the daughters to
take from their mothers’ painful experiences and use them to help cope with
their own problems.
• Do you agree?
Amy Tan believes the film of her
novel is important because “too often,
we discover what’s important only after we’ve lost it.”
• Has the film affected you in
these terms?
The best student writing demonstrates the ability to reflect
upon and learn from experience.
The Joy Luck Club is about reflection. As the mothers impart their
wisdom and pain, their experience
and love to their daughters, and the
daughters come to understand and
value their parents, the film delivers its
richest messages.
• Following your discussions before viewing the film, try writing about
your own relationships with your parents. Do you have a strong bond with a
parent? How are strong bonds formed?
What influences can prevent them
from being formed? You may need to
touch on crisis points, or on significant
experiences that have left lasting impressions on you and/or your parents.
Writing honestly about such experiences will always make interesting and
worthy reading. It may well help you
to understand yourself better too! You
may simply find it enjoyable to reflect
on the times when, as a youngster, you
refused to do your “piano lessons,” and
you now realize what a horror your parents had to deal with !
This study guide was wrtten for ATOM by Libby
Tudball and Andrew Mullett
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