Title: Family relationship in the “Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan Background of the study

Justification for the study
The proposal for conducting this study can be justified from three aspects: the progress of the Chinese-American writers' interpretation in the diaspora literature, the specific features in writing style of Amy Tan and The issues of family as the part of the society in the 20th century in "The Joy Luck Club"
Diaspora Literature involves an idea of a homeland, a place from where the displacement occurs and narratives of harsh journeys undertaken on account of economic compulsions. Basically Diaspora is a minority community living in exile. The Oxford English Dictionary 1989 Edition traces the etymology of the word 'Diaspora' back to its Greek root and to its appearance in the Old Testament as such it references. (Jacob Shai; 34)
However, the 1993 Edition of Shorter Oxford's definition of Diaspora can be found. While still insisting on capitalization of the first letter, 'Diaspora' now also refers to 'anybody of people living outside their traditional homeland. In the tradition of Indo-Christian the fall of Satan from the heaven and humankind's separation from the Garden of Eden, metaphorically the separation from God constitute diasporic situations. Etymologically, “Diaspora' with its connotative political weight is drawn from Greek meaning to disperse and signifies a voluntary or forcible movement of the people from the homeland into new regions”
Chinese American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of Chinese descent. The genre began in the 19th century and flowered in the 20th. Chinese American literature deals with many topics and themes. A common topic is the challenges of assimilation in mainstream, white American society by Chinese Americans. Another common theme is that of interaction between generations, particularly older, Chinese-born and younger, American-born generations. Identity and gender issues are often dealt with as well.
Readings of the development of Chinese American literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have taken into account the relationship that exists between two cultural/political projects-that of “claiming America” and that of “claiming diaspora”. Generally speaking, the literary, cultural, and political project of “claiming America” centers on the implicit and explicit premise that America is home and the controlling basis for all consideration of cultural identity and belonging. It is associated with an earlier phase in the struggle of Chinese America for proper recognition of its place in American society. (Walter S. H. Lim, 2013; 2)
Where the project of “claiming America” supports the conventional narrative of Asian American immigrant desire that presents the East as seeking the promise of the New World, the other project of “claiming diaspora” disrupts the cultural logic of this narrative by fracturing the symbolic hold exercised by the nation-state over the lives of its citizens. Diaspora is a fluid and contested concept, historically and conventionally associated with the experience of homelessness, dislocation, and exile.
A survey of a literature typically begins with an attempt to pinpoint its origins, then proceeds to trace its "growth". In the case of Chinese American literature, however, it would be misleading to plunge into a positivistic, unproblematized chronological account without first addressing definitional issues, for the term "Chinese American literature is itself a product of a specific historical moment. Just as ambiguities surround the term "Chinese Americans," so there exists no consensus on what properly falls within the purview of Chinese American literature; indeed, the boundaries of the field, as inferred from critical practice, have fluctuated with changing historical conditions. It is only when the definitional debates are understood that statements about the significance of specific works and authors, as well as efforts at periodization, become meaningful.
When reading about characters' past lives in China, the reader of Amy Tan's novels becomes acquainted with important events of nineteenth and twentieth century Chinese history. Tan's novels are preoccupied with beginnings, tied to a history and land to which Chinese American subjects born in the United States encounter general difficulties gaining easy access. Both Tan and Kingston portray tapping cultural roots as a preoccupation of American-born children seeking cultural connection with their mothers whose past lives in China are often shrouded in mystery. Serving as a source of cultural information and historical knowledge, parental figures are indispensable despite cultural tensions that usually define their relationship with their children; they continue to be the primary link connecting American-born Chinese to ancestral culture. If the immediate family is the primary source of Old World culture and knowledge, it functions as such via the amalgamated experiences of the early immigrants who made their way to the New World. If interpreting the experiences of a mother's life in China is necessary for a daughter aiming to improve intergenerational bonds, the personalized dimensions of Tan's writings also bring the reader into the world of East Asia, defined with reference to cultural practices, political events, and social upheavals not necessarily
familiar to the reader: the Taiping Rebellion, the Sino-Japanese War, and the Kuomintang-Communist Civil War. Tan's representation of Chinese history opens the reader to a “China” that requires making sense of because it is culturally distant and epistemologically foreign (Walter S. H. Lim, 2013; 9).
Amy Tan's writing style is about the Chinese-American culture integrated with life stories. She gives the reader an opportunity to gain knowledge about the way of life her family, friends, and even herself have had. Tan's main purpose of writing is to educate people about growing up as a minority.
In her stories, "Tan is handing us the key with no price tag and letting us open the brass-bolted door." The focus of "Rules of the Game" was on the culture of the Chinese-Americans but it was weaved into a story to catch the reader's attention. She introduces the readers to the way of like of the Chinese-Americans, "it's like being invited into a dusty room full of castoffs, and being given a chance to reapprehend them in their former richness" ( Qiping Liu, 2019; 18).
The novel opens after the death of Suyuan Woo, an elderly Chinese woman and the founding member of the Joy Luck Club. Suyuan has died without fulfilling her "long-cherished wish" to be reunited with her twin daughters who were lost in China. Suyuan’s American-born daughter, Jing-mei (June) Woo, is asked to replace her mother at the Joy Luck Club’s meetings.
At the first meeting, Jing-mei learns that her long-lost half-sisters have been found alive and well in Shanghai. The other three elderly members of the Club – her mother’s best friends and Jing-mei’s "aunties" – give Jing-mei enough money to travel to China and meet her sisters. Essentially, Jing-mei has the opportunity to fulfill her mother’s greatest wish. Jing-mei’s aunties assign her the task of telling her twin sisters about the mother they never knew. The only problem is, Jing-mei feels like she never really knew her own mother.
This simple premise allows the book to cast a much wider net—it raises the question of how well daughters know their mothers. The other three members of the Joy Luck Club – Ying-ying, Lindo, and An-mei – all have wisdom that they wish to impart to their independent, American daughters. However, their daughters – Lena, Waverly, and Rose – all have their own perspectives on life as Americans.
No shocker here: the moms and daughters don't always see eye to eye, despite loving each other. They're intelligent, complicated women whose lives are made even more complicated by the fact that they live at the intersection of different languages and cultures.
In this novel there are sixteen interwoven stories which concentrates on the conflicts between the Chinese immigrant mothers and their American raised daughters. Four mothers who organise the Joy Luck Club and their daughters. There is always a rift between the mothers and daughters throughout the novel. The clash between them was due to the different cultural background wherein the mothers were from China and their daughters with American lifestyles. The composition of the novel is of four sections. The first section deals with the mothers and their relationship with their own mothers and doesn’t want their daughters to have a tough recollections of the past in their daughter’s future. The second section deals with the childhood of the daughters and their relationship with their mothers, which proves their mothers’ fears. The third section focuses on the daughters’ trouble in their married life and career. Later, they return to their mothers for solution. The fourth section concentrates on inevitable role played by mothers in finding the solution for their daughters’ problems.
The novel was composed of four sets of four first person narratives told by four immigrant Chinese American mothers and their American-born daughters. Memory also configures the narrative structure of the novel. The specific use of Chinese words, the repetition use of pronouns, the presentation of Chinese superstitions have put so much contributions in shaping Amy Tan’s style in her works. Through her literary works, the novelist is able to show her readers linguistic journey through her wordplay style. The Joy Luck Club is dense with symbols and allusions, and interwoven with icons and motifs, that involve the Joy Luck Club, food, and the Chinese language and Chinese-English patois, as well as mirrors, celebrations and events, home interiors, and dreams.
Another category of list of Chinese vocabulary that is found in this novel is the Miscellaneous Category. In this category, there are words and clauses in Chinese
that are used to utter Chinese expressions, Chinese value, and overall Chinese
culture (Mardliya Pratiwi Zamruddin, 2019; 640).
At the same time the use of Chinese when the characters of this novel talk about Chinese culture also shows how mind style works. The way Chinese perceived life is pictured by Amy Tan as not as simple as American and thus the Chinese words is the perfect words to explain about the Chinese values in the novel (Mardliya Pratiwi Zamruddin, 2019; 643).
The Americanized daughters, in the novels of Amy Tan, from their childhood to adolescents reveal us how they distinguish themselves from their powerful immigrant Chinese mothers. Throughout their living, the daughters are being encouraged by their mothers. They seem to hate their mothers but their real love and understanding is being revealed later.