Women’s Silence and Voice

in
Asian and American cultural ideas and beliefs

Amy Tan in her The Joy Luck Club takes Chinese and Chinese-American women’s social

and cultural issues into consideration to study their silence in light of Asian and American

cultural ideas and beliefs. Tan focuses on four mothers and their daughters’ life story through

their own language and on their own “nengken”; “It was this belief in their nengken that had

brought my parents to America” (Tan, 121). She gives an interesting point of view by using

Chinese words and including their meanings. It seems she lets her readers to get closer in

Chinese culture and then find out whatever she demonstrates. Tan shows how do Chinese and

Chinese –American women challenge and struggle to break the cultural barriers of silence

through meaningful quotes in their own life story.

A good quote has been mentioned by Jing-Mei “June” Woo, one of those Chinese daughters

in “Two Kinds” story, it reveals her secrets and says: “This girl and I were the same. I had new

thoughts, willful thoughts, or rather thoughts filled with lots of won’t. I won’t let her change me,

I promised myself I won’t be what I’m not” (Tan, 134). I think that the Chinese girls were

supposed to act obedient and respectful to their elders and it seems that there is a struggle

between Asian women and their American Chinese daughters and what it meant to be feminine

and how a woman should act.

Tan shows that mothers are disappointed when their daughters grow up and they do not act

like a Chinese one and do not show the enough respect of their mothers. In Chinese culture girls

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were expected to be quiet and considerate to their parents and elders. Because of the cultural

barriers I see Chinese mothers fear of directly speaking to their daughters and it is the reason an

enough reason for their daughters to do not understand them well; “ I felt as if I had lost a

battle, but one that I didn’t know I had been fighting. I was weary” (Tan, 182). I think their

problem is not for having different cultures of American and Chinese but rather is on the way of

their communication, because the Chinese culture is not totally about obedience and American

culture is not completely about liberty.

Moreover, their noiselessness had kept them apart and had made them unknown to each

other, though if they were not silent they would have the needed force not only to convey their

inherent good beliefs to each other in the best way but also to act freely as themselves. For

example Linda Jong and her daughter Waverly represent a different kind of strength, the ability

to keep silent till the right time to come. “She cried “No choice! No choice!” she doesn’t know.

If she doesn’t speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn’t try, she can lose her chance forever. I

know this, because I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow

other people’s misery, to eat my own bitterness” (Tan, 215). And having the ability to keep

silent till the right moment brings Waverly to the point of shouting to break her silence after her

mother’s death. She says: “And on that day, I learned to shout” (Tan, 240).

Obviously in the “A Pair of Tickets” Tan portrays two Chinese and American-Chinese

generation arms around each other through taking the last photo of Jing-Mei Woo along with her

lost twin sisters and gives her last message: “My sisters and I watch quietly together, eager to see

what develops. The gray-green surface changed to bright colors of our three images, sharpening

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and deepening all at once. And although we ‘don’t speak’, I know we all see it: Together we look

like our mother” (Tan, 288).

Consequently, Tan was able to monit and exhibit the Chinese women silence culture in two

youth and adult generation with four Chinese mothers and their daughters maybe from 1920, 30,

40,50,60,70 and 1980 in China before their arrival to America and later on. I believe that the

central theme of silence connecting them all in the inability of the mothers and their daughters to

communicate with each other effectively.

However it seems that all mothers of the Joy Luck Club story want their daughters to

never have to go through the struggles they themselves had to go through. That’s why they did

not share what they had as silence culture but rather they discovered new ones and gained their

voice. They took advantages of some incidents like what Linda took of a few coincident to

convince Tai Tai that her marriage to her son is ill-fated. So it might have been the reason why

she mentions the daughters as their translations and also says: “I wanted my children to have the

best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these two

things do not mix?” (Tan, 254)

In conclusion by focusing on Chinese women’s silence culture in The Joy Luck Club, I

feel Amy Tan is trying to show Asian and American cultural ideas and beliefs differ in many

ways; like as being free in asking many whys and hows in American culture for women as

family members and having to cope with family rules in Chinese culture as a member of Chinese

family. This book is a good evidence of Chinese women’s challenge to break their silence

despite of their cultural barriers because by publishing this book they not only broke that silence

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but also heighten their voice all around the world through telling their own stories, talking about

their cultural differentiations and leaving it for next generations.

Works Cited:
Tan,Amy.The Joy Luck Club . United States of America: Putnam sons, Penguin, 1989.