Summary:
In our lives we come across problems between American culture and our own culture. In this case it's the mixture of American and Chinese culture. A couple of characters have come across these problems; Waverly Jong and Lena St. Clair. Mixtures of Chinese and American cultures result in conflicts in our lives and demonstrated in "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan.
Joy Luck Club Essay
In our lives we come across problems between American culture and our own culture. In this case it's the mixture of American and Chinese culture. A couple of characters have come across these problems; Waverly Jong and Lena St. Clair. Mixtures of Chinese and American cultures result in conflicts in our lives and demonstrated in "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan.
The first character I'm going to talk about is Waverly Jong. The mixture of Waverly, a Chinese and Rich, an American resulted in conflicts throughout their relationship. Waverly had trouble getting a chance to tell her parents that she was getting married so Waverly found the perfect change at her father's birthday dinner. It went band even before the dinner when Lindo had just saw Rich for the first time. "So many spots on his face." (Tan 196) she told Waverly. Freckles were not supposed to be a good thing in the Chinese culture. It went even worse at the dinner table. Rich brought a bottle of French Wine, something that Chinese don't really appreciate. Rich had two full glasses when everyone else had half and inch, just for taste. Then Rich insisted on using slippery ivory chopsticks when he was offered a fork by Waverly. Then he helped himself to large portions of shrimp and snow peas when he only should have took a spoonful. He thought he was being polite by refusing seconds. It got much worse when he criticized Lindo's cooking by pouring soy sauce on the dish, covering it with black liquid stuff when Lindo said it was not salty enough. After the horrible dinner, Waverly and Rich got home. "Well I think we hit it off A-o-kay" (Tan 198) How could Rich even be so blind about his mistakes. He had different American culture thoughts than Waverly with her Chinese culture expectations. Mixtures of American and Chinese dinner culture resulted in conflicts in their lives.
The next character is Lena St. Clair. The mixture of Lena and Harold, a Chinese and American resulted in conflicts as well. When Lena moved in with Harold, they kept track of all their items they brought and paid for their own personal items and paid together for their shared items. That was how it was in the American culture. "You should pay for the exterminator, because Mirugair is your cat and so they're your fleas it's only fair." (Tan 179) Usually in the Chinese culture you spilt everything evenly. Later when Lena crosses out the "ice cream" on Harold's list to mean that he shouldn't get credit for his own ice cream anymore, Harold doesn't mind. "Why do you have to be so goddamn fair!" (Tan 179) They soon got into an argument and they hear an unsteady table collapse, crashing a black vase on the floor, shattering it in half. Lena, knowing this was going to happen, didn't save it. Why? Because of the problem on the mixture of cultures resulting in problems.
We probably have seen someone been in these problems. Being aware will prevent us from ending up like Waverly Jong and Lena St. Clair. If you marry a person who's culture is completely different from yours, you're going to have problems. It gets worse when you have a child and your child has to follow both yours and your spouse's culture. If we choose the right person to marry, everything will go well in the end.
This is the complete article, containing 573 words
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