The Joy Luck Club - Growing up Asian

The Joy Luck Club was a 1989 novel written by Amy Tan (later adapted into a film in 1993). It was celebrated for its prominence as a film that featured a majority Asian cast (the next only released 25 years later in 2018- Crazy Rich Asians).

Few have heard of the book or the film. I was introduced to it when an English teacher showed it in class when I was in secondary school and it left a deep impact on me ever since.

 

Four women - Lindo Jung, Ying Ying St. Clair, An Mei Hsu and Suyuan Woo, left China in the 1950s/60s to escape gruelling circumstances. They migrated to America, and started a family here. They each had a daughter, and as their daughters grew up, they not only experienced a genereational gap, but a cultural gap with their own mothers.

These four women met after migrating to America and formed the Joy Luck Club, supporting each other in their struggles both as mothers, and as first-generation Chinese immigrants in America. They frequently played mahjong together and take the same positions every game. Their daughters, June, Waverly, Lena and Rose also met through their mothers and became friends. 

At the start of the story, we are informed that Suyuan (Kieu Chinh) had passed away from a brain aneurysm years ago. Her daughter June, took her place at the mahjong table and we are told about Suyuan's story through flashbacks. 

 

The key theme of the Joy Luck Club was the strength of mother-daughter relationships, transcending even the cultural and generational gaps between first generation Asian-American immigrants and their Westernised children. 

I feel Singaporean viewers may relate to this a bit better than we will Crazy Rich Asians; after all, The Joy Luck Club was more representative of the life of an average 30 year old Singaporean, who was raised by the Merdeka Generation which saw wealth in Singapore only within their own lifetime, and is exposed to multicultural influences thanks to globalisation and technology. At the same time, the Joy Luck Club also explored the struggles of women in juggling marriage, motherhood and societal expectations, and how these struggles are inadvertently passed down the generations even as society evolves.

"And now the woman was old, and she had a daughter who grew up only speaking English and swallowing more Coca-cola than sorrow." 

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June Woo and her mother, Suyuan Woo

"I'm just sorry that you got stuck with such a loser. That I've always been so disappointing" - June Woo

While in China, Suyuan was escaping the Great Leap Forward and fell ill on the journey away from home. Not knowing if she would survive or not, she gave up her elder twin daughters, together with all her possessions, to give them a tiny chance that they would survive with a foster family. She also left a photo of herself so that her daughters would remember their mother. 

Suyuan abandoned her babies en-route to Chongqing

Years later, Suyuan survived, and started a new family in America, where she had a third daughter, June. Suyuan never knew whether her daughters in China had survived and the guilt of leaving behind her daughters behind led her to channel all of her hopes, dreams and motherly love to June.

As a child, June (Wen Ming-Na) was forced to attend piano lessons which she hated, and had a dramatic falling out with her mother after a botched piano competition as she was under too much pressure to perform. The incident left her with low self esteem. Years later, June grew up painfully average, working for her childhood friend Waverly who was her client, single and had an uneventful career in her 30s. It was almost as if deep down, Suyuan could never push her to be anything more. 

June grew up with an underlying inferiority complex, feeling like she could never match up to what her mother expected of her. These feelings blew up when June had a work-related sqaubble with Waverly, and Suyuan utterly broke June's heart by making a "self-deprecating" comment about how one must be born with style, like Waverly and unlike June. 

 

While washing dishes, June broke down and confessed that she had resigned to the fact that she would always be a disappointment to her mother and would never be loved for who she was. Suyuan told her daughter that everything she had wanted of her were not "expetctations", but just "hopes". Moreover, her accomplishments were only secondary, and what really distinguished her from people like Waverly was her "best quality heart". With that, June finally understood her mother's love for her, and that her mother had always appreciated her for who she really was, accomplishments or not.

After her mother's death, June's father passed her a gift that Suyuan always wanted to give her, but did not. It was a swan feather, which symbolised all the hopes and dreams Suyuan had for her. The reason Suyuan had never given it to her all these years was because of her own self-doubt. Suyuan never felt she would be a good mother after abandoning her two elder daughters, and her methods might not have been right, but she still wanted the best for June. 

This spurred June to want to fulfill her mother's long-cherished wish- to travel to China to find her long-last half-sisters, and send her late mother's regards to them.

June broke the news of their mother's death to her half-sisters in China. Upon seeing them, she felt as though her mother's spirit was alive again through her sisters, and she could finally pass on her mother's hope to someone in the world.

"You have best quality heart." - Suyuan Woo

Waverly and her Mother Lindo

"Aren't you going to say anything else? About the apartment, about this? All of this!" - Waverly to her mother

Lindo (Zhou Tsai Chin) grew up poor in a village in China, and was sold off to be the wife of a rich young master (a literal child) to feed the rest of her family. Uneducated and powerless, all Lindo had were unconventional wits and a fierce spirit which she used to out-maoeuvre her over-bearing mother-in-law and leave her arranged marriage. She ran away to America and married another Chinese man, and then she had Waverly.

 Lindo lied that she was condemned by her husbands family's dead ancestors to get out of her arranged marriage

Waverly (Tamilyn Tomita) took after her mother's eccentric ways and strong personality, and friction in the mother and daughter pair ensued throughout Waverly's childhood. Like June, Waverly was forced to play chess by her mother, and was labelled a "child prodigy" by everyone. The only problem was, Waverly hated chess. Sick and tired of her mother showing her off like a prized trophy over a "talent" she wasn't even interested to possess, she had a major outburst in front of her mother and swore never to play chess again. After recovering from her impulsive outburst, she decided to return to chess, but to her surprise, Lindo said nothing about both her major declarations, apart from warning Waverly she couldnt just quit something and go back to it as and when she wished.

True enough, Waverly got rusty from not having played for a while, and lost in a tournament for the first time in her life.

The incident drove a wedge between her mother and her for the rest of her childhood. There were multiple parts to it- Lindo's lack of response to her outbursts caused Waverly to think her mother didn't care about her feelings. The shame that Waverly had- she could almost feel the "I told you so" from her mother.

 

Lindo watching Waverly lose at chess

I had to rewatch Waverly and Lindo's story arc a few times to truly understand what the real issue causing their strained relationship was. It was at this point that I realised - both Lindo and Waverly were Guessers (i.e. people who prefer to pre-empt the other party's response to things before they would say or do anything, or default to unspoken social norms to guide their words and actions. This is as opposed to an Asker who will just be direct about what they think or want- and expect that the other party would be honest in return). 

It is very common for Chinese to be Guessers because of our culture of politeness (what our parents would call, 客气). A second reason was Lindo being conditioned from a young age that it was pointless for her to ask for anything in life as she had standing in neither her in-laws family (who only used her as a tool to produce a male heir), nor in society as an impoverished woman. 

We see these traits in Waverly as well - she preferred to play games with her mother to get her attention than communicate directly with her. This led to preconceived mental models the mother and daughter pair had for each other. Lindo assumed her daughter was rebellious and would do the exact opposite of what she asked just because, and that her daughter would never care about what she wished for her. "This girl not concerned for us, we not concerned for this girl." Waverly asssumed her mother's silence meant she never cared for or valued anything she did. "I didn't tell Ma I was getting engaged to you; she'd rather get rectal cancer." Hence, the mother and daughter pair were frequently seen quarrelling without any apparent catalyst for conflict- they already assumed each other was disapproving of the other. 

Waverly brought her mother to her new apartment she bought with Rich nd Lindo started criticising everything. Waverly wrecked her room in rage

After a botched marriage with an Asian American man, Waverly was finally ready to find love again, this time with a Caucasian man, Rich. Despite feeling like her mother would silently disapprove of Rich because of his race, she brought him home for a chance at impressing her anyway. Lindo had cooked her best dish that night precisely because her guest was her daughter's boyfriend; a fact that was lost on Waverly. Instead, Waverly was disheartened by Rich not understanding ettiquette at a Chinese dinner, and left in a huff very sure that she had gained her mother's disapproval once again.

One day at a hair salon Lindo said in resignation that maybe she wouldn't attend Waverly's wedding, lest she embarrassed her daughter, Waverly finally broke the million dollar question, "Ma, why don't you like Rich?" She went on to talk about how her mother's discouraging treatment had led to her feeling like nothing she ever did was right- including the losing at chess and getting married to Rich. Lindo replied that she would have never allowed Rich to marry her beloved daughter if he didn't like him, and it was revealed that in fact, her seemingly disapproving behaviour was all because she was afraid Rich wasn't good enough for her daughter. 

After all, it is logical from the viewer's point of view- how can a mother not be worried that her prospective son-in-law cannot even be bothered to learn Chinese customs and manners? How can she therefore be assured that he will make an effort to become a part of her daughter's life, and by extension, really understand her daughter's needs? Her silent treatment wasn't disapproval; it was what I would assume Lindo wanting Waverly to learn for herself the actions of her own consequences. She did warn Waverly that she couldn't just start and quit something as and when she liked, and true enough, Waverly learned it the hard way.

It was interesting how all it took was one honest conversation after so many years for both mother and daughter to finally understand that the tension was all an illusion, and that they did care for each other.

"Now, you make me happy" - Lindo Jong

Lena St Clair and her mother Ying Ying St. Clair

"Why do we have to be so god-damn fair? I just feel like we need to change things." - Lena to her husband Harrold

Unlike her friends, Ying Ying (France Nguyen) was born into a wealthy family in China. Interestingly, she was born in the Year of a Tiger, and her family believed it was inappropriate for a girl of her social status to be ferocious and strong-tempered like a Tiger. (Chinese people believe that the personality of a person is heavily influenced by their Zodiac Sign. I was a hyper-active child myself which my parents and relatives often attributed to the fact that I was born in the year of a monkey) Hence, they conditioned her to lose any semblence of personality or individuality from young, training her to instead be meek and submissive. 

Young Ying Ying demurely sipping tea

She met a rich man Lin Xiao at a ball and married him after a short instense of passion, only to realise he was abusive and visited prostitutes. But it was too late- she already had an infant son with him. Ying Ying silently tolerated the physical and verbal abuse, kept quiet when her husband flirted with other women in her presence, and still prepared dinner and waiting night after night for a husband who never came home.

Until one day, she finally snapped, and drowned her infant son in a fit of blind rage. She didn't have any courage left to stand up to her husband after decades of conditioning to be passive and weak, so she took it out the only way she could- on a defenseless baby. She ran away from it all and went to America, but the incident haunted her into old age.

From her daughter Lena's perspective, her mother always appeared to be distant wall she could never really communicate with. Lena only knew that her mother had met a bad man in China, and she would frequently find her mother in a daze (we as viewers know she was dissociating from her unresolved trauma). Lena watched her mum this way growing up, weak and unable to articulate her trauma, and it rubbed off on Lena (although Ying Ying eventually got better). Lena had no spirit, because Ying Ying had none to give her.

Lena (Lauren Tom) herself was newly married to a Chinese American man, Harrold, who believed in marriage equality. Well yea, "equality" in the sense that marriage finances had to be split exactly 50-50. I'd pause here to say that on the surface this sounds like there is nothing wrong in a first world country where women more or less have equal opportunities to men now, but there is context to this. Lena made significantly less than Harrold. Harrold penny pinched and made Lena split finances for every item in the house, including things she didn't use. Harrold was often condescending and dismissive of Lena's needs and didn't even care to realise Lena avoided ice cream because she was allergic to it.  The 50-50 was just a symptom, the actual problem is that Harrold did not care for Lena as a partner.

Harrold bought Lena a pet cat for her birthday but the cost for upkeeping the cat was all Lena's, including the fleas

This was not covered, but perhaps the most important part- should the couple intend to have children, Lena will be the one carrying the child to term for nine months, risking her physical health to bear a child. She will face opportunity costs in the workforce while raising a child as she will be expected to bear the bulk of caretaking duties as a woman in the 1980s, and especially since she would already face employment discrimination as an Asian American. So is 50-50 really 50-50? Like Ying Ying said- this was a lopsided house, with Lena severely disadvantaged.

Lena herself said that the irony of it was that she started things this way when they were dating, by initiating the splitting of the bill on their dinner dates. The film did not explain why she did that, but there are two reasons why many women may choose to do this on dates. Firstly, it is to keep ourselves safe. Yes, a man paying for a date absolutely does not mean we owe them anything, but we would not know if the guy we are meeting for the first time believes otherwise. We'd rather make a clean cut should we decide we don't want to see them again, than risk finding out he is one of the entitled ones 500 messages and 1763287391 missed calls later about how we owe them sex because they paid for dinner one time. Second, many modern women who want to go on proper, classy dates have been accused of being materialistic, and so they have been gaslit into going 50-50 to prove that they are independent enough to hold their own. Ironically, they do this to gain the approval of a man.

But all in all, it was clear Lena did not like this treatment, yet was determined to put up with it, and denied that she was unhappy everytime Ying Ying pointed it out. When Lena finally snapped and confronted Harrold about the unfair situation, she was once again met with condescension. At the height of the couple's conflict, Ying Ying realised that all these years, she had subconsciously instilled the same passiveness and lack of self-worth in her daughter. Ying Ying had a honest talk with Lena and coaxed the latter to admit what she really wanted from her marriage. If she wasn't getting the respect and tenderness she wanted from Harrold, Ying Ying added, then leave and do not come back. Years later we see Lena again at a gathering, once again engaged but this time happily to a another man who loved and cherished her.

 "Losing him does not matter. It is you who will be found, and cherished" - Ying Ying St Clair

Rose Hsu and her mother, An Mei Hsu

"I like being tragic, Ma. I learned it from you." - Rose 

An-Mei (Lisa Lu) had a traumatic childhood. Her father passed away when she was really young, and her widowed mother all of a sudden left the family and married a rich tycoon. Her mother was labelled a wanton, loose woman and was denounced by the family as a result, but An Mei stayed loyal to her mother and followed her into the rich man's family. 

It only years later that An Mei realised her mother had been raped by the rich man and made pregnant with his child. Think about it- even a woman who is raped in modern day will not only hardly ever face justice because rape is difficult to prove, she might even face a slew of insults and victim-blaming comments. What more in the early 20th century- being raped was a fate worse than death, because it either meant she was forced to marry her rapist so that she could at least live with dignity, or live in trauma and shame (that shouldnt be hers) for the rest of her life.

An Mei's mother told her that the only reason she hadn't committed suicide from all the trauma was because she wanted to see An Mei again. An Mei's mother recognised something in An Mei - her insecurity having grown up in two unstable households (her biological father's death and now the rich rapist's household). As a result, An Mei was afraid to assert herself, instead doing anything she could to feel accepted. An Mei's mother knew that she could not allow her daughter to follow in her footsteps, and one last thing she could to awaken that courage in her. An Mei's mother committed suicide. The anger and injustice of it all broke An Mei during the wake and spurred her for the first time in her life to rightfully demand proper treatment from the rapist step-father and for proper burial rights for her mother.

An Mei's mother's suicide gave her power over their enemies

An Mei kept all of this from her daughter Rose as she wanted Rose to grow up healthy (psychologically). However, An Mei's trauma manifested in indirect ways, which Rose sensed - hence the latter describing her mother as "liking to be tragic".

Rose (Rosalind Chao) dated a Caucasian man Ted. Interracial relationships were a lot less common in the 1980s, and Rose had faced a lot of racist prejudice as a result. She wanted to belong to American society, and it felt like her husband was her only pillar she could rely on to truly belong. After experiencing racism from Ted's parents and having Ted stand up for her, she clung onto Ted even more.

Rose confessed that she sometimes felt out of place when interacting with Ted's family, one of the few times she was honest with him before she lost her individuality

But after they got married, Rose began to feel increasingly pressured to be a good wife to Ted, cleaning up after him, cooking only the food that he liked etc. Rose become more and more of "Ted's wife" than Rose as time went by, and what initially attracted Ted to her (which was her individuality) started to fade away. And the more Ted pulled away from her, the harder she bent over backwards to cater to him. Like all scrotes who need an excuse to cheat, Ted cheated on her.

After Rose tearfully confided in her mother while going through a divorce, An Mei revealed the story about her own mother killing herself so her daughter could live on with dignity. An Mei compared her own mother with Rose, and said that they both did not know what they were worth until it was too late. Rose realised that in order for her to live on (figuratively, the real her within which had been subsumed after all these years of trying to be a good wife), she had to kill her weak self.

For the first time in many years, she stood up to Ted, and told him she would be keeping their matrimonial home, and it was he who was going to get out.

"You are just like my mother. You never know your worth." - An Mei Hsu

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"For the longest time, the woman would give her a single swan feather, and tell her, 'This feather may look worthless, but carries with it all my good intentions'".

I saw similarities between my own experiences growing up as Asian (and Singaporean Chinese) with the stories of the four mother-daughters. Waverly and June's lives reflected the pressures we faced as children; and Lena and Rose's personalities were a result of both the traditional expectations for women of their mothers' generation, and the pressure to prove themselves equal to men in their present generation.

My mother grew up in an old 2 bedroom HDB in Chinatown, which she shared with my maternal grandparents and her four other siblings. My maternal grandparents were hawkers in the 1960s. She would tell me about how she grew up malnourished, often feeling faint on bus rides between home and school. 

This was a normal way of life in post-independence Singapore. Our government had always encouraged hard work in my parents' generation and instilled this systemically through meritocratic policies, something which would bring our nation from Third-World to First in a matter of decades. (Most of the wealth Singaporeans have today was acquired within our/our parents' generation, so families with generational wealth like the Crazy Rich Young family are rare.) Hence, my mother valued education and financial savviness. She raised my brother and I to plan for our future, to value health and nutrition and to focus on our education. However, the 90s was a fast-moving era in terms of technology, and even more so as the average Singaporean started gaining wealth at a rapid pace during that period. Our parents' generation grew up with traditional Chinese values, while my generation grew up in a period of globalisation, hence our values more international and I'd say malleable.

I sometimes look back at my 30 years and wonder if I am what my mother pictured me to be. My mother was progressive for her time in many ways, but she still always believed life ought to follow a fixed path- pri/sec sch/JC, then uni, then a job, then get married and have kids in that order. It was the safe path which I followed for a majority of my childhood. I chose the safest, least competitive, most academic hobbies in school that allowed me to be in the background, because I was raised to be hardworking but humble. On the flip side, my parents weren't good with words and were not the affectionate kind, preferring instead to show their love through acts of service. I would go as far as to say my parents (and some close relatives) raised me to paranoid and distrusting of non-family members, and I was actively discouraged from having a social life below the age of 12 (I couldn't go to friends' houses etc).

However, there was an rebellious streak in me deep down that wanted to challenge conventions, and it was a side that I never dared to show outside. In some ways, I felt a bit of Waverly's story in mine, wanting to choose what I wanted to do and when to do it but always secretly feeling like my mother never approved of it. I knew my mother never wanted me to be in the military and delay my studies for two years- she wanted me to study in a local uni immediately after JC so as not to derail my whole life, but I wasn't about to give up an opportunity to pursue a career that was much more meaningful than profit-making. Similarly, there's a bit of Waverly in all the kids of my generation who wanted to pick art but was forced into medicine, who had a strained relationship with their parents because they picked a path (they think) their parents would never approve.

Like June, I always grew up wondering what was special in me. I was never the poster child for anything, never won sports competitions, was never the prettiest, most popular etc. Having attended one of what people called "the most elite" schools in the nation also ensured I was only surrounded by the creme de la creme- hence being average became by extension, mediocre. My parents' lack of focus on developing my social skills also led me to grow up emotionally stunted and I didn't learn to properly relate to people until late in life. I grew up with crippling self-esteem issues and all I knew was to silently push on and work even harder, by myself.

I was fortunate that my mother shielded me from the toxic, sexist values that were prevalent in her generation. I grew up in the 1990s when people still legitimately believed girls shouldn't do sports, shouldn't get degrees, and should wear pretty dresses and be quiet and weak and make herself as palatable to the lowest common denominator man as possible just so we can have a husband and become a housewife. Ying Ying was raised to do everything right by patriarchal standards, but instead of attracting a strong man to come to her rescue, she attracted a rubbish man who took advantage of her meekness and abused her until she escaped to the States. Her trauma followed her for a long time and it negatively affected how she raised Lena.

My mother was enlightened and being a working mom, she instilled in me at a young age that a woman's place did not have to be in the kitchen. However, her patriachal upbringing manifested in how she raised me, in a different way. She was particular about how I dressed and it had been a major source of conflict in my childhood. I preferred pants to skirts simply because it was more comfortable, but none of my elders would have it and labelled me a tomboy. I didn't like anything frilly or pink, but those were the clothes they kept forcing on me. 

My mother did not tell me I was worth less than a boy, but other relatives and the media often did. You watched chinese dramas and the characters within would talk about preferring sons to daughters. My relatives told me I couldn't be loud and physically active. Being 30 and single meant it was the end of me. Subconsciously, my mind associated being a girl with being lesser than, the next thing I knew I spent the rest of my childhood being ugly and androgenous on purpose.

All that focus my mother had on me, her own tough personality, and a very straightforward no-nonsense approach in my childhood made me tough as nails. The 2010s was a major turning point in how women were perceived in the Asian world and we were gradually recognised as equals to men, which was a good thing. However, for women growing up through these eras, part of us still feel like we need to be a gentle, understanding female presence to a man, the next part of us feel we have to over-achieve to be taken as seriously as a man would be. The end result is this mutation where we would contribute and contribute in marriage and career, while not knowing how to ask for reciprocation for our hard work because we feel we don't deserve to be rewarded. This was Lena and it manifested in the 50-50 relationship where Lena had to pay 50 and do 100 out of everything else (i.e. pregnancy, emotional labour, caretaking, etc) to have equal standing in the home, and not knowing how to ask to be treated with love and tenderness in a partnership.

Chinese societies place heavy focus on obligations, so our careers, parenthood, marriage and filial piety were commitments that our parents poured their souls into. How many of us can say we truly know who our mothers are, outside of their roles as our mothers? As a child, my mother had a strong spirit, and she was sure what she wanted everytime, but somehow that gradually got more and more muted as we grew up. Rose's story arc articulates this - many women lose the initial spirit they had as young women and then disappear into the black hole of motherhood and marriage, never to be found again.

Of course, later in life I understood that everything I already had was a privilege, and that everything my parents taught me or conditioned me to do was an invaluable lesson that benefited me a great deal down the road. I had great upbringing and the styles that would be considered "toxic" actually benefitted me a great deal down the road. 

My mother's strict standards conditioned me to be strict with myself in all areas- health, diet, academics and career, and I am healthy and am financially comfortable as a result. Only when my foundations were stable and I had built a solid reputation for myself that I could showcase a more unconventional side of myself without being ostracised. 

I was the "nerdy" kid as I didn't know how to socialise. I grew up cold and unfriendly and it set me back in many years in emotional development, but it prevented me from falling into bad company (cos everyone avoided me) and protected me in my formative years.

I was never pretty, and therefore I managed to avoid a good deal of complications that came with romatic relationships and men in my younger days. I learned never to need validation with regard to my looks. If anything, my parents' generation's constant threats that I better be pretty and tame my strong personality or not have a man only taught me that if a man's love is so conditional, then it is worthless. I instead chose to define myself by my character and other talents. 

Looking back now- of course I speak for myself here, but I think we don't quite understand our mothers sometimes. We don't see our mothers for what they wish for, what they represent, and why they make the choices they do often enough. We forget that they are first and foremost people before they are our mothers. They were once young and unsure like we are, grappling with finding their own identity amid the influences and experiences that came with their generation. They also had to grapple with their own mothers' experiences. They may not be perfect mothers but their love and concern for us is genuine. 

Barring actual abuse or a relationship that is broken beyond repair for whatever reason, we should remember to reciprocate it, and pass it down to our children's generation, so that our mothers' hopes will never be lost, lest we find ourselves searching for it elsewhere in the world when our mothers are no longer around.