The joy luck club
The movie is about the complex mother –daughter relationships of four Chinese families whose roots from the past intertwine within the present causing conflicts and misunderstandings in their lives. It’s also a movie about power of family. There is a problem with communication in nearly every single account .One reason for this is the mothers struggle with English and the daughters has a very slim grasp on the Chinese dialect of their mothers.so they cannot grasp the full meaning what they are trying to say to each other. Other problem is due to cultural clash. Mothers are still very much influenced by a culture that the daughters have never experienced. In Chinese culture the parents have a strong bond with their children but don’t like to express their love and don’t openly communicate to their children and they are strict. They do not habitually explain everything, Verbal message is indirect; one talks around the point. The mothers expect their daughters to obey their elders and so learn by obedience. The daughters born and raised in America do not understand or care about the old customs and are embarrassed by their traditionalism and other somber attitude. Daughters think of themselves as American and adopt the culture that surrounds them. This difference makes it hard to really communicate.
From the perspective of mothers, a mother passes on her strengths and weakness to her daughters. She has a responsibility to provide them with a good future, keep them away from harm, teach them about life and keep them from making the same mistakes she did. Every mother has those hopes and expectations for her children that children will exceed them and have a happier life than they did. Sometimes these hopes and expectations are not what the daughter wants or perceives for herself. The daughters think that role of a mother is to be unconditionally kind, supportive, and encouraging. Each daughter recalls her own past and she felt pushed to do things for her mother, trying to please her, yet feeling unworthy. What was needed is good communication to bridge the gap. But finally the heart to heart talk with their mothers unites them. A little communication can go a long way. Being an immigrant I can relate to this. The difficult process of watching my children grow in another culture-wonderful, different and have to figure out how to connect with the children.
As they mature, the daughters begin to sense that their identities are incomplete and become interested in their Chinese heritage.One of the daughters whose mother had recently passed away learns of a painful experience in her mother’s life like in china, which forced her to make the decision no mother should have to make i.e. abandoning her children. She travels to China to unite with her twin sisters and tells them story about their mom. Her goal is mind is letting the twins know who their mother was and how much she loved them. live your life according to honesty, compassion, courage, modesty and forgiveness.