The Search for Identity in Amy Tans The Joy Luck Club Essay -- Joy Lu

The Search for Identity in The exult Luck Club When Chinese immigrants enter the unify States of America, it is evident from the trip that they are in a live onledge domain far different than their homeland. attend to face with a dominant culture that often times acts and thinks in ways contrary to their previous lives, immigrants are on a uncontrollable path of attempting to be semen an American. Chinese immigrants find themselves often caught between devil worlds the old world of structured, traditional and didactic china and the new world of mobile, young and prosperous America. They nostalgically look back at China longing for a simpler life but look at the United States as a land of opportunity and freedom that they did not know in China. For this is why they came to America in the first place, to provide for their children and themselves what they could not in China. To do this, of course, they are faced with the challenge of assimilating. Learning the language, acq uiring education, owning property, etc. are all ways to seize the American Dream. but this poses a problem for the Chinese immigrant for, in the process of assimilation, they lose around of their Chinese culture. This especially rings true for the children of Chinese immigrants the second-generation Chinese Americans. Second-generation Chinese Americans are faced with a special challenge. Their parents have endured the struggle to come to this coun... ... October 19%. 256,257. Shear, Walter. Generational Differences and the Diaspora. Critigue leap 1993 193-199. Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Vintage Contemporaries. tonic York A Division of Random House, Inc., 199 1. Tsai, Shan-Shan Henry. The Chinese Experience in America. Bloomington and capital of Indiana Indiana University Press, 1986. Xu, Ben. Memory and the Ethnic Self. Reading Amy Tans The Joy Luck Club.Meleus. Spring 1994 3 -16. Yung, Judy. Chinese Women in America A Pictorial History. Seattle and capital of the United Ki ngdom University of Washington Press, 1989. (several found in Gale Literary Database t)v-(http//www.galenet.com/servlet/GLD/hits?c...n=10&1=d&NA=Amy+Tan=&The+Joy+-Luck+Club)