The Joy Luck Club: Suyuan and Jing-mei: Loss, Hope and Return
Suyuan’s hope sustains her through loss and becomes pressure for Jing-mei. Follow how the daughter’s changing understanding brings connection without undoing the past.
Hope made under pressure
Begin with the situation Jing-mei inherits. In "The Joy Luck Club", Suyuan has recently died, so Jing-mei takes her mother's east seat at the San Francisco mahjong table. The three aunties then reveal that Suyuan's twin daughters have been found in China. They ask Jing-mei to travel there, meet her half-sisters and tell them about the mother they lost.
The request unsettles Jing-mei because she does not believe she knows Suyuan well enough to represent her. This uncertainty is central to the Woo story. Jing-mei is not simply searching for missing relatives; she is being asked to carry a history she heard incompletely and often resisted.
That history begins with Suyuan's first Joy Luck Club in Kweilin during war. Japanese invasion makes ordinary safety uncertain. Against scarcity and fear, Suyuan and her friends meet, make meals from what they can obtain, play mahjong and tell stories that imagine better outcomes. Their joy is not evidence that conditions are easy. It is a repeated action that prevents terror from determining every part of life.
Later, while fleeing Kweilin, Suyuan becomes separated from her twin babies. She survives, migrates and establishes another Joy Luck Club in San Francisco, but the original loss remains active. She continues searching for the twins and dies before she can meet them again.
This sequence changes the meaning of hope:
| If hope is read as... | The Kweilin evidence suggests... |
|---|---|
| a cheerful feeling | too little: the club operates amid danger, scarcity and displacement. |
| denial of suffering | too simple: the women know the danger and deliberately act against despair. |
| a survival practice | stronger: repeated gathering, food, play and storytelling create communal endurance. |
Historical context sharpens the final reading. Kweilin was threatened during the Japanese invasion of China, so the fictional club's performance of abundance takes place under real conditions of wartime insecurity. Context explains why Suyuan later treats hope as something that must be acted upon. It does not prove the exact date or campaign of her fictional flight, and it does not make every later action right.
Suyuan never narrates this history directly. At first it reaches the reader through Jing-mei; later the aunties and Canning add what Jing-mei does not know. Her east seat therefore carries both succession and uncertainty. She can continue Suyuan's hope, but she cannot simply repeat an untouched version of her mother's story.
Jing-mei recalls Suyuan describing the wartime club in Kweilin.
Source A
The Joy Luck Club — “The Joy Luck Club”
By Amy Tan
[19] “Each week one of us would host a party to raise money and to raise our spirits. The hostess had to serve special dyansyin foods to bring good fortune of all kinds—dumplings shaped like silver money ingots, long rice noodles for long life, boiled peanuts for conceiving sons, and of course, many good-luck oranges for a plentiful, sweet life.
[20] “What fine food we treated ourselves to with our meager allowances! We didn’t notice that the dumplings were stuffed mostly with stringy squash and that the oranges were spotted with wormy holes. We ate sparingly, not as if we didn’t have enough, but to protest how we could not eat another bite, we had already bloated ourselves from earlier in the day. We knew we had luxuries few people could afford. We were the lucky ones.
[21] “After filling our stomachs, we would then fill a bowl with money and put it where everyone could see. Then we would sit down at the mah jong table. My table was from my family and was of a very fragrant red wood, not what you call rosewood, but hong mu, which is so fine there’s no English word for it. The table had a very thick pad, so that when the mah jong pai were spilled onto the table the only sound was of ivory tiles washing against one another.
[22] “Once we started to play, nobody could speak, except to say ‘Pung!’ or ‘Chr!’ when taking a tile. We had to play with seriousness and think of nothing else but adding to our happiness through winning. But after sixteen rounds, we would again feast, this time to celebrate our good fortune. And then we would talk into the night until the morning, saying stories about good times in the past and good times yet to come.
[23] “Oh, what good stories! Stories spilling out all over the place! We almost laughed to death. A rooster that ran into the house screeching on top of dinner bowls, the same bowls that held him quietly in pieces the next day! And one about a girl who wrote love letters for two friends who loved the same man. And a silly foreign lady who fainted on a toilet when firecrackers went off next to her.
[24] “People thought we were wrong to serve banquets every week while many people in the city were starving, eating rats and, later, the garbage that the poorest rats used to feed on. Others thought we were possessed by demons—to celebrate when even within our own families we had lost generations, had lost homes and fortunes, and were separated, husband from wife, brother from sister, daughter from mother. Hnnnh! How could we laugh, people asked.
[25] “It’s not that we had no heart or eyes for pain. We were all afraid. We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. How much can you wish for a favorite warm coat that hangs in the closet of a house that burned down with your mother and father inside of it? How long can you see in your mind arms and legs hanging from telephone wires and starving dogs running down the streets with half-chewed hands dangling from their jaws? What was worse, we asked among ourselves, to sit and wait for our own deaths with proper somber faces? Or to choose our own happiness?
[26] “So we decided to hold parties and pretend each week had become the new year. Each week we could forget past wrongs done to us. We weren’t allowed to think a bad thought. We feasted, we laughed, we played games, lost and won, we told the best stories. And each week, we could hope to be lucky. That hope was our only joy. And that’s how we came to call our little parties Joy Luck.”
Notes
Paragraph numbers locate the passage within this chapter. “Section break” marks a break in the original.
The aunties have located Suyuan’s twin daughters and tell Jing-mei what they hope she will do.
Source B
The Joy Luck Club — “The Joy Luck Club”
By Amy Tan
[129] “No, no,” says Auntie Lin with her mock exasperated voice. “Every year we save our mah jong winnings for big banquet at fancy restaurant. Most times your mother win, so most is her money. We add just a little, so you can go Hong Kong, take a train to Shanghai, see your sisters. Besides, we all getting too rich, too fat.” she pats her stomach for proof.
[130] “See my sisters,” I say numbly. I am awed by this prospect, trying to imagine what I would see. And I am embarrassed by the end-of-the-year-banquet lie my aunties have told to mask their generosity. I am crying now, sobbing and laughing at the same time, seeing but not understanding this loyalty to my mother.
[131] “You must see your sisters and tell them about your mother’s death,” says Auntie Ying. “But most important, you must tell them about her life. The mother they did not know, they must now know.”
[132] “See my sisters, tell them about my mother,” I say, nodding. “What will I say? What can I tell them about my mother? I don’t know anything. She was my mother.”
[133] The aunties are looking at me as if I had become crazy right before their eyes.
[134] “Not know your own mother?” cries Auntie An-mei with disbelief. “How can you say? Your mother is in your bones!”
[135] “Tell them stories of your family here. How she became success,” offers Auntie Lin.
[136] “Tell them stories she told you, lessons she taught, what you know about her mind that has become your mind,” says Auntie Ying. “You mother very smart lady.”
[137] I hear more choruses of “Tell them, tell them” as each Auntie frantically tries to think what should be passed on.
Notes
Paragraph numbers locate the passage within this chapter. “Section break” marks a break in the original.
When hope becomes pressure
After the recital, Suyuan expects Jing-mei to continue her piano practice.
Source A
The Joy Luck Club — “Two Kinds”
By Amy Tan
[63] I assumed my talent-show fiasco meant I never had to play the piano again. But two days later, after school, my mother came out of the kitchen and saw me watching TV.
[64] “Four clock,” she reminded me as if it were any other day. I was stunned, as though she were asking me to go through the talent-show torture again. I wedged myself more tightly in front of the TV.
[65] “Turn off TV,” she called from the kitchen five minutes later.
[66] I didn’t budge. And then I decided. I didn’t have to do what my mother said anymore. I wasn’t her slave. This wasn’t China. I had listened to her before and look what happened. She was the stupid one.
[67] She came out from the kitchen and stood in the arched entryway of the living room. “Four clock,” she said once again, louder.
[68] “I’m not going to play anymore,” I said nonchalantly. “Why should I? I’m not a genius.”
[69] She walked over and stood in front of the TV. I saw her chest was heaving up and down in an angry way.
[70] “No!” I said, and I now felt stronger, as if my true self had finally emerged. So this was what had been inside me all along.
[71] “No! I won’t!” I screamed.
[72] She yanked me by the arm, pulled me off the floor, snapped off the TV. She was frighteningly strong, half pulling, half carrying me toward the piano as I kicked the throw rugs under my feet. She lifted me up and onto the hard bench. I was sobbing by now, looking at her bitterly. Her chest was heaving even more and her mouth was open, smiling crazily as if she were pleased I was crying.
[73] “You want me to be someone that I’m not!” I sobbed. “I’ll never be the kind of daughter you want me to be!”
[74] “Only two kinds of daughters,” she shouted in Chinese. “Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter!”
[75] “Then I wish I wasn’t your daughter. I wish you weren’t my mother,” I shouted. As I said these things I got scared. It felt like worms and toads and slimy things crawling out of my chest, but it also felt good, as if this awful side of me had surfaced, at last.
[76] “Too late change this,” said my mother shrilly.
[77] And I could sense her anger rising to its breaking point. I wanted to see it spill over. And that’s when I remembered the babies she had lost in China, the ones we never talked about. “Then I wish I’d never been born!” I shouted. “I wish I were dead! Like them.”
[78] It was as if I had said the magic words. Alakazam!—and her face went blank, her mouth closed, her arms went slack, and she backed out of the room, stunned, as if she were blowing away like a small brown leaf, thin, brittle, lifeless.
Section break.
[79] It was not the only disappointment my mother felt in me. In the years that followed, I failed her so many times, each time asserting my own will, my right to fall short of expectations. I didn’t get straight As. I didn’t become class president. I didn’t get into Stanford. I dropped out of college.
[80] For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.
[81] And for all those years, we never talked about the disaster at the recital or my terrible accusations afterward at the piano bench. All that remained unchecked, like a betrayal that was now unspeakable. So I never found a way to ask her why she had hoped for something so large that failure was inevitable.
[82] And even worse, I never asked her what frightened me the most: Why had she given up hope?
[83] For after our struggle at the piano, she never mentioned my playing again. The lessons stopped. The lid to the piano was closed, shutting out the dust, my misery, and her dreams.
Notes
Paragraph numbers locate the passage within this chapter. “Section break” marks a break in the original.
In "Two Kinds", hope changes setting and effect. In the United States, Suyuan treats possibility as almost unlimited: if the right talent can be discovered and trained, Jing-mei might become exceptional. The search moves through imagined prodigy roles and settles on piano lessons and a public recital.
Jing-mei experiences this campaign differently. To Suyuan, undeveloped talent may look like a future waiting to be released. To Jing-mei, the repeated search suggests that her present self is not enough. This is why the conflict is larger than a disagreement about practising. It concerns who has the authority to define the daughter she should become.
The failed recital exposes the gap between maternal fantasy and the child's actual preparation. Jing-mei is humiliated, while Suyuan's public confidence does not immediately produce a more honest conversation. When Suyuan later expects the lessons to continue, their argument becomes deliberately wounding. Jing-mei uses the memory of Suyuan's lost babies against her, turning the mother's deepest loss into a weapon of resistance.
A one-sided reading loses something important:
- Calling Jing-mei merely lazy ignores her fear that love depends on becoming someone else.
- Calling Suyuan merely cruel ignores the survival history that has taught her to turn hope into plans.
- Calling the pressure harmless because it comes from love ignores the shame, resentment and mutual injury the chapter makes visible.
The strongest judgement holds cause and consequence together. Suyuan's wartime loss and belief in American possibility help explain why achievement feels protective to her. They do not excuse making Jing-mei's worth depend on success.
Amy Tan's account of her own writing supports this careful use of context. Tan has described a mother who also tried to cultivate her as a piano prodigy, but she insists that the fictional stories transform family experience rather than mirror it directly. The context gives the conflict emotional resonance; the novel's episodes still control the interpretation.
Years later, Suyuan offers Jing-mei the piano. After Suyuan's death, Jing-mei returns to the music and discovers that the two pieces associated with her childhood are complementary parts of one song. That later moment does not make the recital or argument necessary. It suggests instead that Jing-mei can now hold two truths together: she was a pleading, resistant child, and contentment or reconciliation may still become possible.
Jing-mei recalls her mother’s expectations in America.
Source A
The Joy Luck Club — “Two Kinds”
By Amy Tan
[1] My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. You could open a restaurant. You could work for the government and get good retirement. You could buy a house with almost no money down. You could become rich. You could become instantly famous.
[2] “Of course you can be prodigy, too,” my mother told me when I was nine. “You can be best anything. What does Auntie Lindo know? Her daughter, she is only best tricky.”
[3] America was where all my mother’s hopes lay. She had come here in 1949 after losing everything in China: her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls. But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better.
Notes
Paragraph numbers locate the passage within this chapter. “Section break” marks a break in the original.
Jing-mei describes the preparations and performance at her childhood piano recital.
Source B
The Joy Luck Club — “Two Kinds”
By Amy Tan
[49] A few weeks later, Old Chong and my mother conspired to have me play in a talent show which would be held in the church hall. By then, my parents had saved up enough to buy me a secondhand piano, a black Wurlitzer spinet with a scarred bench. It was the showpiece of our living room.
[50] For the talent show, I was to play a piece called “Pleading Child” from Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood. It was a simple, moody piece that sounded more difficult than it was. I was supposed to memorize the whole thing, playing the repeat parts twice to make the piece sound longer. But I dawdled over it, playing a few bars and then cheating, looking up to see what notes followed. I never really listened to what I was playing. I daydreamed about being somewhere else, about being someone else.
[51] The part I liked to practice best was the fancy curtsy: right foot out, touch the rose on the carpet with a pointed foot, sweep to the side, left leg bends, look up and smile.
[52] My parents invited all the couples from the Joy Luck Club to witness my debut. Auntie Lindo and Uncle Tin were there. Waverly and her two older brothers had also come. The first two rows were filled with children both younger and older than I was. The littlest ones got to go first. They recited simple nursery rhymes, squawked out tunes on miniature violins, twirled Hula Hoops, pranced in pink ballet tutus, and when they bowed or curtsied, the audience would sigh in unison, “Awww,” and then clap enthusiastically.
[53] When my turn came, I was very confident. I remember my childish excitement. It was as if I knew, without a doubt, that the prodigy side of me really did exist. I had no fear whatsoever, no nervousness. I remember thinking to myself, This is it! This is it! I looked out over the audience, at my mother’s blank face, my father’s yawn, Auntie Lindo’s stiff-lipped smile, Waverly’s sulky expression. I had on a white dress layered with sheets of lace, and a pink bow in my Peter Pan haircut. As I sat down I envisioned people jumping to their feet and Ed Sullivan rushing up to introduce me to everyone on TV.
[54] And I started to play. It was so beautiful. I was so caught up in how lovely I looked that at first I didn’t worry how I would sound. So it was a surprise to me when I hit the first wrong note and I realized something didn’t sound quite right. And then I hit another and another followed that. A chill started at the top of my head and began to trickle down. Yet I couldn’t stop playing, as though my hands were bewitched. I kept thinking my fingers would adjust themselves back, like a train switching to the right track. I played this strange jumble through two repeats, the sour notes staying with me all the way to the end.
[55] When I stood up, I discovered my legs were shaking. Maybe I had just been nervous and the audience, like Old Chong, had seen me go through the right motions and had not heard anything wrong at all. I swept my right foot out, went down on my knee, looked up and smiled. The room was quiet, except for Old Chong, who was beaming and shouting, “Bravo! Bravo! Well done!” But then I saw my mother’s face, her stricken face. The audience clapped weakly, and as I walked back to my chair, with my whole face quivering as I tried not to cry, I heard a little boy whisper loudly to his mother, “That was awful,” and the mother whispered back, “Well, she certainly tried.”
[56] And now I realized how many people were in the audience, the whole world it seemed. I was aware of eyes burning into my back. I felt the shame of my mother and father as they sat stiffly throughout the rest of the show.
Notes
Paragraph numbers locate the passage within this chapter. “Section break” marks a break in the original.
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