The Joy Luck Club: The Mothers' China: War, Patriarchy and Migration
The mothers bring different histories of war, coercion and survival to America. Connect those histories to their choices without treating four fictional lives as one cultural rule.
Four mothers, four histories
Begin with what happens to each woman before trying to make a broad claim about China, gender or migration.
| Mother and chapter anchor | Pressure in her China narrative | How she responds | What remains costly or unresolved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Suyuan, remembered in "The Joy Luck Club" | War makes Kweilin dangerous and scarce; flight separates her from her twin daughters. | She creates the first Joy Luck Club, making food, mahjong and storytelling into a repeated practice of hope. | She survives and later migrates, but survival does not restore the lost years with the twins. |
| Lindo, "The Red Candle" | A childhood marriage contract places her in the Huang household, where obedience and family reputation define her role. | She observes the household closely and constructs a convincing way out of the marriage without openly dishonouring either family. | Her freedom depends on working through the system's own beliefs; the system itself remains in place. |
| An-mei's mother, "Magpies" | Sexual and social coercion leave her with insecure status in Wu Tsing's household, where Second Wife controls appearances and rank. | Her final act uses the household's beliefs to improve An-mei's position. | The act costs her life. Any power it gains is limited and exposes how few safer choices she has. |
| Ying-ying, "Waiting Between the Trees" | Her first husband's betrayal and her pregnancy and abortion are followed by a severe loss of confidence and force. | She endures, later migrates and eventually narrates the history that had remained hidden. | A new country and marriage do not automatically restore her former self. |
These histories overlap, but they are not interchangeable. Suyuan creates community under war; Lindo uses strategy inside a marriage system; An-mei's mother turns a lethal constraint into limited protection for her child; Ying-ying survives while carrying lasting damage. The differences matter because a claim such as "the mothers are strong" is too simple unless it identifies what strength achieves and what it costs.
Only after seeing those episodes does the term patriarchal power become useful. Here it means more than individual men behaving badly. It describes arrangements in which contracts, household rank, reputation, money and decision-making give men and senior family members greater power over women's lives. Tan's four family histories expose such arrangements, but they do not prove that every Chinese household, marriage or man is the same.
Suyuan: war and chosen hope
Suyuan's first Joy Luck Club begins in wartime Kweilin. The members gather whatever food they can, play mahjong and tell stories as if better fortune is possible. The club does not make the war disappear. Its importance lies in making hope into something the women do together when danger and scarcity could otherwise determine every thought.
This creates a more precise reading of Suyuan's optimism. She is not hopeful because suffering is minor or because she cannot see it. Hope is a survival strategy: a temporary claim over food, time, language and companionship. The strategy is powerful because it protects a human capacity to imagine life beyond the immediate crisis.
The flight from Kweilin prevents that reading from becoming sentimental. Suyuan survives, but she becomes separated from her twin daughters. Her later migration and the San Francisco club show that she can rebuild a community; they cannot make the separation unhappen. In this narrative, survival preserves a future while also carrying an irreversible loss into it.
Historical context sharpens this interpretation when it remains carefully bounded. The U.S. National Park Service records that a major Japanese offensive in 1944 drove through the Kweilin region, led to the abandonment of cities and sent large streams of refugees north. That evidence makes the novel's wartime flight and scarcity historically legible. However, the novel does not securely date Suyuan's evacuation, so it would be inaccurate to claim that this specific offensive caused her fictional journey.
Here is the useful text-context relationship:
The documented danger around Kweilin helps us understand why the club's performance of abundance matters. Against a history of invasion, evacuation and scarcity, sharing food and hopeful stories can be read as a small act of control rather than escapism. Yet Suyuan's separation from the twins prevents "resilience" from sounding like complete recovery: the strategy sustains life but does not cancel the cost of war.
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.
Patriarchal households and constrained agency
An-mei recounts what Yan Chang told her about her mother’s entry into Wu Tsing’s household.
Source A
The Joy Luck Club — “Magpies”
By Amy Tan
[139] “Five years ago—your father had died only one year before—she and I went to Hangchow to visit the Six Harmonies Pagoda on the far side of West Lake. Your father had been a respected scholar and also devoted to the six virtues of Buddhism enshrined in this pagoda. So your mother kowtowed in the pagoda, pledging to observe the right harmony of body, thoughts, and speech, to refrain from giving opinions, and to shun wealth. And when we boarded the boat to cross the lake again, we sat opposite a man and a woman. This was Wu Tsing and Second Wife.
[140] “Wu Tsing must have seen her beauty immediately. Back then your mother had hair down to her waist, which she tied high up on her head. And she had unusual skin, a lustrous pink color. Even in her white widow’s clothes she was beautiful! But because she was a widow, she was worthless in many respects. She could not remarry.
[141] “But this did not stop Second Wife from thinking of a way. She was tired of watching her household’s money being washed away in so many different teahouses. The money he spent was enough to support five more wives! She was anxious to quiet Wu Tsing’s outside appetite. So she conspired with Wu Tsing to lure your mother to his bed.
[142] “She chatted with your mother, discovered that she planned to go to the Monastery of the Spirits’ Retreat the next day. And Second Wife showed up at that place as well. And after more friendly talk, she invited your mother to dinner. Your mother was so lonely for good conversation she gladly accepted. And after the dinner, Second Wife said to your mother, ‘Do you play mah jong? Oh, it doesn’t matter if you play badly. We are only three people now and cannot play at all unless you would be kind enough to join us tomorrow night.’
[143] “The next night, after a long evening of mah jong, Second Wife yawned and insisted my mother spend the night. ‘Stay! Stay! Don’t be so polite. No, your politeness is really more inconvenient. Why wake the rickshaw boy?’ said Second Wife. ‘Look here, my bed is certainly big enough for two.’
[144] “As your mother slept soundly in Second Wife’s bed, Second Wife got up in the middle of the night and left the dark room, and Wu Tsing took her place. When your mother awoke to find him touching her beneath her undergarments, she jumped out of bed. He grabbed her by her hair and threw her on the floor, then put his foot on her throat and told her to undress. Your mother did not scream or cry when he fell on her.
[145] “In the early morning, she left in a rickshaw, her hair undone and with tears streaming down her face. She told no one but me what had happened. But Second Wife complained to many people about the shameless widow who had enchanted Wu Tsing into bed. How could a worthless widow accuse a rich woman of lying?
[146] “So when Wu Tsing asked your mother to be his third concubine, to bear him a son, what choice did she have? She was already as low as a prostitute. And when she returned to her brother’s house and kowtowed three times to say good-bye, her brother kicked her, and her own mother banned her from the family house forever. That is why you did not see your mother again until your grandmother died. Your mother went to live in Tientsin, to hide her shame with Wu Tsing’s wealth. And three years later, she gave birth to a son, which Second Wife claimed as her own.
Notes
Paragraph numbers locate the passage within this chapter. “Section break” marks a break in the original.
Ying-ying recalls the betrayal and reproductive loss in her first marriage.
Source B
The Joy Luck Club — “Waiting Between the Trees”
By Amy Tan
[44] My husband started to take many business trips to the north. These trips began soon after we married, but they became longer after the baby was put in my womb. I remembered that the north wind had blown luck and my husband my way, so at night when he was away, I opened wide my bedroom windows, even on cold nights, to blow his spirit and heart back my way.
[45] What I did not know is that the north wind is the coldest. It penetrates the heart and takes the warmth away. The wind gathered such a force that it blew my husband past my bedroom and out the back door. I found out from my youngest aunt that he had left me to live with an opera singer.
[46] Later still, when I overcame my grief and came to have nothing in my heart but loathing despair, my youngest aunt told me of others. Dancers and American ladies. Prostitutes. A girl cousin younger even than I was. She left mysteriously for Hong Kong soon after my husband disappeared.
[47] So I will tell Lena of my shame. That I was rich and pretty. I was too good for any one man. That I became abandoned goods. I will tell her that at eighteen the prettiness drained from my cheeks. That I thought of throwing myself in the lake like the other ladies of shame. And I will tell her of the baby I killed because I came to hate this man so much.
[48] I took this baby from my womb before it could be born. This was not a bad thing to do in China back then, to kill a baby before it is born. But even then, I thought it was bad, because my body flowed with terrible revenge as the juices of this man’s firstborn son poured from me.
[49] When the nurses asked what they should do with the lifeless baby, I hurled a newspaper at them and said to wrap it like a fish and throw it in the lake. My daughter thinks I do not know what it means to not want a baby.
Notes
Paragraph numbers locate the passage within this chapter. “Section break” marks a break in the original.
The marriage histories reveal different forms of gendered power, so a useful comparison must preserve their differences.
Lindo's response is strategic escape. In "The Red Candle", her marriage has been arranged through a family contract made when she is a child. She appears obedient, but inwardly she studies the Huang household and the ritual claims surrounding the marriage. She exploits the gap between the wedding ritual’s promise and what actually happened, constructing an explanation the household can accept and securing her release. Her method is effective because she understands the rules more acutely than those who control her. Its limit is equally important: she has to disguise resistance as obedience because a direct refusal carries too much risk.
An-mei's mother's response is desperate leverage. "Magpies" reveals the coercion behind her place in Wu Tsing's household and the manipulation of her status by Second Wife. Shortly before the lunar new year, she takes her own life in a way that uses the household's fears and beliefs to strengthen An-mei's position. One defensible reading sees intelligence and maternal protection in the timing. Another emphasises that a system in which death becomes her most effective form of speech has almost destroyed agency. The strongest judgement holds both: the act has consequences, but it is not a cost-free victory.
Ying-ying's response is survival followed by delayed testimony. In "Waiting Between the Trees", the betrayal in her first marriage and her reproductive trauma are connected to the loss of her forceful former self. Later migration changes her location and circumstances, but not the fact that the earlier experience continues to shape her. This lesson needs only that mother-history; whether Lena can change belongs to the earlier St Clair study.
Context prevents these households from being mislabelled as an unchanging "ancient China". Historian Xia Shi's Cambridge University Press study shows that Republican-era reform and continuing concubinage could exist at the same time: legal change had loopholes, was unevenly applied and did not instantly remove household practice. This makes Wu Tsing's household more intelligible as a particular system of rank and dependence. It does not tell us the exact legal options available to An-mei's mother, and it cannot support the claim that all Chinese marriages worked this way.
The three responses therefore create a spectrum rather than one lesson about female strength:
| Response | What it achieves | What it costs or cannot do |
|---|---|---|
| Lindo's concealed strategy | Release from her first marriage and increased room to direct her life. | Requires performance and leaves the wider household order unchallenged. |
| An-mei's mother's final act | Limited protection and improved status for An-mei. | Ends her life and exposes the lethal narrowness of her choices. |
| Ying-ying's endurance and later account | Preserves life and eventually makes the hidden past narratable. | Does not prevent lasting damage or produce automatic recovery after migration. |
Lindo finishes her account of escaping the marriage and reflects on what she retained.
Source A
The Joy Luck Club — “The Red Candle”
By Amy Tan
[96] By mid-morning they had dragged the matchmaker’s servant over to our house and extracted her terrible confession.
[97] And after much searching they found the servant girl I liked so much, the one I had watched from my window every day. I had seen her eyes grow bigger and her teasing voice become smaller whenever the handsome delivery man arrived. And later, I had watched her stomach grow rounder and her face become longer with fear and worry.
[98] So you can imagine how happy she was when they forced her to tell the truth about her imperial ancestry. I heard later she was so struck with this miracle of marrying Tyan-yu she became a very religious person who ordered servants to sweep the ancestors’ graves not just once a year, but once a day.
Section break.
[99] There’s no more to the story. They didn’t blame me so much. Huang Taitai got her grandson. I got my clothes, a rail ticket to Peking, and enough money to go to America. The Huangs asked only that I never tell anybody of any importance about the story of my doomed marriage.
[100] It’s a true story, how I kept my promise, how I sacrificed my life. See the gold metal I can now wear. I gave birth to your brothers and then your father gave me these two bracelets. Then I had you. And every few years, when I have a little extra money, I buy another bracelet. I know what I’m worth. They’re always twenty-four carats, all genuine.
[101] But I’ll never forget. On the day of the Festival of Pure Brightness, I take off all my bracelets. I remember the day when I finally knew a genuine thought and could follow where it went. That was the day I was a young girl with my face under a red marriage scarf. I promised not to forget myself.
[102] How nice it is to be that girl again, to take off my scarf, to see what is underneath and feel the lightness come back into my body!
Notes
Paragraph numbers locate the passage within this chapter. “Section break” marks a break in the original.
An-mei interprets her mother’s death and recounts the household’s response.
Source B
The Joy Luck Club — “Magpies”
By Amy Tan
[169] Yan Chang later told me my mother had listened to Second Wife and tried to do pretend-suicide. False words! Lies! She would never listen to this woman who caused her so much suffering.
[170] I know my mother listened to her own heart, to no longer pretend. I know this because why else did she die two days before the lunar new year? Why else did she plan her death so carefully that it became a weapon?
[171] Three days before the lunar new year, she had eaten ywansyau, the sticky sweet dumpling that everybody eats to celebrate. She ate one after the other. And I remember her strange remark. “You see how this life is. You cannot eat enough of this bitterness.” And what she had done was eat ywansyau filled with a kind of bitter poison, not candied seeds or the dull happiness of opium as Yan Chang and the others had thought. When the poison broke into her body, she whispered to me that she would rather kill her own weak spirit so she could give me a stronger one.
[172] The stickiness clung to her body. They could not remove the poison and so she died, two days before the new year. They laid her on a wooden board in the hallway. She wore funeral clothes far richer than those she had worn in life. Silk undergarments to keep her warm without the heavy burden of a fur coat. A silk gown, sewn with gold thread. A headdress of gold and lapis and jade. And two delicate slippers with the softest leather soles and two giant pearls on each toe, to light her way to nirvana.
[173] Seeing her this last time, I threw myself on her body. And she opened her eyes slowly. I was not scared. I knew she could see me and what she had finally done. So I shut her eyes with my fingers and told her with my heart: I can see the truth, too. I am strong, too.
[174] Because we both knew this: that on the third day after someone dies, the soul comes back to settle scores. In my mother’s case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow.
[175] So on that day, Wu Tsing, fearful of my mother’s vengeful spirit, wore the coarsest of white cotton mourning clothes. He promised her visiting ghost that he would raise Syaudi and me as his honored children. He promised to revere her as if she had been First Wife, his only wife.
[176] And on that day, I showed Second Wife the fake pearl necklace she had given me and crushed it under my foot.
[177] And on that day, Second Wife’s hair began to turn white.
[178] And on that day, I learned to shout.
Notes
Paragraph numbers locate the passage within this chapter. “Section break” marks a break in the original.
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