Critique: The Joy Luck Club

      "Nobody, but he who has felt it, can conceive what a plaguing thing it is to have a man's mind torn asunder by two projects of equal strength, both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction at the same time."  British novelist Laurence Sterne eloquently put to words the turmoil which one can feel when he has a decision to make, a decision that could determine what the future could hold for him, a decision that could effect who he becomes.  It is not an easy decision to make when two opposing conditions are the only choices, and those choices vie for attention, pull eagerly at hte mind, and try their best to be the chosen one.  Sometims the decision is also a struggle between parent and child, demonstrated in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club.
      Jing-mei Woo is a young Chinese girl in America who feels the full effects of just such a situation when she and her monther's ideas clash.  Her mother, Suyuan Woo, has come to America with hopes and dreams of allowing her children the best of everything, of taking advantage of every opportunity that America can provide, but taking those opportunities with Chinese intention.  It seems to Suyuan, that in America, every person, every child, has the chance to become a prodigy.  Suyuan views the world with proud detachment and believes that a person can be anything he or she wants to be.  Jing-mei, who has grown up in America, has rather different perceptions of the world.
      Suyuan has the hope of fostering some hidden talent in Jing-mei and finally settles on the skill of piano.  She trades house-cleaning for Jing-mei's lessons with a retired paino teacher who lives in the same apartment as the Woo family. Suyuan presistently preaches to Jing-mei that the potential for prodigy resides in everyone.  She wants an incredibly talented daughter and through this, an honor for the family.  Jing-mei, according to her Chinese upbringing, cannot contradict her mother's wishes.  But also, due to the freedoms America has allowed her, Jing-mei carries with her the desire to be simply herself, and the defiance to conform to anyone else's definition of herself.
      It is not so much that Jing-mei detested the piano-playing, nor the practicing that it required, but rather the necessity that she must please her mother.  The decision between pleasing her mother or making her own choices in life was the real conflict of the chapter.  The situation also reveals the problem created for many children of Chinese immigrants at the time.  There is an opposite pull between the American culture that they see aroundt hem, and the Chinese culture that thier parents have done thier best to instill in them since they were small.  They must make their own choices without letting only one of the two very different cultures decide for them.
      It is curious, however, that at the end of the chapter, when Jing-mei's childhood piano is given back to her as a gift from her mohter, there is some reconciliation betweent he choices she once thought so very different from each other.  The musical piece "Pleading Child" that decidely ended any interest Jing-mei had in playing, is sitting on the paino, and she now discovers that it has a second part, "Perfectly Contented."  These two very different melodies are combined and played one after the other.  Perhaps it is the suggestion that the two choices that tried to take her in very different directions as a child were not as opposite as she had once thought.  Perhaps it is a suggestion that within each of us, there is potential to go more than one direction in life, and that no matter the decision we make, later, when we are older and look back, the situations will not seem as difficult as we once supposed.  Maybe it is the suggestion that we should live without the regrets of the past, but recognize that there have been both dark and light pieces in our lives and by finding the strength to keep walking, and to make our own decisions, we are helping to combine the dark and light within ourselves.