喜福会 英文简介 读后感

2011—2012—2英语阅读（4）期中作业姓名田小星班级英语1103班学号 1101901307 得分
The Joy Luck Club
The author of The Joy Luck Club is Amy Tan, who was born in Oakland, California, in 1952. Besides this book, she hasalso written other famous novels, such as The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter and Saving Fish From Drowning. In response to the widely held opinion that she writes with a social aim—to portray the Chinese American experience. Through her writing, Tan approaches issues that are universally applicable to all groups of people. She explores themes of family and memory, as well as the conflicts of culture that arise in so many American communities.
The Joy Luck Club contains sixteen interwoven stories about conflicts between Chinese immigrant mothers and their American—raised daughters.The novel consists of four sections,each section contains four separative narratives. In the first section, four mothers, Lindo, Ying ying, and An mei, recollect their relationship with their nature mothers clearly one by one. However, their daughters' recollection of them will never be so clear. In the second section, these daughters, Waverly, Jing mei,Lena, and Rose recollect their childhood relationship with their mothers respectively. They tell their childhood stories so clearly and touchingly that it can powerfully prove what their mothers worry about at least is partially unnecessary and unimportant. In the third section, the four daughters narrate their adult dilemmas—troubles in marriages and with their careers. Although they believe that their mothers' antiquated ideas do not have anything concerned about their own American lifestyles, but their search for solutions inevitably brings them back to their relationships with the older generation. In the final section, the mothers come up with some practical solutions and support their daughters, in the process learning more about themselves.
After reading The Joy Luck Club briefly, I have come to think of something. From my standpoint, Suyuan' story is representative of the struggle to maintain the relationships between mothers and daughters across cultural and generational gaps. The major conflict is that the mothers try to instill their daughters with an understanding of their heritage, and also attempt to save the pain they had in China. The daughters, on the other hand, often see their mothers' attempts as a form of unrealistic challenging. Both the mothers and the daughters struggle with issues of identity: the mothers try to reconcile their Chinese pasts with their American presents, the daughters attempt to find a balance between independence and loyalty to their heritage. Thus when Lindo fears that the American and Chinese cultures cannot mix, she is contemplating the combination of two extremes. In reality, each identity is mixed, just as the American culture is not wholly about independence and liberty, the Chinese culture is not wholly about passivity and self restraint. Nonetheless, the challenging of finding a way to combine aspects of both into one's own unique personality is a challenge faced not only by Waverly, but all of the daughters in this novel. Besides, this book emphasizes the importance of will. The sentence that "will becomes a way not only of achieving one's desires but of achieving those desires in the face of hardship and oppression, in the face of hostile and controlling external forces." is my favourite. So keep it in your mind that perseverance is victory.。