Divide from within This essay is about generation gaps of the characteres in the book J"oyluck club" by Amy Tam.

Essay by nisanthanvHigh School, 12th gradeA-, March 2003

download word file, 5 pages 3.5

Downloaded 61 times

Divided From Within

Just imagine yourself wanting to go into college, while your parents expect you to attend the best university in the country. The expectations are set too high and a feeling of misunderstanding arises between your parents and you. Parental expectations can sometimes be huge pressure to shrug off and walk. It causes children to lose their self-esteem and is forced to take upon these expectations without the actual desire or actual potential for achieving these features. Similarly, in the book Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan, the characters, Jing-mei "June" Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan and Waverly Jong experience a great deal of parental experience that impact their lives and change their lives forever.

"My mother believed you can be anything you wanted to be in America." (Tan 1989, 141). One can tell from this line that Suyuan Woo, June's mother, would have great expectations for her kids.

She believed that you could be anything that you wanted to be in the States. She would tell June that nothing is impossible in America and that "...you can be prodigy, too" (Tan 1989, 141). This early stage of high parental expectations frustrates June, who believes she is nowhere near being a prodigy. Suyuan Woo set this early expectation that her child can be anything she wanted her to be. She would watch Shirley's old movies and tell June that she can be like Shirley and quickly took her to a beauty school.

At a really early stage June was forced to believe that "[She] would soon become perfect" (Tan 1989, 143). June was given many tests and she hated every bit of it and disliked her early childhood years. When June decided not to listen to her mother and argue about what she liked to do and...