Breeze 1

Kathleen Breeze

Fuentes

AP Literature-- Block 1

5 November 2018

Promoting Diversity of Thought in the Literary Canon

The Western literary canon stands for diversity of thought and enrichment of readers’

views on the world. Yet the canon’s array of authors contradicts this goal; the majority of its

works are written by caucasian men, with very few women and even fewer minorities considered

classics of the canon. Readers may struggle to expand their perspective on the world with such a

narrow scope of perspectives. Rather than exclude works by minorities from the canon, those

works deserving of such acclaim should be celebrated as classics, and the canon should be

celebrated as an enriching reading experience that will help readers gain an understanding of

many perspectives. The canon should be an integration of cultures. In Amy Tan’s ​The Joy Luck

Club,​ integration of cultures is celebrated; Tan discusses the struggles of attempting to

understand different cultures and trying to blend them. But through her stories of four Chinese

mothers and their Chinese-American daughters, she conveys the benefits of expanding people’s

understanding of different cultures and viewing the world through another perspective,

specifically touching on immigrants’ struggles. The canon, too, should appreciate this rewarding

understanding variety of cultures, by including works like ​The Joy Luck Club.​ With

thought-provoking stories enriched by multiple perspectives, Amy Tan’s ​The Joy Luck Club

touches on the undertold and misunderstood struggle of immigrants, crafting unique themes and

a cultural significance worthy of inclusion in the literary canon.

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Readers easily find the commonalities between Tan’s characters and themselves rather

than the dissimilarities. Tan’s characters provide understandable and evocative stories of their

struggles as immigrants and children of immigrants. Her unique inclusion of seven first-person

perspectives “enhance[s] the range of personalities offered: the mothers, for all their similarities,

are indeed very different… Tan succeeds in achieving a truly diverse and heteroglot range of

mothers' perspectives in ​The Joy Luck Club​” (Souris). By providing multiple viewpoints with a

range of characteristics, Tan allows readers who may have no understanding of

Chinese-Americans’ struggles, or who may even hold stereotypes of them, to see the diversity of

this charming group of mothers and daughters. Readers may even relate to aspects of these

characters, making the story easily accessible to all readers and enriching their understanding of

the human condition and how it affects different groups. The difficulties that the mothers and

daughters face in their relationship are relatable to many readers, as well as the common issues

that they each face as individuals, including divorce and struggles with growing up. “It was as if

she had erected an invisible wall and I was secretly groping each day to see how high and how

wide it was,” Waverly comments on her relationship with her mother (172). The relatable issues

and characteristics provided in the novel evoke sympathy from readers, while the Chinese and

American culture’s dissimilarities are acknowledged, but overcome and honored as the daughters

learn their mothers’ stories. The reader is able to see how these different cultures approach these

issues and the value in these different approaches. Novels worthy of acknowledgment in the

Western literary canon contain relatable aspects of the human condition, as well as unique

perspectives or themes, which are clearly contained within ​The Joy Luck Club​. Tan effectively

ties these aspects into her novel to craft a story deserving of a place in the canon.
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Classic novels should also provide insight into the time period in which it takes place in

order to accurately depict its theme. ​The Joy Luck Club​ includes a vivid setting that provides

insight into not only the 1950s-1980s in San Francisco, but also the 1920s-1940s in China,

creating an accurate picture of the immigrants’ struggles. “Moreover, its unique theme--mothers

from China and their American-born daughters struggling to understand each other--allows for a

rich array of dialogized perspectives within single utterances: the Chinese, the American, and the

Chinese-American, all three of which can be discerned, to varying degrees, in the monologues”

(Souris). Again utilizing multiple points of view, Tan juxtaposes the settings in which each story

takes place; the mothers often recall their early life in China, while the daughters detail growing

up in America and struggling to understand their mothers’ beliefs. “I once sacrificed my life to

keep my parents’ promise,” Joy Luck mother Lindo Jong reminisces as she complains of her

daughter’s broken dinner promises (50). Tan then uses imagery to detail Lindo’s story in China,

describing cicadas crying in the yard,” and the “painted face” of the matchmakers who arranged

her marriage when she was only two (51). The setting illustrated by Tan allows the reader to see

how the mothers’ childhoods and the culture that they grew up in influence their parenting. “The

two settings strengthen the contrast between the cultures that Tan depicts through her characters

and their relationships” (Historical Context, 2003). The settings Tan describes provides insight

into why the mothers act as they do, as their Chinese culture influences many of their actions that

puzzle their American-born daughters. This plotline demonstrates the impact of the cultural

shock and integration that Chinese Americans faced when immigrating during this time period,

as well as America’s misunderstanding of them. “Just as the United States has learned to value

contributions of Americans of various backgrounds, the daughters in ​The Joy Luck Club​ learn to
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value their own Chinese heritage” (Historical Context, 2003). The daughters begin to appreciate

their mothers’ actions as they learn their backgrounds, and they value the diversity of thinking

that their mothers provide. As the daughters grow in understanding their mothers, the reader, too,

begins to empathize with these characters. This insight into the cultural significance of the

settings within ​The Joy Luck Club​ make it worthy of a place in the literary canon.

Tan uses effective literary techniques that enhance the novel and effectively convey

Tan’s themes. One of the Joy Luck daughters, Rose Jsu, recalls that her mother “said that if I

listened to her, later I would know what she knew: where true words came from, always from up

high, above everything else” (185). Rose is skeptical of her mother’s insistence. Rose’s mother

An-mei later recounts being entranced by a pearl necklace from an insincere woman. An-mei’s

mother stomped on the necklace, revealing that is was fake. “This necklace that had almost

bought my heart and mind now had one bead of crushed glass” (231). Jewelry throughout the

novel serves as symbolism for a mother’s true and genuine love for their daughters, and here, the

fake pearls allow the reader to understand why An-mei insists that Rose listen only to her. This

symbolism, paired with Tan’s structural choice of providing multiple perspectives, conveys

Tan’s theme of the misunderstanding between generations that have grown up submerged in

different cultures, as well as the enduring strength of the relationship between mother and

daughter despite these differences. Tan also uses more direct instances of symbolism where both

the daughter and mother directly address the same symbol. “Tan's use of… a common

denominator across the two monologues constitutes an effective exercise in triangulation, a

common technique in multiple narrator novels to demonstrate (usually) the subjective nature of

perception” (Souris). Tan’s multiple perspectives allows the reader to view the same situation or
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symbol from the viewpoint of multiple characters, allowing the reader to see how the mothers

and daughters perceive the same things in a different way due to their cultural differences. Tan’s

structural choice to make the novel include seven perspectives further enhances her theme of the

misunderstanding between the multicultural relationships between the mothers and their

daughters, and how the storytelling of their backgrounds may enlighten their understanding of

one another. These effective literary techniques, as well as the uniqueness of her structure,

qualify ​The Joy Luck Club​ to be included in the literary canon.

The Western canon’s strict lack of diversity leaves little room for new perspectives, but

The Joy Luck Club​ fits all the criticism of a classic and would add a new insightful perspective.

Rather than turn down new or minority perspectives, the canon should celebrate and accept them,

as these perspectives feed diversity of thought. “[Minorities] are not destroying anything by

demanding to be part of the canon or the curriculum or the country. Those building walls are the

ones allowing their fear to destroy what they wish to preserve” (Nguyen). The fear that drives

people to exclude minority perspectives from the curriculum fuels misunderstanding, prejudice,

and intolerance. The canon should uphold diversity, and excluding these minorities is destroying

the principles that the canon should stand for. “White people will gain more by embracing this

reality rather than fighting it” (Nguyen). A diverse range of viewpoints can enlighten readers and

convey different time periods, cultures, and the broad spectrum of the human condition. It would

benefit our society to begin teaching students to study a “curriculum which combines the

introduction of Western literary canons and the Chinese literary classics” so they can begin to

learn acceptance of new cultures(Wu). Expanding one’s outlook on the world and viewing things

through multiple perspectives will enrich readers’ understanding of the world. “Both
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Shakespeare and slaughter are part of the Enlightenment. Can we recognize both these faces of

modernity? Not if we read only Shakespeare” (Nguyen). We need the different sides of a story to

understand a historical account. ​The Joy Luck Club​ provides the under told stories of Chinese

immigrants and Chinese-Americans, and allowing books with these new stories will help to

dispel the prejudices and misunderstandings that many white Americans in the majority falsely

believe.

The Joy Luck Club’​s literary techniques and unique structure convey noteworthy themes.

Any reasons for excluding it from the canon are motivated by irrational fear of diversity. This

fear of minorities that is excluding them from the canon translates into the troubling xenophobia

and intolerance that can be seen in America now. Adding books like ​The Joy Luck Club,​ which

will allow caucasian readers to relate to and understand immigrants, will ease this intolerance

and grow an understanding and appreciation of these new and diverse cultures.
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Works Cited

Chow, Andrew R. "The Lasting Impact Of 'Joy Luck Club'." ​New York Times,​ 10 Sept. 2018,

Student Resources In Context.

"Historical Context: ​The Joy Luck Club.​ " ​EXPLORING Novels​, Gale, 2003. ​Student Resources In

Context.

"Literature." ​DISCovering Multicultural America:​ ​African Americans, Hispanic Americans,

Asian Americans, Native Americans​, Gale, 2003. ​Student Resources In Context.

Nguyen, Viet Thanh. "Books by immigrants, foreigners and minorities don't diminish the classic

curriculum." ​Washington Post,​ 3 May 2018, ​Student Resources In Context.

Souris, Stephen. "'Only two kinds of daughters': inter-monologue dialogicity in 'The Joy Luck

Club.'(Theory, Culture and Criticism)." MELUS, vol. 19, no. 2, 1994.

​ enguin, 2016.
Tan, Amy. ​The Joy Luck Club. P

Wu, Yan. "Research on the Teaching Model of Reading Literary Classics from the Cross-cultural

Perspective." ​Theory and Practice in Language Studies,​ vol. 8, no. 9, 2018, ​Academic

OneFile.​