Prompt: Although much of the plot of each story revolves around men, The Joy Luck Club as a whole centers on the relationships between mothers and daughters. How would the book differ if the Chinese characters were fathers and sons instead?
In The Joy Luck Club there were many miscommunications between mothers and daughters. Many of the conflicts these women went through were because of the diversity between their cultures. The mother being Chinese and the daughter being American. I believe that this book would completely change if these characters would be based on men instead of women for 3 reasons. The reasons being that men have less conflict, they are less emotional, and finally they're a lot less influential than women. This leads me to explaining further on about the examples I listed previously.
The first reason as to why I think this book would change if the Chinese characters would be men is because men tend to have less conflict with others. We can see in the chapter called Rules of the Game when Waverly Jong gets overwhelmed by her mother's constant pressure for the game of chess. Waverly breaks in emotion one day with her mother and asks her why she has always tried to take credit for her success. This creates conflict between these characters because at the end of the day Waverly lost interest in something she once had passion for and all because of her mother's selfishness.
The second reason why the book would change if it revolved around men is because men are less emotional. They never really express what they are feeling and tend to not have emotional breakdowns. The chapter The Voice from the Wall portrays how Lena is confused from her mother's actions and state of mind. Ying-Ying, Lena’s mom, suffered from a loss of a baby. She would always cry and never say much and claim to see the future. This affected Lena’s life because she never really got to interact with her mother throughout her childhood. By this, a wall was created upon them causing diversity between them.
The last reason is that men are a lot less influential than women. After Suyan passed away, it was June’s call to take over her mother's legacy and fulfill her wish. June was influenced by her mother and her legacy to fly to China and find her long lost sisters and give them Suyan’s message. Men don’t usually influence other’s or have a sense of control over someone, which is why I think this would be different if it was a book based on Chinese men.
In conclusion, those were the 3 examples why I thought this book would be different if it focused on Chinese men. I thought this book was very inspiring in the sense of how we should always be grateful of what and who we gave in our lives because one day they will all be gone. The book teaches us to always have a type of communication with our loved ones and if there are misunderstandings we should try to fix them. It’s better to solve a problem together than time passing by and not being able to say sorry.
