Mother as Villain and Victim in Joy Luck Club In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan focuses on several mother-daughter relationships. One of the relationships explored is that between a Chinese immigrant mother and her American-born daughter Jing-mei. The mother expects Jing-mei to be a child prodigy - while pursuing this dream she unintentionally creates a serious conflict between her and her daughter. To meet her unrealistic expectations, her mother pushes Jing-mei to be the best in everything. Initially, the reader may perceive the mother as the villain of the story; however, the mother just wants her daughter to have the life she never had. Jing-mei doesn't understand his intentions. Jing-mei's mother thought that opportunities were everywhere in America, "America was where all my mother's hopes were placed" (Tan 1208). The mother lost everything when she moved from China to San Francisco in 1949. In China she lost her family, her husband, and had to abandon her twins (Tan 1208). This implies that her mother had a difficult life and wanted to start a new life in America. Unfamiliar with American customs, she had been raised in a strict Chinese culture. Her mother probably raised her the same way and, therefore, that is where she learned her parenting skills. Chinese life is harsh, more so than American life, and that was the only way the mother knew how to raise her daughter. The mother seemed to be the villain of the story, but she was just trying to be a caring parent as best she could. She just wanted her daughter to be the best, but a conflict broke out when her daughter failed to meet her expectations. At first Jing-mei, the...... middle of paper......wanted to see her daughter become something better than what she had become. Instead of encouraging his daughter to become someone she wanted to be, he ends up pushing her in the wrong direction. I think Jing-mei finally understood why her mother did what she did. I agree with Ghymn when she states that “Jing-mei cares deeply about what her mother thinks of her” (84). It's obvious that even though they were two guys from two different cultures, they still found forgiveness in the end. Work cited Souris, Stephen. "'Only Two Kinds of Daughters:' "Inter-Monologue Dialogic in The Joy Luck Club." Melus 19.2 (Summer 1994): 99-123. Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Vintage Contemporaries. New York: A Division of Random House, Inc. 1993.Willard, Nancy Asian American Writers Harold Bloom Publishers 1997.