An Examination of Cultural Barriers in Chinese-American Literature Emaa Elrayah 12th Grade

Family ties are an extremely common topic of emphasis in young adult novels, particularly those that focus on immigrant or minority narrators. Mother-daughter relationships are clearly dominant issues in both Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior; both texts revolve around American-born girls’ interactions with their Chinese mothers. Storytelling, referred to as “talk-story” in both books, clearly plays a large role in developing and showcasing the power of words to bring families together. However, this is not always the case, as demonstrated by the Westernized daughters’ reactions to their mothers’ Chinese heritages and experiences. In particular, the relationships between American daughter Maxine and her mother Brave Orchid in The Woman Warrior and various mother-daughter pairs in The Joy Luck Club demonstrate this most clearly. In both novels, the younger, Americanized daughters’ interactions with their families reveal that even familial relationships are not always enough to overcome cultural barriers.

The young daughters’ narrations reveal their struggles in understanding their mother’s stances on certain issues that, more often than not, directly affect the girls. In “Half and Half”,...