Mother as Villain and Victim in Joy Luck ClubIn 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. By pursuing this dream, she unintentionally creates a serious conflict between herself and her daughter. To meet her unrealistic expectations, the mother pushes Jing-mei to be the best at everything and everything. At first, 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 believed that opportunities were everywhere in America, "America was where all my mother's hopes rested" (Tan 1208). The mother lost everything when she left China for San Francisco in 1949. In China, she lost her family, her partner and had to abandon her twin daughters (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 so that's where she learned her parenting skills. Chinese life is strict, even more so than American life, and this is the only way the mother knew how to raise her daughter. The mother seemed to be the villain of the story, but she was only trying to be a caring mother the best she knew how. She only wanted her daughter to be the best, but a conflict began when the girl did not meet her expectations. At first Jing-mei, the...... middle of paper ...... he wanted to see his daughter became something better than what she had become. Instead of encouraging her daughter to become who she wanted to be, she ended 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 is evident that even though they were two species from two different cultures, they eventually found forgiveness. Work cited Souris, Stephen. "'Only Two Kinds of Girls:'" Inter-monologue dialogue 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 Ed. Harold Bloom Chelsea House Publishers, Philadelphia. 1997.