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During their life, daughters finally realize the fact that “it’s hard to keep your Chinese face in America” (Tan, 2006:258). Because they totally live and grow up in a different country compared to their mothers’. What they see are those who have the white face, blond hair and blue eyes. What they hear and say is English. What they eat is American food. Even the clothes they wear are no more than the traditional Chinese costumes.
In order to be assimilated into the mainstream society, the Joy Luck daughters depress their mothers by disobeying their will. They walk out of the Chinatown, and do the jobs different from their mothers’ and try to change Chinese features. Lena St. Clair “used to push her eyes in on the sides make them round” (Tan, 2006:106), or she would “open them very wide until she could see the white parts” (Tan, 2006:106). As a fifteen-year sophomore at a San Francisco High School, Jing-mei vigorously denies that she has any Chinese below the skin, “Inside—she is all American-made”(Tan, 2006:289). She wants to be some type of generic American and fit in with her Caucasian classmates—not an abnormal or inassimilable Chinese “Other”. Even Amy Tan herself admits to her own desire to westernize her Chinese features through plastic surgery: “ there was shame and self-hate[]there is this myth that American is a melting pot, but what happens in assimilation is that we end up deliberately choosing the American things—hot dogs and apple pie —and ignoring the Chinese offerings”(Wang, 1985:23).
Unfortunately, all the Joy Luck daughters’ efforts are proved to be in vain: they don’t enter the mainstream society, nor does the mainstream society accept them. No matter how Americanized they are, their yellow skin by which they are distinguished, turns out to be a barrier in their acceptance by the American mainstream society. They are really caught in identity confusion.
2.2 The Obstacle in Understanding between Mothers and Daughters
Another big obstacle to the Joy Luck daughters is the understanding between mothers and daughters, which clearly reflects in this novel. We can tell that, the way of the American-born daughters want to be is extremely different from the mothers who expect to. The Chinese mothers want their daughters to keep the traditional characteristics even they live in foreign country. The Chinese mothers also want the daughters to take them as a real model in the progress of growing up. But things go contrary to mothers’ wishes. The Joy Luck daughters or the author of this novel just want to be them selves and to fulfill their dreams of what they like in this society. The Joy Luck daughters, Waverly and Jing-mei are vivid examples. When Waverly is ten years old, she knows she has a gift to play chess; she takes part in many competitions and becomes famous very soon. Her mother takes pride in her and teaches her the “invisible strength” (Tan, 2006:94) to win the game. When they are on the street, her mother would introduce her to whoever looks her way by saying that this is her daughter, Waverly Jong. It is totally Chinese love of a mother to her daughter. However, Waverly thinks her mother is taking advantage of her to show off like one her many trophies her mother polishes. “She used to discuss my games as if she had devised the strategies"(Tan, 2006:170). She “hated the way her mother tried to take all the credit” (Tan, 2006:170). So one day she shouts at her mother on the street: “why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don’t you learn to play chess?”(Tan, 2006:99). Then she quits playing chess as rebel against her mother.
When Jing-mei is young, her mother Suyuan thinks Jing-mei will be a Chinese version of Shirley Temple. Suyuan trades house-cleaning services for weekly lessons and a piano for her daughter to practice every day. Every night after dinner, she and her mother would sit at the table and her mother would present new tests, taking examples from stories of amazing children she has read, while Jing-mei thinks that her mother is imposing her will on others. Owing to her mother’s “foolish pride”, she performs badly at the piano show. However, her mother isn’t “defeated” and still forces Jing-mei to practice it. In the same way, the daughter doesn’t yield: “I’ll never be the kind of daughter you want me to be,” (Tan, 2006:142) and retorted: “I am not your slave. This is not China.” (Tan, 2006:142). Her mother shouts in Chinese, “only two kinds of daughters, those who are obedient and those who follow their own minds! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house, obedient daughter!”(Tan, 2006:142).