Cycles in The Joy Luck Club

There are many important cycles that appeared in the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. One of the most important one that I see is the growth of the daughters throughout the book compared to the experiences that their mothers had in their past. The mothers had their own problem and their daughters seemingly follow them:

“And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.” (Page 215)

This show that the mistakes that the mother had in their past seems to repeat itself through their daughters also. This quote also happen to show another cycle form the book. This cycle is the relationships between mothers and daughters. Like the quote explained, the mothers passed on their fate into their daughters, and eventually those daughters becomes the mothers and pass their fate on to their daughters. It is just one big cycle. Another important cycle that I found is the feelings that the mother had for their daughters. Throughout the book, the mothers are there to teach their daughters and raise them in a way that they hope for their daughters to become better than them and not repeat the same mistake as them:

“'Of course you can be prodigy, too', my mother told me when I was nine. ' You can be best anything.'

(Page 132)

This repeats over and over again. Another cycle is the whole concept of going to America. Many of the mothers in this book came to America because they want to start a new life:

“America was were all my mother's hope lay. She had come here in 1949 after losing everything in China...” (Page 132)

They want to leave their past behind them, and look for hope in America. The Joy Luck Club consist of stories after stories about the mother's bad past, but all of them eventually ended up in America.? Why? I think they wanted their daughters to grow up in a place where their daughters could get a chance to become something much more than they are now.