The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates Introductory Response

In the “The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan, I think there two main purposes of why she wrote a introductory piece on page 87. One purpose that I think she want from writing this introduction is to introduce a relationship between a Chinese mother and her daughter. This allow the readers to predict that the stories in this section of the book is going to based around that kind of relationship. In the “Rules of the Game”, Amy Tan showed the reader the relationship of Waveryly Jong and her mother:

“I knew it was a mistake to say anything more, but I heard my voice speaking. '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.' My mother's turned into dangerous slits.” (Page 99)

By reading the introductory piece, we can tell that the relationship of the daughter and mother in one of these stories is not going to be a peaceful one. In my personal opinion, I tend to think that it is a wonderful thing for a parents to show off their children like how Waveryly's mother did for her. The reason why I think this is that when a parent show off their child like that, it usually mean that the parent is very proud of their child. Who doesn't want their parent to be proud of their child? I guess Waveryly didn't see it that way which is probably why she said all those things to her mother.

The second main purpose of the introductory piece is give out a foreshadow. There was one part from this section of the book in the “Half and Half” that mentioned The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates which was introduced in the introductory piece:

“My mother had a superstition, in fact, that children were predisposed to certain dangers on certain days, all depending on their Chinese Birth date. It was explained in a little Chinese book called The Twenty-Six Malignant Gate.” (Page 124)

The little Chinese book that was mentioned in the story and the introductory piece both gave out a vibe to the reader that something bad is going to happen and true enough, something bad did happen in one of the stories reflecting on the superstitious Chinese book. In the “Half and Half”, Rose Hsu Jordan was ordered by her mother to watch over Bing who was Rose's little brother at all time because of the superstitious thing that her mother got from The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates. Rose didn't believe in that nonsense and so in the end, the family lost Bing to the tides in the beach because rose was not careful enough.

In conclusion, the introductory pieces that the author give to the reader show connections to later stories. This allow the reader to get a sense of what the upcoming stories are overall about.