Throughout most of the novel, Jing-Mei is the character
who struggles most with accepting and incorporating her Chinese identity into who she is
as an adult. This is of course mostly due to the unrelenting pressue which her mother
caused her to live with. Her mother's idea that Jing-Mei could be a prodigy and the way
that she forces her to do things that Jing-Mei herself does not want to do, such as take
piano classes, leaves Jing-Mei feeling inadequate and like a failure. In addition,
Jing-Mei is constantly being compared by others, unfavourably, to Waverly, who is
tremendously successful at everything she turns her hand to. Consider the following
account from Jing-Mei about how she failed her mother after her disastrous piano
recital:
It
was not the only disappointment my mother felt in me. In the years that followed, I
failed her so many times, each time asserting my own will, my right to fall short of
expectations. I didn't get straight A's. I didn't become class president. I didn't get
into Stanford. I dropped out of
college.
This sense of being
a failure expresses itself in her rejection of her Chinese heritage. In particular, she
views the Joy Luck Club as being "a shameful Chinese custom." What changes this view is
when Jing-Mei joins the club and replaces her mother. She realises the richness of her
Chinese heritage and understands the desperate struggle of the Chinese mothers to ensure
that their Chinese heritage is not forgotten, and this suddenly fills her with purpose
and finds a new confidence and self-respect for herself. This change in her character,
and her ability to embrace her identity, is cemented when she goes back to China to meet
her half-sisters for the first time.
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