Chinese Character and American Circumstances in Amy Tan's Double Face

"Double Face," a vignette from The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, tells of the conflict between Lindo, a Chinese immigrant to the United States, and her daughter Waverly, born in America. This piece shows that immigrant mothers and American-raised daughters will never truly understand each other due to the gap in cultures.

One very important piece of both Lindo's and Waverly's identity is language. Lindo, raised in China, is fluent in their language and finds English difficult to speak. In a complete foil, Waverly is raised in America, fluent in English, and finds Chinese difficult to speak. Both women have some level of proficiency in each of their second languages, but sometimes concepts arise that cannot be translated. This leads to a breakdown in communication between Lindo and Waverly.

Because of this language barrier, Waverly feels capable to judge her mother as eccentric. Lindo knows this, and explains in "Double Face": "I know (Waverly's) meaning. She is ashamed of my looks. What will her husband's parents and his important lawyer friends think of this backward old Chinese woman?" (Tan, 308)

Another factor driving Lindo and Waverly apart is the changing roles of women between China and America. In China, a daughter obeys her mother and heeds her wisdom. Lindo had this relationship with her mother yet does not with Waverly:

The traditional role of a Chinese mother has been greatly curtailed in America. If formerly she represented an automatic authority, now she is unsure of herself, defensive, hesitant to impose her own standards on the young. With the mother's role changed, the daughter no longer identifies with her mother or internalizes her authority in the same way as in China, if indeed she recognizes her authority at all. (Xu, 13)

This concept is shared, if interpreted in a slightly different manner, in Hamilton. Lindo found her way out of a horrible marriage in China and worked hard for money to go to America and learn their customs. The act of leaving her husband and going by herself to start a new life goes against everything the stereotype of Chinese women stands for. It was Lindo's concern for herself and her own life that got her to America; and it is this same concern that drives Waverly away from her. This is shown in Hamilton:

Ironically, the same spirit of individualism that seems so liberating to the older women makes their daughters resistant to maternal ad-vice and criticism. Born into a culture in which a multiplicity of religious beliefs flourishes and the individual is permitted, even encouraged, to challenge tradition and authority, the younger women are reluctant to accept their mothers' values without question (Hamilton, 3).

This culminates in Lindo's original hope for Waverly: that she would have "Chinese character and American circumstances." While Waverly does have some of each culture in her identity, it is not as Lindo intended it to be. As she explains, "Only (Waverly's) skin and her hair are Chinese. Inside-she is all American made" (307).

The need to ethnicize their experience and to establish an identity is more real and more perplexing to the daughters than to the mothers, who, after all, are intimate with and secure in their Chinese cultural identity in an experiential sense, in a way their American-born daughters can never be. The daughters, unlike their mothers, are American not by choice, but by birth. Neither the Chinese nor the American culture is equipped to define them except in rather superficial terms. They can identify themselves for sure neither as Chinese nor American. Even when they feel their identity of "Americanness" is an estrangement from their mothers's past, there is no means of recovering the Chinese innocence, of returning to a state which their experiential existence has never allowed them. They are Chinese-Americans whose Chineseness is more meaningful in their relationship to white Americans than in their relationship to the Chinese culture they know little about (Xu, 8).

Thus, as Waverly strives to reconcile herself as American and not Chinese, she pushes herself away from Lindo. While Lindo has taken on some American characteristics since her immigration, she is secure in her identity as Chinese. Waverly, as the above quote illustrates, feels torn between her ethnic Chinese heritage and the dominant American culture of her surroundings.

As Lindo finally gives up trying to share the heritage of the Old Country with Waverly, she watches her daughter flail about in American society, first with one husband, then another, trying to find her identity. Unless Waverly matures to the point that she can truly appreciate Lindo, she will never be able to reconcile her Chinese roots and American raising. By the time Waverly arrives at this realization it may be too late. Like any daughter frustrated with her mother, it may take years for her to recognize that her mother is a strong, capable woman with her own unique story and unique wishes for her daughter in America.

Works Cited

Du Pree, Marleen. The Mother/Daughter Relationship in Toni Morrison's Sula and Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. Diss.
Utrecht University, 2006. Utrecht, The Netherlands: Utrecht University Library. Igitur - Utrecht Publishing & Archiving Services. Utrecht University. 11 Dec. 2008 .

Hamilton, Patricia L. "Feng Shui, Astrology, and the Five Elements: Traditional Chinese Belief in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck
Club." MELUS 24 (1999): 125-45. JSTOR. Dixie State College of Utah Library, St. George. 11 Dec. 2008 .

Romagnolo, Catherine. "Narrative Beginnings in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club: A Feminist Study." 89-107. EBSCO.

Tan, Amy. "Double Face." American Mosaic : Multicultural Readings in Context. By Barbara Roche Rico and Sandra Mano. Boston: Houghton Mifflin College Division, 2000. 306-15.

Xu, Ben. "Memory and the Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club." MELUS 19 (1994): 3-18. JSTOR. Dixie State College of Utah Library, St. George. 11 Dec. 2008 .