Joy Luck Club

Joy Luck Club

Joy Luck Club is a 1993 film based on the novel of the same name written by Amy Tan and published in 1989.The film focuses on the issues surrounding four women of Asian descent and their daughters. The film depicts the struggle for the various families to adapt to American culture. It also displays how difficult it was for the women and their daughters to maintain a bicultural identity without being grouped as either American or Asian; the film displays their plight to achieve this. Through the relationships with their mothers, the daughters gain their own sense of identity by dealing with the expectations of their parents, gender roles, acculturation and assimilation.

The themes of acculturation and assimilation are central throughout the movie. When one belongs to a minority community in a country, yet retains their own culture but cannot remain isolated and are affected by the majority culture in such a way that they end up adapting to some aspects of the majority culture, the process is referred to as acculturation. It can be said that the individual or members of a specific community are bicultural, meaning their original customs remain while at the same time accepting customs from the majority. In a multi-ethnic society such as the United States, an individual who has foreign cultural roots remains attached to his or her own culture while adapting and accepting certain American customs. The process of acculturation results in many various processes, which includes assimilation. Assimilation is a process whereby individuals of a culture learn to adapt to the ways of the majority culture. There is a loss of one’s own culture as an individual gives more value to the cultural aspects of the majority community; assimilation usually takes place whenever immigrants inhabit a foreign land. Assimilation can be in degrees; full assimilation can be said to have taken place when it becomes difficult to