Instructional Objectives: The student will be able to analyze the effect of having to translate from one culture into another in terms of its effect on parents and children through

1. tracing the patterns that link mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club
2. analyzing the role of translation (in terms of both language and culture) within a family and
3. writing a personal essay that compares/contrasts one's own experience to that of several characters in The Joy Luck Club

Resources/Materials: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Time Frame: Lesson Plan One: 45 minutes. Lesson Plan Two: 90 minutes

Interdisciplinary Connections:

• World Languages: Activity with Chinese ideograms of the title and with names; could extend study of ideograms into a study of calligraphy and Chinese art (Visual Arts)
• Immigration: How do cultures get translated, linguistically and otherwise? How does cultural transition affect families?
• Religion/Spirituality: How do beliefs about luck, fate, and the ability to change one's luck differ in different cultures? How do they affect one's view of life? How do views of death differ in different cultures?

Lesson Plan One: Knowing one's mother: an effort of translation (after first night's reading, pages 3-41)

Initial activity: Read aloud the opening pages (3-4), "Feathers from a Thousand Li Away."

This mythic story, which applies to many of the tales in the book, describes a woman who tries to bring a swan from China, but ends up only able to bring a feather. She does not want to give it to her daughter until she (the mother) can speak "perfect American English." As a result, the mother never gives it to the daughter.

Questions for discussion:

• How does the mother try to convey her message to the daughter?
• How do cultures get lost in translation?
• What are some ways they can be transmitted?
• What hopes do parents have for their children?
• How do children understand/respond to those hopes?

Main activity: Read pp. 6-14 and pp. 31-2 of the book's first chapter (also called "The Joy Luck Club"). These pages focus on Suyuan Woo's experience in China during World War II (the Japanese invasion forces her to abandon the place where she's living and all her possessions, as well as her twin babies). Note how Suyuan's daughter Jin-Mei respond to the story, with bewilderment and fear; as an adult she is asked to go back to China and meet the sisters she never knew.

Questions for discussion:

• How is the American-born daughter affected by her mother's experiences in China?
• How does her mother tell her the story?
• Why does the daughter feel it would be difficult for her to tell her sisters about their mother?
• page 31: "your mother is in your bones"; what does this mean?

Closure (could take place on a second day): What is a story that has come down in your family (preferably about your family's coming to this country?) Tell it to your neighbor. What does the story indicate about your family?

Homework: Journal Entry:

• How does the opening story of the swan apply to the book so far (including the epigraph, "To my mother/and the memory of her mother//You asked me once/what I would remember./This, and much more")?
• How does it apply to the story from your family?

Extensions:

Activity: (with application to World Language)

• Discuss some possible meanings of "Joy Luck."
• Copy the ideogram for "Joy Luck" (reproduced in frontispiece of book)
• What are some differences between the ways in which things are represented in the Chinese language and the ways in which they are represented in English?
• If possible: find other Chinese ideograms (or have any students in the class who are Chinese write them) and have students learn two more ideograms and their meanings.
• Have each student write his/her name on the board and explain the meaning of each part. Then have a class discussion on the subject: How do names convey cultures, languages, and the differences among them? Note that the daughters in The Joy Luck Club have Chinese and American names. Do you have more than one name? (nicknames, for example) How did you acquire them and what does each name mean to you?

Activity:

• Read poems "Modern Secrets" by Shirley Geok-lin Lim and "Where is My Country" by Nellie Wong, in Unsettling America, ed. Maria and Jennifer Gillan (NY: Penguin, 1994).
  (These poems are also by Asian-American writers about efforts to locate oneself in a culture; other poems on this subject could be substituted.)
• Write a poem or story about a time when you have felt that you were between two cultures; perhaps in coming to a new country or a new part of this country, or even visiting a new place or new group of people: what seemed strange to you? what did you manage to preserve that was familiar? How did people respond to you? How did you adapt (or not)?

Lesson Plan Two: Losing identity to find identity: the mutuality of mothers and daughters (a two-day plan) (to be done after students have read at least the first half of the book)

Day One:

Introduction: The book has 4 sections (told by the four mothers, the daughters, then the daughters, then the mothers) and 4 chapters in each section. Each mother's story has strong correspondences in the story of her daughters.

Preliminary activity:

Draw your family tree. Write a page describing what the tree reveals about your family. (size, relationships)

Then choose one member of your family to whom you're close (such as a parent or sibling) and draw a comparison/contrast chart of traits. (This activity could be the basis for a more extended writing activity.)

Class Discussion:

Look at the chapter entitled "The Moon Lady" (note: Amy Tan subsequently wrote a children's book entitled "The Moon Lady").

See especially pages 77-83, when the little girl, Ying Ying St. Clair is lost and encounters the Moon Lady.

• In what senses is the girl lost?
• What does the Moon Lady convey about women's roles? How has the little girl resisted being put in a traditional woman's role?
• What are some other incidents of people being lost in the book? (answers could include the little boy lost at the shore, pp.128-140), and Ying-Ying St. Clair's sense of being lost when she slips into depression after the death of her baby, pp. 115-18)
• How are they found? (see p. 118-121; how a daughter can "pull her mother through" her depression)

Activity:

Divide students into four groups: each group should be responsible for one of the mother-daughter pairs.

Think about commonalities between the mothers and daughters. Then do a chart in which you show for your pair

• relations to men
• relations to adversity
• shared/different character traits
• gifts given by the mother to the daughter (and vice versa) and their symbolic significance
• metaphors the author uses to describe the family

Day Two:

Groups present their posters about each mother-daughter pair.

Concluding Assessment: Write a 5-page personal essay (can be in a variety of memoir forms) in which you respond to the characters in the story and describe similarities to yourself, your family, and your culture.

Vocabulary:

Literary terms: metaphor, symbol, conflict, ideogram

Lesson Extensions:

Additional Readings:

• Amy Tan, The Moon Lady (children's story based on chapter of the same name in The Joy Luck Club) and The Kitchen God's Wife (an extension of the story of An-Mei Hsu's mother)
• Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior
• Amy Ling, Between Worlds (literary criticism on Asian American women writers since the beginning of the twentieth century)

Visual/Oral: See activities suggested above for working with ideograms.

Related Internet Sites:

• http://www.custan.edu/english/reuben/pal
  website of PAL, Perspectives in American Literature: A Research and Reference Guide, run by Paul Reuben at the University of California, Stanislaus. Appendix E, on Alienation and Initiation as a Theme and The Immigrant Experience includes analysis of alienation which could apply to cultural transitions and a good bibliography of The Immigrant experience. Also contains bibliography for Amy Tan
• http://www.edc.org/CCT/NDL/overview.html
  American Memory Fellows Program sponsored by the Library of Congress. Includes background information and lesson plans on themes related to immigration.
• http://www.ncte.org/teach/Fulmer15978.shtml
  On the NCTE site, a teacher's plan for teaching the American Dream.
• http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/amytan/
  A website devoted to Amy Tan. Has links to reviews and interviews, including video clips of the author.
• http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramsevil/asia.hm
  Links to information on the history, literature, and biographies of Asian Americans, including one to an essay by Amy Ling from the Heath Anthology of American Literature on teaching Asian American literature.
• http://www.pbs.org/kcet/newamericans/6.0/6.0pathway.html
  A variety of lesson plans for teachers of grades 7-12 on immigration issues. Accompanies a forthcoming series of documentaries on the lives of immigrants from Nigeria, Dominican Republic, and other countries, to be aired on PBS in the Spring of 2002.

New Jersey Core Content Standards:

3.1.15 Speak before a group to defend an opinion and present an oral interpretation (group activity on one pair of mothers and daughters).

3.2.11 Demonstrate comprehension of, and appropriate listener response to, ideas in a persuasive speech, an oral interpretation of a literary selection, interviews in a variety of real-life situations, and educational and scientific presentations (extension activity on second generation)

3.3.19 Write a research paper that synthesizes and cites data (research paper on immigration).

3.3.28 Analyze how the works of a given period reflect historical events and social conditions (research paper on immigration).

3.4.31 Understand the effect of literary devices, such as alliteration and figurative language, on the reader's emotions and interpretation (group activity on one pair of mothers and daughters and personal essay).

Global Citizen 2000 Modules-Core Questions Addressed:

Global Literature Module:

1. What are universal experiences?
   -How do they relate to concerns of the adolescent reader/writer?
   -How does geography shape/influence/impact human experience?
   -How does the need for story cross cultural boundaries?
   -How does personal experience reflect cultural experience?
2. How can literature help readers understand global issues?
3. How does reading literature promote an appreciation of the concept of global citizenry?
4. How does the study of global literature foster empathy with others?

The United States and the Immigrant Experience Module:

1. Why do immigrants come to the United States of America? (political and economic reasons)
2. Is coming to the United States of America good for the immigrant?

World Languages Module:

1. How does language reflect and/or influence culture?
2. How do the various world languages look and sound?
3. How do world languages compare?

Religion and Spirituality Module:

1. How is religion an expression of culture?
2. How does religion influence gender roles?