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The Interplay of Memory and Place in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club | ||
| College Of Basic Education Research Journal | ||
| Volume 21, Issue 2, June 2025, Pages 690-710 PDF (567.64 K) | ||
| Document Type: Research Paper | ||
| DOI: 10.33899/berj.2025.188744 | ||
| Authors | ||
| Herjin Fadil Abdullah1; Hassan Muayad Hamid* 2 | ||
| 1English Department, College of Humanities, University of Zakho, Zakho, The Region of Kurdistan, Iraq. | ||
| 2Department of English, College of Education for Humanities, Mosul University, Mosul, Iraq | ||
| Abstract | ||
| This paper investigates memory and place in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1989). It unfolds the suffering of the first-generation Chinese immigrants from the Sino-Japanese War. It draws upon concepts such as the relation between memory and place, mother-daughter conflict, the formation of identity, and the immigrant experience. The Joy Luck Club is an interlinking collection of traumatic narratives and memories paired with their places of occurrence. It revolves around four Chinese mothers who narrate their personal and collective experiences and memories to their daughters and how the daughters endeavour to balance their dual cultural identities. The paper adopts Maurice Halbwachs’s concept of “mémoir collective”. It tackles Susanne Langer’s and John Sutton’s emphasis on the social and collective nature of memory, which functions as an organiser of consciousness that shapes the individual’s current actions and experiences and forms his identity. It further adopts Pierre Nora’s concept of “memory places”, which act as metaphorical locations where communities store their memories and recognise them as integral parts of their identity. The different maternal memories and places in Tan’s novel function as a means of connection so the daughters can better understand their mothers’ backgrounds, the sacrifices made for their families, and the values that guide their actions. The paper concludes that the intergenerational exchange of personal and collective memories becomes a powerful tool for developing empathy, bridging cultural gaps between Chinese ancestral and domicile American cultures, and thus, strengthening the bonds between mothers and daughters. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Memory; Place; Identity; Trauma | ||
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