The Joy Luck Club (1993) follows four first generation Chinese-American mothers, and how their past traumas and familial legacies came to affect their daughters’ livelihoods. It is adapted from Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club (1989) which also directed its attention to the Chinese-American immigrant families. In fact, Amy Tan herself co-wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation.

One can define intergenerational trauma through events that involve emotional, psychological, and/or physical abuse, or any other negative experience that may derive from a tumultuous historical event. This may include times of war, economic insecurity, or political instability. In the film adaptation of The Joy Luck Club, intergenerational trauma drives the narrative and creates conflict within the characters’ relationships and their respective arcs. The film’s narrative structure relies on flashbacks in order to convey to the audience each of the four mothers’ perspectives, and how their painful experiences in China have shaped them. The mothers are Lindo (Tsai Chin), Ying-Ying (France Nuyen), An-Mei (Lisa Lu), and Suyuan (Kiều Chinh) — all of whom formed the titular Joy Luck Club as a result of their friendship.

Lindo’s journey began in China. At the very young age of four, Lindo’s mother had matchmakers determineher future prospects — the family in which she would marry into for the rest of her life. When she turned fifteen she was sent away from her family to have her destiny be defined by the man she was matched to marry. This proved to be a rather unfortunate and unhappy fate for Lindo, as her groom was a boy even younger than she. Her mother-in-law Huang Tai Tai was incredibly emotionally and verbally abusive. Huang Tai Tai’s (Gou-Rong Chin) disdain stemmed from the lack of grandsons that Lindo failed to bear. This turn of events also revealed the sexist notions of traditional Chinese culture, as sons were valued above daughters. Playing off the superstitions and ancestral worship that Huang Tai Tai’s family participated in, Lindo tricked the family into thinking her marriage was cursed. Thus, allowing for her escape from that marriage and eventual immigration to America. 

Lindo married again in America and had a daughter named Waverly (Tamlyn Tomita). Her daughter was a chess prodigy, and through her innate talents won the title of chess champion. However, the leering presence of toxic familial expectation would bleed into their relationship. It created a constant sense of approval that Waverly felt like she needed from her mother. The emotional distance that was created between Lindo and Waverly is implied to stem from Lindo’s experience from the tumultuous first marriage in China, and the emotional abuse was carried on from Lindo’s own experience with abuse as Waverly’s feelings were continuously invalidated via her mother’s silent treatment. 

In terms of Waverly’s arc, she seeks validation from her mother that is unfulfilled throughout her childhood. She mentioned how she married a Chinese man and gave her a granddaughter simply to please her. They divorced and Lindo was most displeased, even blaming Waverly for the misfortune of such a circumstance. And most recently in Waverly’s life was when she introduced Rich to her mother, which became the ultimate test of approval. Especially since Rich came from a different cultural background as a white man. During a family gathering, Waverly’s new fiance is inadvertently ignorant of Chinese cultural mannerisms and embarrasses Waverly in front of her extended family and mother. 

In a confrontation at a hair salon to prepare for Waverly and Rich’s wedding, Waverly confesses to Lindo that “You don’t know the power you have over me. One word from you, one look, and I’m…four years old again crying myself to sleep. Because nothing I do, could ever, ever please you.” 

This confession of true feeling from Waverly to her mother resolved a decades long tension between the two. And they tearfully laughed and embraced each other. 

Ying Ying, An Mei, and Suyuan’s experiences and traumas in China also explore similar issues tying into overarching thematic patterns in concern to mother-daughter relationships. The Joy Luck Club (1993) is a beautifully thought provoking intersectional commentary on the Chinese American immigrant experience that also empowers female voices.