Fictional readings and magical realism week 2, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
My writings on The Joy Luck Club will be fairly short as I have realized how long I am going to need to spend on this writing project to get it to a place where I am happy with it. There are a few things I want to highlight about the book and its relevance to my ILC but you can find my write-up from last year on the first post of my Spring 23 WordPress.
The Joy Luck Club rides the line between magical realism and straight-up realism, a lot of the magical elements having to do with ideas of superstition or spiritual tradition. A collection of sixteen stories and two generations of Chinese women, revealing secrets of the distant and more recent pasts of four families. What drew me to the book originally was the way food was used to make major events, milestones, and recurring traditions. “The Joy Luck Club” for which the book is named is the club that binds these women together, the mothers telling stories of their upbringings and immigration to the United States, and the daughters of the original members, reflecting on the way their mothers raised them and their relationships with each other. Not only is food a central theme in most of these shorts, but food itself ties the Joy Luck Club together as a central piece of each gathering. I find this book to be both beautiful in its writing and fluid storytelling, and heart-wrenching as the painful moments within are so dutifully described.
As much of this book deals with themes of cultural significance that I do not claim to be knowledgeable about, I do not want to call these instances “magical” so as not to offend anyone who may be more connected to them than I. I do however want to explore one example from the book that may be described as “spiritual” or “supernatural” if we were to put it in the vaguest of terms.
In Spring 23 I summarized the chapter and I will place it below so anyone who hasn’t read the book will still have an idea of what is going on.
“In “Scar” presented by An Mei Hsu, she recalls how after her mother left her and her brother, An-Meis family referred to them as “two eggs that nobody wanted, not even good enough to crack over rice and porridge”. She is encouraged to forget her mother, to act as if she never existed and when she returns is conflicted on how to approach being around her. Despite having been tossed aside by her family, An-Meis mother returns when her own mother gets sick, to create her a medicinal soup of herbs, medicine, and the flesh of her arm. This relates to food studies in both the act of consuming flesh as a form of medicine/sustenance, but also food as medicine, and the conflicting act of returning to a home that banished you, to draw your own blood for someone who may not do the same to you.”
This idea of consuming the flesh of your children for health is not something I have ever found concrete scientific study on, probably because it is such an unsavory idea for most to think about, but it begs the question of what was the motive and reasoning. Tan gives us some idea, with the line “She cooked magic in the ancient tradition to try and cure her mother one last time.” Meaning that this is spiritually or supernaturally motivated, and within the context of the scene seems to be something An Mei’s mother was well aware of. The way An Mei watches with couch childlike shock and curiosity mimics the reaction of a reader unprepared for what is coming, with discomfort and questions. How can I capture this in my writing? I want to create a piece that introduces the reader to ideas and actions vastly different from those in our world, whilst making it comfortable and relaxed for the characters, demonstrating their ease in this world. And how do I balance that with a sense of realism? Can I create a world of my own or does it have to be the one that already exists? Can the world be ours but altered or can only the beings be altered? Which elements can be touched by the magic?
Another story worth mentioning is from the very first chapter “Feathers from a Thousand Li Away”. The first page gives us not the first introduction to the book, but a Chinese proverb telling the story of a woman and her swan in their journey to America. As the swan and the woman cross the ocean together she speaks to the swan of the life and family she will have in America, of all the things she will teach her daughter. When she arrives un the United States her swan is taken from her by immigration and in the rush of forms and customs paperwork she forgets why she is here. Now an old woman, she regrets that she forgot to pass on her culture and language to her daughter. As we read on through the chapter we can see the connection between this story and the life of our narrator, June. Woven throughout the chapter are references to June’s assimilation to American culture, through her name and diet to name a few. At the end of the chapter, June has a chance to fix regrets her mother may have had that mirrored those of the old woman in the story. How does interweaving mythology or proverbs into writing classify as far as magical realism is concerned? Even though the events themselves were not of a supernatural nature, does the presence of this proverb at the start of the chapter and indicator of the influence that the story holds over June and her family? Or is it simply a parallel?
Magical Realism Writing Project
I won’t lie and say I enjoyed this project, I don’t think I have done any fictional Writing since I was a freshman in high school and that’s because I don’t consider myself very good at it. I chose to write the story I did because I couldn’t think of a more nuanced way of incorporating magical realism into writing about food, as much as I wanted to be more creative than collecting ingredients I think that having a simple concept allowed me to take risks and be more poetic and descriptive in my writing. I’m honestly curious about what the parameters of magical realism are, at moments I felt like I could be sliding too far to either side of the genre and it would be interesting to take a broader look at magical realism syntax and writing rules.
However, after completing it and sending it to a friend to edit, I felt much more confident. Using her notes I went back through and changed language, formatting, and small story details that made a huge overall difference in the narrative flow and readability of this story. The brainstorming, writing, and editing process took me about eight hours total which I think demonstrates how much I struggle with this style, but I am glad I took a few extra hours this week to finish the editing.