SOURCE: “Daughter-Text/Mother Text: Matrilineage in Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club,” in Feminist Studies, Vol. 19, No. 3, Fall, 1993, pp. 597–616.

In the following essay, Heung addresses how The Joy Luck Club portrays mothers and daughters struggling to maintain female-centered relationships—through language and storytelling—in the face of cultural and social pressures.

The critical literature on matrilineage in women's writings has already achieved the status of a rich and evolving canon.¹ At the same time, in recognizing race, class, and gender as crucial determinants in writings by women of color, some critics have indicated the need to develop a distinct framework for understanding these works. For example, Dianne F. Sadoff has examined the literature by African American women to note that “race and class oppression intensify the black woman writer's need to discover an untroubled matrilineal heritage.” Referring to Alice Walker's adoption of Zora Neale Hurston as a literary foremother...