Tradition and change in The Kitchen God's Wife and The Joy Luck ClubIn the novels The Kitchen God's Wife and The Joy Luck Club, the author Amy Tan conveys the message of tradition and edit. Each novel contains sections about mothers speaking and telling their stories to their daughters. The daughters of the Joy Luck Club hear stories of loss and happiness, joy and hate. Each of the four mothers tells these stories to their daughters as lessons or offerings for their future. They tell the stories to show how lucky their daughters were, but how their lives will never be the same as before. They try to help their daughters in a way with these stories. Yet they understand the fact that they could never understand their mothers. The protagonist, Pearl, in The Kitchen God's Wife talks about her life and her mother. Pearl and her mother Winnie, the other half of the mother/daughter duo, attend a funeral while Pearl narrates. They then go to Winnie's house, as Winnie adores Pearl and her two daughters. Pearl's heart breaks when she notices all the little intricacies of her mother and all the little things her mother does to show her love. As Pearl and her family move away from her mother's house, Winnie begins to tell her daughter about her life, her struggles and her loves. Through these two novels, the five mother/daughter pairs and the perception of mother in daughter, the theme of mother-daughter relationships is distinctly portrayed. Pearl sees her mother in many different ways. Often, through her mother's movements or appearance, she will see her mother as fragile, but strong and knowledgeable, "...I imagine my mother's scroll as skin, furious... in the middle of the paper... .ire. “Amy Tan.” The Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature Pg1065 Great Britain: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1992. Cheng, “Amy Tan Redux Letters, 1991, pp 15, 19. (on GaleNet). Davidson, Cathy N., and Linda Wagner-Matlin. "The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Graham, Judith" Amy Tan Yearbook. pg559 New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1992. See, Carolyn. “Drowning in America, Starving for China.” “Generational Differences and Diaspora in The Joy Luck Club.” in <>Critique, No3, Spring 1993 pp 193-99. (on GaleNet) Willard, Nancy "Tiger Spirits." Vol.6, nos. 10-11, July 1989, page 12. (on GaleNet)