The bond between mothers and daughters explored in The Joy Luck Club Throughout the novel, The Joy Luck Club, author Amy Tan explores issues of tradition and change and the impact it has on the bond between mothers and daughters. The theme is developed through eight women telling their separate stories, which merge into four pairs of mother-daughter relationships. Chinese mothers, so focused on their own cultures, do not want to realize what is happening around them. They don't want to accept the fact that their daughters are growing up in a culture so different from theirs. Lindo Jong, tells her daughter Waverly, "I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents' promise. That means nothing to you because promises mean nothing to you. A daughter can promise to come to dinner, but if he has a headache, a traffic jam, if he wants to watch his favorite movie on TV, he no longer has a promise." (Tan 42) Ying Ying St.Clair observes: "...because I have been silent for so long, now my daughter can't hear me. She sits by her luxurious pool and only hears her Sony Walkman, the her cordless phone, her big important husband asking her why they have coal and no lighters” (Tan 64)The American daughters, on the other hand, the other half of the inseparable couple, tells stories of how tradition. , their mother's culture and beliefs, helped them reach many realizations about themselves. These realizations are both positive and negative. Jing-Mei Woo tells the story of how her mother wanted her to be the next Shirley Temple. "My mother believed you could be anything you wanted in America. You could open a restaurant... you could become instantly famous." Naturally... middle of paper... Heung, Marina "Daughter-Text/Mother-Text: Matrilineage in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club." ED Amy Tan: A Critical Companion: Greenwood P, 1998.Ling, Amy Between Worlds: Women Writers of Chinese Ancestry: Pergamon, 1990.Maynard, Joyce. by The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan and The Temple of my Familiar, by Alice Walker July 1989: 70, 72, 180.Miner, Valerie "The Joy Luck Club" The-Nation 24 April '89 p 566-9Schell, Orville . “Your mother is in your bones.” Rev. of The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan Book Review, March 19, 1989: 3, 28. “A Game of Showing and Telling.” Rev of The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan. Newsweek April 17, 1989: 68-69.