Cycles in Travel

One thing that I feel is cyclical in the Joy Luck Club are the journeys that the mothers and daughters take throughout the story. For example, in the beginning of the story, the mothers come from China to the United States, the beginning of the cycle.

“This was the year my mother and father left China with one stiff leather trunk filled with only fancy silk dresses and nothing else.” “When they arrived in San Fransisco, my father made her hide those shiny clothes. She wore the same brown-checkered Chinese dress until the Refugee Welcome Society gave her two hand-me down dresses all too large in size...” (Pg 20) This is when Jing-Mei’s mother an father initially came from China to America. It is the beginning of the immigration and vacation cycle. The reason that the mother had come was because she wanted to escape her past, and wanted to make at least some part of her past become a forgotten part of history that no one would ever remember.



The end of the cycle, or at least, a part of the cycle was when Jing-Mei went back to China after her mother died to go and see her older, never before seen, twin sisters. “At the airport, I am exhausted. I could not sleep last night. Aiyi had followed me into my room at three in the morning, and she instantly fell asleep on one of the twin beds” (Pg 286) “Wake up, we’re here,” says my father. And i awake with my heart pounding in my throat. I look out the window and we’re already on the runway, It’s gray outside.” (Pg. 287) This is sort of the end of the cycle because this is when the daughter goes BACK to China FROM America. It was the opposite of what her mother had done, and one of the only reasons that she did it was to “bring an end to something”. She wanted to go and end her curiosity about her mother’s past, and she wanted to figure out all of the unknowns that she had about her mother’s past, such as the two twin sisters that Jing-Mei had that her mother left behind in China.