Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club (1989) describes the experiences of four Chinese migrant families in San Francisco. The short stories comprising the novel focus on the women of these families, portraying their relationships with one another and with their social and cultural surroundings. In this essay, I will examine one of these stories, Rules of the Game, and the strenuous ties it depicts between the protagonist, Waverly Jong, and her mother. I will also demonstrate how the differences between these two characters and their interactions serve as reflections of intercultural tensions, indicating different approaches to balancing Chinese tradition and American norms within a migrant community.
The story is bookended by the words of advice Waverly's mother gives her, which emphasize resolve and composure as means to achieve one's goals without letting them be known. This structure, marked by the repetition of the mother's idiom: "Strongest wind cannot be seen" (89, 103), situates the relationship between the protagonist and her mother as the focal point of the story. At the beginning of the story, the mother's life philosophy is clearly described as a mechanism she attempts to train her children to master, for their own protection and personal growth: "My mother imparted her daily truths so she could help my older brothers and me rise above our circumstances" (89).
