Abstract
This paper provides a biography of the novelist Amy Tan born on February 19, 1952, in Oakland, California, to Chinese parents. It examines how her novel, "The Joy Luck Club", is, in many ways, a biography of Tan's life. It discusses how like the main character, Tan did not learn that she had half-sisters from her mother's previous marriage until she was older. It evaluates many other parallels between her life and the book such as how she describes her pain from her father and brother's deaths, through Suyuan Woo's loss of her twin daughters and her death. It also shows how like the main character of "The Joy Luck Club", Tan resented her mother when she was younger for being so controlling.

Outline
Introduction
A Biography
The Joy Luck Club
Generation Gaps in the Joy Luck Club
Cultural Differences
Chinese American Life
Conclusion

From the Paper
"One of the major themes in Tan's " The Joy Luck Club" is a constant quest for identity. Tan's eight main characters all face the challenge of defining themselves while they are undergoing some sort of personal conflict. Lindo Jong's early marriage into an unreceptive family caused her to become a stronger woman and made her vow to never forget her roots. Ying-ying St. Clair became a sort of "ghost" as the result of betrayal and loss in her life. Rose Hsu Jordan repeatedly tried to get her self-confidence back to standup to husband. June Woo narrates much of the story, telling of her quest to China, which was orchestrated by her Joy Luck Club aunties. June tries to understand her mother's tragic past, while realizing her own personal and ethnic identity. "

Tags:china, culture, identity, suyuan, woo

Abstract
This paper examines the sonnet "Surprised by Joy," in which William Wordsworth writes about his painful feelings about the death of his daughter Catherine. Specifically, the paper discusses how, in his other poems, Wordsworth uses his memory to return to an emotional status he enjoys but, in 'Surprised by Joy", memory draws him back to the painful emotional space where he does not want to go. Memory cannot bring his daughter Catherine back to him, and his own inspiration which he usually derives from a joyful memory, cannot protect him from all the pain caused by the loss of his daughter.

From the Paper
"In "Surprised by joy," the physical space is absent. Wordsworth became very hopeless and lonely when he wanted to share his joy with his dead daughter, because the memory could not bring him back to the original place where the story happened. In "Tintern Abbey," he returned back to the ruin and experienced the same scenery again. Even in "I wandered lonely as a cloud", although he revived the scene of the dancing daffodils when he was sitting "in the coach" (305, Line 19), there was still a place to go, and he could easily see those beautiful daffodils again if he wanted to. "

Tags:Catherine, death

Abstract
This paper examines how "The Joy Luck Club," a novel by Amy Tan, explores the complex, multifaceted relationships between four sets of Chinese-American mothers and daughters. The novel centers on the members of the "Joy Luck Club" and their monthly mahjong games. It looks at how Tan's method of writing and storytelling untangles the messy knot of the relationships, showing readers the differences that divide the characters from one another.

From the Paper
"The first character readers meet is Jing-mei Woo, daughter of Suyuan Woo. Jing-mei, or, by her American name June, begins telling the story of her mother and how she traveled to America so many years ago. The recent death of Jing-mei's mother has caused Jing-mei to reevaluate her life and wonder about what her mother had wanted in her own life. Jing-mei is haunted by a story Suyuan told Jing-mei once, about her life in China and how she came to America. The story told by Suyuan, is the first example of the cultural differences faced by the generations of mothers and daughters."

Tags:mahjong, suyuan, american, chinese

Abstract
This paper explains that author Dominique Lapierre researched this book by living with the people of India and the people who try to help them for three years. The author states that critics have called "The City of Joy" one of the most important books on the culture and sociology of India. The paper points out that the author does not look at the topic through rose-colored glasses; he shows the abject poverty in enormous and memorable detail.

From the Paper
"This is a story of people who are used to hardships and have learned how to deal with them through courage and good humor. Rather than bemoan the loss of everything he had worked so hard to obtain, Prodip Pal revels in the joy of his sons. "What a blessing those sons were" (Lapierre 7)! This is the central conception to the book, and one from which everyone can learn important lessons. These people do not feel sorry for themselves rather they revel in the joys they can find, because they "shared in a communal world and respected its social and religious values, maintaining the ancestral traditions and beliefs" (Lapierre 45). This is why the decrepit slum is called "The City of Joy." It is more than clear they are poor, but they are happy, and it becomes a joy to read about it, even though many of their experiences are quite simply unspeakable."

Tags:india, hardship, courage, poverty, community

Abstract
This paper focuses on the mother-daughter narratives in "The Joy Luck Club". It focuses in particular on the mothers' side of the narratives. It shows how Tan successfully subverts stereotypes about Chinese and Asian women to reveal a fierce inner strength.

From the Paper
"The Joy Luck Club is a rich lyrical novel that weaves 16 stories and seven viewpoints into a narrative tapestry. This review focuses on the effectiveness of Tan's multiple viewpoint narrative technique and on her subversions of the submissive Chinese woman stereotype.
One unusual feature of The Joy Luck Club is Tan's explicit inclusion of the mother's perspective. Even as the daughters tell their stories, the voices of the mothers shine through. For literary critic Marina Heung, Tan's depictions of matrilineage include her in the growing canon of writing that addresses the intersections of race, class and gender. This canon includes works by several important women of color, such as Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston (Heung)."

Tags:asian, american, mother, daughter

Abstract
This paper examines the ways in which the mother-child relationship is negotiated and continually reconstructed in "The Joy Luck Club" and the endlessly complex ways in which mothers and daughters love each other and can so easily destroy each other. All of this takes place in the context of families of Chinese-Americans in California.

From the Paper
"When political barriers began to fall in the 1970's, older emigrants welcomed the chance to end their long and agonizing exiles. But their children looked with a deep ambivalence on the idea of having to awaken a dormant Chinese side in themselves. And so, as the exterior world went about recognizing China, re-establishing diplomatic relations and initiating trade and cultural exchanges, these young Chinese-Americans found themselves wrestling with a very different and infinitely more complicated interior problem: how to recognize a country to which they were inextricably bound by heritage, but to which they had never been. For Tan's daughters, this meant coming to terms with themselves as independent of their mothers and yet inextricably a part of the same heritage."

Tags:Chinese, relationships, mother, daughter, heritage

Abstract
This paper compares and contrasts two poems from William Blake's "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience" collections: 'Infant Joy' and 'Infant Sorrow'. In one poem a child is nourished and loved and in the other the child is leaping into a ?dangerous world?. It discusses the differences in style, language and poetic pattern between the two poems and compares their themes to events known to have occurred in Blake's lifetime.

From the Paper
"An interesting concept is that in the poems there is a reference to the part of Songs they are printed in. In "Infant Joy" the narrator sings to the child, a song of innocence, in "Infant Sorrow" the mother groaned and the father wept, a song of experience. Even though some might deny that groaning or weeping are songs, they could be viewed in such a way, they are songs of realism, songs of pain, songs of experience. Thus even within these poems there is a referring to the part they are printed in, Songs of Innocence or Songs of Experience."

Tags:innocence, poetry, songs, poetic, pattern, rhyme

Abstract
The following essay deals with the issues of woman sexuality as portrayed in "Possessing the Secret of Joy." It compares the notion of possession in the Western culture as a romantic notion, to the subject of Walker's book, that of genital mutilation to the African woman. The author also touches on the similarities in themes between "The Color Purple" and this novel, focusing specifically on the African Woman and the discrimination she is subjected to.

From the paper:

"Female genital mutilation is a complex issue, not a simple issue of men victimizing women as it is often portrayed. It is a product of a particular cultural context. Walker makes this clear in the way that she unfolds her narrative. She does not only present things from Tashi's perspective. She also presents things from the perspective of those who lover her. At the time Tashi's story takes place in the present, Tashi is married to a man named Adam. Of course, what has been done to his wife affects him. This is most clear, not to put to fine a point on it, in terms of their sexual relationship."

Tags:female, secret, erotic, desire, ripping, euphemistic, sexual, coy, genital, self-blindness, Olinka

Abstract
The paper looks at the Epicurean view that death should not be feared and compares it to the view of Thomas Nagel that death is indeed something to dread to the extent that it brings an unhappy and permanent close to our existence on Earth. The paper also considers Nagel's likely response to the Epicurean injunction that death should not be feared. The paper argues that Epicurus's view is a more compelling one, simply because death is an inevitability that all living beings must face, and thinking relentlessly upon the topic of death distracts people from the joys of living.

From the Paper
"It is hard to escape the conclusion that death is one of the things about which human beings think, if not constantly, than certainly frequently. With this in mind, the following paper will look at the Epicurean view that death should not be feared and compare it to the view of Thomas Nagel that death is indeed something to dread to the extent that it brings an unhappy and permanent close to our existence on Earth; the paper will also consider Nagel's likely response to the Epicurean injunction that death should not be feared. While both writers raise excellent points in defense..."

Tags:epicurus, nagel, death

Abstract
This paper discusses Augustine's explanation in his "Confessions" that man is continuously "scattered" by his own impermanence, and shows that, in Books X and XI of "Confessions", the concept of "scattered humanity" is presented as a condition that is simultaneously undesirable and unavoidable to mankind. Through his discussions of memory, temptation, and time, Augustine portrays the human condition as that of utter temporality, corruptibility, and changeability. The writer explains that Augustine sees man as "divided up in time" by his changeable will and the corruptibility of his concentration. Thus, it is only through God's grace that man can hope to be freed from his temporality to rest within God.

From the Paper
"Book X begins with a discussion of memory. Augustine envisions memory as something that is not always present. Things are stored in one's memory but must be thought about and brought forth again out of one's mind. In contrast, for God all things are present at all times. God does not remember things and all things are continuously existent to God. However, within man's memory there is a remembrance of the eternal. There are ideas, according to Augustine, that one can recognize as being self-evidently true. These ideas must then "have been in [man's] mind even before [he] had learned them," simply waiting to be recognized. If man recognizes a self-evident truth, then he is actually assembling the disordered and forgotten pieces of a universal and eternal memory. The universal memory is the root of man's search for God."

Tags:contemplation eternity creation, original sin, distraction joy