Relationships of Waverly Jong and Jing-mei Woo in The Joy Luck Club Ess

The Relationships of Waverly Jong and Jing-mei Woo in The Joy Luck Club  Ã‚        Ã‚   Amy Tan in her novel The Joy Luck Club presents us with daughters who are striving to place themselves beyond the control of strong mothers and become individuals. Adrienne Rich in her book Of Woman Born calls this splitting from the mother, "matraphobia" (Rich, 235), and later notes: "The mother stands for the victim in ourselves, the unfree woman, the martyr. Our personalities seem dangerously to blur and overlap with our mothers; and, in a desperate attempt to know where mother ends and daughter begins we perform radical surgery." (Rich, 236) Tan shows us two characters in her novel who consciously split from their mother when they feel unable to claim their true selves. These two characters are Waverly Jong and Jing-mei Woo.    Waverly's break from her mother comes when she perceives her mother's pride in her ability to play chess being something that increases her mother's own self worth. Waverly tells us: "I knew it was a mistake to say anything more, but I heard my voice speaking. 'Wh...