(Posted as a writing exercise as part of The Joy Luck Hub. 63 words over, but they can just suck it if they have problems with that.)
The Joy Luck Club was the first and last movie we ever saw as an immediate family. I mean, it seemed like an obvious choice at the time — it’s 1993 and I’m a junior in high school, and holy shit, here’s a movie and it actually has people speaking Chinese in it. In Mandarin, with subtitles! Which is perfect, because my mom doesn’t speak a lick of English, even though she’s been here since forever. Maybe I was expecting her to comprehend the Chinese parts so well that she would magically extrapolate the rest of the movie. I think I had assumed that my parents would instantly relate — or at the very least be entertained — by the people speaking Chinese on the screen.
Yeah, not so much.
The tales of immigration on the screen clearly did not resonate with our families tales. My parents came over here in the 1970s from Taiwan, enticed by America’s dream that with hard work you could live “the good life,” whatever that is. Prosperity, I think. It’s always prosperity.
This is what I remember shortly after the movie: The house lights come up. I look over to my dad and he has a giant frown on his face. But he always has a frown on his face, so I look over to my mom. And she’s just shaking her head. They cry too much in this movie, she says. And the pacing is too slow. And there’s my sister who has borrowed a kleenex from the four black women sitting behind us. She is sobbing. She would have her final, tragic mental break five or six years later, and there would be no dramatic close-up with melancholy erhu music. There would be no happy ending. (None that I’m aware of, anyway.)
And sometimes I wonder if my parents were somehow fortold what would happen — that their daughter would succumb to mental illness and their son would become an overweight homosexual with a penchant for putting his private life to share with the Internet — if they would perservere and stay in the United States, or if they would turn around and go right back to where they came from.
You ask your final question as if to say that there are no mental illnesses or gay people in Taiwan.
I didn’t know about your sister and sorry to hear about that; but your parents are lucky to have such a smart and witty guy for a son. And as this is the age of Too Much Information we’ll say that the private-life-on-the-internet stuff is just you being “cutting edge”
Nice piece.
I could just imagine what your mom would say to the movie The Wedding Banquet.
Oh, Calichef. Of course there aren’t! Silly, silly…
The line about “there would be no dramatic close-up with melancholy erhu music” is really poetic. You are a fantastic writer.
For what it’s worth, I think that the last paragraph is being too hard on yourself. Your sister’s mental state is a real tragedy, but you have produced moving stories that have affected a lot of people. I think your parents should be proud of you.
The funny thing is, though the movie was in English, I felt the same way about The Color Purple.
i don’t think the last paragraph is too hard on the writer. it’s hard, ironic, witty, and self-deprecating in a very vogue way. to top it off, it’s probably among most asian parents’ worst nightmares (then again, is that saying so much? i think there are a lot of asian parents’ worst nightmares). nice one. my only gripe is that it’s actually centered around the joy luck club. i guess it’s kind of funny to be so literal.
So beautiful. Thanks for sharing; am looking forward to exploring your site.
This was pretty much my parents’ response to Zhang Yimou’s The Road Home. I sat between them bawling my eyes out while they alternately glanced at their watches or yawned. I’m sure this would be their response to The Joy Luck Club if they ever saw it.