In the book Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, many characters encountered obstacles in finding themselves. One such character is Ying-Ying St. Clair. Throughout the various stages of her life, as a child, adult, and mother, Ying-Ying St. Clair struggled against Chinese and American cultures to find her own identity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayIn her early childhood, Ying-Ying was a brave and adventurous little girl. She recalls: “I remember a time when I was running and screaming, when I couldn't stay still” (Tan, p. 67). However, her mother invoked traditional Chinese ideas about gender roles, stating that "a boy can run and chase dragonflies, because that is his nature, but a girl must stay still" (Tan, p. 72). . In this way, Ying-Ying learned to suppress her inner curiosity from a young age, something she would also unknowingly teach her daughter. As a child she was told to become someone she was not, taught that to live a good life she had to become a dependent wife, a submissive housewife. Later, while her family is sailing across the ocean on a boat during the Moon Festival, Ying-Ying accidentally falls into the water and is rescued by a village fisherman, who lets her go, hoping that her family will find her . She wanders alone and afraid, until she meets a man dressed as Moon Lady, the wish granter of Chinese culture. To her, Ying-Ying tells her of her wish: “I wanted to be found” (Tan, p. 83). A lonely child, lost from her family and far from her comfort zone, Ying-Ying realizes how important her family is, even if she must obey her parents and become a submissive woman. She discovers that her family is worth more to her than losing her own face or identity. As a teenager, Ying-Ying was engaged to a man several years older than her. She resisted him at first, knowing he wasn't what she wanted in a man. However, she slowly realized that she would marry him, even though she didn't want it to happen. Through their marriage, Ying-Ying slowly began to lose her own identity, as she states: "I became a stranger to myself. I was pretty for him. If I put slippers on my feet, it was to choose a pair that I knew he would like” (Tan, p. 247). She became dependent on her husband's compliments and happiness, mistaking his pleasure for her own and even conceived a child for him. Little did she know, she was just a placeholder - she later learned from an aunt that "he had left me to live with an opera singer... American dancers and ladies." Prostitutes. A cousin even younger than me” (Tan, p. 247). Devastated, Ying-Ying became a shell of her former rebellious teenager. She aborted the baby in her womb, she had so much hatred towards her ex-husband that "When the nurses asked what they should do with the lifeless baby, I threw a newspaper at them and told them to wrap it up like a fish and throw it away. in the lake” (Tan, p. 248). This child symbolized a culmination of his despair, but also that of his own identity. Along with memories of her husband, she rejected his dreams and expectations, the ideals that made her who she was, in a sense. Her aborted baby, a boy, was meant to carry these dreams, but she thought all hopes were lost when she chose not to carry him. It was only much later, when she became a mother, that she realized she still had her spirit to pass on to her child,. 252).