Intro
The Joy Luck Club was on the bestseller list for weeks and weeks when it was first published in 1989. At the time, this stuff was really new: here was a Chinese American female author, writing about the experiences of Chinese American women both in China and the U.S. It was the first time that Asian American literature went mainstream.
Quote
I have a photo of my mother with this same scared look. My father said the picture was taken when Ma was first released from Angel Island Immigration Station. She stayed there for three weeks, until they could process her papers and determine whether she was a War Bride, a Displaced Person, a Student, or the wife of a Chinese-American citizen. My father said they didn't have rules for dealing with the Chinese wife of a Caucasian citizen. Somehow, in the end, they declared her a Displaced Person, lost in a sea of immigration categories.
My mother never talked about her life in China, but my father said he saved her from a terrible life, there, some tragedy she could not speak about. My father proudly named her in her immigration papers: Betty St. Clair, crossing out her given name of Gu Ying-ying. And then he put down the wrong birth year, 1916 instead of 1914. So, with the sweep of a pen, my mother lost her name and became a Dragon instead of a Tiger.
Analysis
The narrator here, Gu Ying-ying's daughter, tells us a lot about the experience of Chinese American women in just a couple of paragraphs. The first thing that happens to Gu Ying-ying at the Immigration Station is that she's given a set of predetermined identities she can take on. Is she a "War Bride"? A "Displaced Person"? A "Student"? None of these actually fit Gu Ying-ying, but she has to choose.
Basically, the first thing that happens to Gu Ying-ying in the United States is that she's forced to take on an identity that isn't her own.
After that, Gu Ying-ying's American husband goes and gives her a new name and a new birth date: "with one sweep of the pen, my mother lost her name and became a Dragon instead of a Tiger." Going from Gu Ying-ying to Betty? That's quite a jump. And Gu Ying-ying doesn't even get to choose her new American name; her husband chooses it for her.
On top of that, a lot of Chinese cultural practices are tied to your birth year. Going from a "Dragon" to a "Tiger" isn't just a matter of having the wrong date on your documents—it changes your place on the entire cultural map.