"Joy Luck Club" (喜福會)

I really enjoy my ESL(English as Second Language) class in Santa Clara adult education center. This course totally exceeds my expectation since I don't expect any high quality in free courses. I am so lucky to meet a good teacher, I think. My teacher Nancy always does her best efforts to make the class abundant and interesting, helping us learn more about American culture.
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Since it is ESL class, our classmates are not native Americans. Even though California is a pretty friendly place where residents are used to get along with foreigners, sometimes discrimination still exists. Surprisingly, Nancy told us if we classify all the people in America into 4 racial groups, namely: White, Black, Asian, and Spanish-speaking, the ranks in order from highest to lowest are: White, Asian, Black and Spanish-speaking. Indeed, I have no idea that Asian people are number 2, and Spanish-speaking people come last. Nancy explains that Asians in the States highly value education, and save more money than Americans. Therefore, American think Asians are well-educated in general. On the contrary, Spanish-speaking people, like Mexicans, don't value education. Besides, they are too friendly and easy-going to ask more for their rights. Gradually, Americans have an impression that Spanish-speaking people are not well-educated. What do these differences influence? White people don't need to prove themselves in American society, since everyone thinks they are more excellent. Asians come second. Spanish-speaking people have to prove themselves to get rid of any worse first impression. Well, Nancy's point is that if you think it is unfair, complain won't work. You have to improve yourself, to speak up, to ask more, to prove yourself and to change the situation.

Most of our classmates are female, coming to America because their husbands work here. Our teacher understand some of us are outstanding in our own country. What limits us to find a job here is the language problem. I remember I was surprised when I knew one of my classmate was a professor of Math in Iraq.

Compared to Americans, the culture of Asians and Spanish-speaking people are much more conservative and traditional. Therefore, one of the things Nancy values most is that women are supposed to pursue your life, becoming independent, not obedient to others or the traditional culture. To convey this goal, after reading one chapter of "Joy Luck Club" (喜福會) these couple days, we watched the movie "Joy Luck Club" in our ESL class this morning and discussed it.

Mothers in the movie are from China, suffering a lot of unfair things for women in their youth. After escaping from China to America, they just want to give more to their daughters, not suffering like them in China, but go too far to control everything. Plus the Chinese traditional culture that parents are not good at communicating with children, the relationship between mothers and daughters are tense and aloof, even though they care each other so much. Nancy just want to notice that it is bad for women when someone wants to dominate your life, like the mothers in their youth in China or the way the mothers want to dominate their daughters' life. It is also important to speak up to communicate.

Actually, I had watched this movie when I was still a high school student. I couldn't believe I watched it again 15 years later, especially in America.