The Wind

In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan makes frequent use of the wind as a symbol of female agency. It is surprising, considering so much of the book takes place at home and indoors. The symbolism is appropriate, for so many of the public decisions that affect the fate of females in the stories are made by others—both men and women. To get what they want, the women are forced to act in a more invisible way, often reverting to subterfuge. Though less easily seen, the wind of their wills is a powerful force.

In the “The Joy Luck Club” chapter, for instance, the narrator Jing-Mei Woo takes the place of her recently deceased mother at a longstanding mahjong game. The mahjong table is divided into cardinal points each with a prevailing wind, and Woo takes her mother’s usual spot in the East. “The East is where things begin, my mother once told me, the direction from which the sun rises, where the wind comes from” (Tan, 1989, p. 33). The winds shift throughout the game, and during the final round, Woo’s Auntie An-Mei takes over The East. It is from here that she hands Woo an envelope with a letter from her half-sisters in China—children her mother was forced to leave behind as Japanese troops advanced—along with a $1200 check to fund a trip to see them. Clearly her mother’s wind and wishes still blow from beyond the grave. (Tan later reveals that as a child, Auntie An-Mei was badly scalded on her windpipe.)

In “The Red Candle,” Lindo Jong is betrothed at age two to a son of a family of higher stature. A candle marked with the couple’s names adorns the wedding ceremony. If the candle burns from both ends without going out, the couple’s union can never be broken. On the wedding night, a servant watches the candle to ensure it burns out as it should, but she is scared by a storm. A breeze flickers the candle, but will not extinguish it as Jong hopes, so she enters the room and blows it out herself, creating her own wind, her own agency.

Later while dreaming of her pet frog Big Wind, Jong hears “huffing” and is suddenly slapped by her mother-in-law who is unhappy she has not produced children. She then hatches a plan to free herself from the bondage of her bad marriage.

Lena St. Clair’s neighbor knocks on her door in “The Voice From the Wall” because her mother has kicked her out of the house. To get back in, she goes to St. Clair’s room to climb up the fire escape to re-enter the apartment. St. Clair reveals, “I sat down on my bed watching her, waiting for her to stop, feeling the cold air blow in from the dark opening” (Tan, 1989, p. 114). The pluck shown by her upstairs neighbor helps St. Clair become less passive as she starts to actively deal with her ailing mother.

In “Rules of the Game,” Waverly Jong gains the respect of her mother and possession of her brothers’ bedroom by mastering the game of chess. At her first chess tournament she plays a fifteen-year-old boy, and a breeze begins to blow. “It whispered secrets only I could her.” She destroys her opponent. “‘Check,’ I said, as the wind roared with laughter. The wind died down to little puffs, my own breath” (Tan, 1989, p. 96-97).

Tan’s clearly uses the wind as a positive force, a power for her female characters that bridges geographic, spiritual and generational distance. Perhaps if the characters themselves could recognize this power, it lessen anxiety for community elders who fear their offspring will forget them, and ease issues of insecurity among the younger, Americanized set, whose childhood straddled two cultures and has left them confused about their identities.

Tan, Amy (1989). The Joy Luck Club. New York: G. P. Putnam Son’s