A Foucauldian Analysis of Body Inscription and Female Agency in The Joy Luck Club

Abstract

Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club explores the complex relationships between Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters as they navigate cultural identity and mutual understanding. This article examines how body discipline and female agency are represented across three generations in this novel. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s theory of disciplinary power, it analyzes An-mei Hsu, her mother and her daughter Rose in different historical and cultural settings. The mother’s flesh-cutting and strategically timed suicide reveal an agency that remains entangled with bodily injury; An-mei’s scar becomes a medium of maternal memory and testimony; Rose turns inherited memory into resistance within her marriage. Thus this novel shows how forms of resistance change as body memory is transmitted and reinterpreted across generations, contributing to the formation of Chinese American female subjectivity.