Qualia In The Joy Luck Club

The philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett has done numerous researches on the concept of Qualia: a gap in language. Qualia are the subjective experiences that cannot be described by words, such as describing color to a blind person, or the blind describing the lack thereof to a seeing person. In the novel "The Joy Luck Club," the mothers and the daughters have somewhat of a communication gap: one is centered on the Chinese language and the other American English. In communication between the mothers and daughters, there is a large amount of misunderstanding that can be seen due to the mother’s insistence on speaking Chinese and the daughter’s habit of speaking English.
The novel illustrates the relationships between Chinese Society
I talked to her in English, she answered back in Chinese” (Tan 33-34). The difference of languages is a synecdoche of the difference of the culture as a whole, with the daughter being strongly connected to the American world and the mother being strongly connected to the traditional Chinese world. Because of this barrier, neither side can completely be adapted to the other; similar to how a perfect translation cannot exist from the Indo-European language family to the Sinto-Tibetian language family. A transition from the main language in a family is a “growing pain” of immigration. The communication between them, or lack thereof, makes them seem unrelated and certainly not close due to their reactions, their communications, and their ideas. This event has happened all over the world, from the Hellenistic Era in Greece to the Pax Sinica in China, where new cultures were accepted throughout the entirety of the ancient world. Another place where a difference of culture and beliefs are seen is when Jing-Mei was thinking through her argument