A dark and menacing cloud very often hovers over the hopeful heads of immigrants and furtively waits to rain at the most inopportune moments. Challenges can never be entirely avoided for immigrants who fervently seek to find freedom, security, and acceptance in the lands and cultures of those who are very different from them. Barriers between different and contrasting cultures can never be completely erased, so immigrants must assimilate as successfully as possible into the countries where they have chosen to live and raise their children. However, the obstacles that separate immigrants and their cultures from the inhabitants of their new residences may also have a much more deprecatory purpose. They often hinder immigrants' relationships with their children. Children of immigrants routinely accept and adopt the customs of their birthplace, leaving parents exasperated and bewildered. What immigrants believe to be the most significant aspects of their culture have been swept away by a merciless monsoon and distorted or rejected by their children. This is the case of the Chinese mothers in The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. Because the immigrant women in this novel are Asian, rather than English-speaking European, they face great difficulty in fully acclimating to the American environment. In addition to trying to assimilate, the women also have to deal with bitter memories of Chinese society. As bitter as these memories may be, the women use their traditional Chinese beliefs to try to find balance in their new homes and even gain their freedom. They also attempt to deal with some of their assimilated tribulations by creating short stories,......half of the paper......Pasadena,CA: Salem Press, 2010. 48-63. Print.Foster, M. Marie Booth. “Voice, Mind, Self: Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan's TheJoy Luck Club and The Kitchen God's Wife.” Critical Insights: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. Ed. Robert C. Evans. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2010. 173-194. Print.Hamilton, Patricia L. “Feng Shui, Astrology, and the Five Elements: Traditional Chinese Beliefs in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club.” Critical Insights: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.Ed. Robert C. Evans. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2010. 196-220. Print.Hsu, Francis LK Americans and Chinese: transition to differences. Honolulu: The UniversityPress of Hawaii, 1981. Print.Xu, Ben. “Memory and the Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club.” Amy Tan's Joy LuckClub. Ed. Robert C. Evans. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2010. 93-111. Press.