The Joy Luck Club (1993)

Tamlyn Tomita: Waverly - The Daughter

Photos 

Quotes 

• Waverly (Age 6-9) : I've decided to play chess again.

  Lindo Jong : You think it is so easy. One day quit, next day play. Everything for you is this way: so smart, so easy, so fast. Not so easy anymore.

  Waverly Jong : What she said, it was like a curse. This power I had, this belief in myself, I could actually feel it draining away. I could feel myself becoming ordinary. All the secrets I once saw, I couldn't see them anymore. All I could see was, were my mistakes, my weaknesses. The best part of me just disappeared. But I can't put it all on my mother. I did it to myself. I never played chess again.

• Waverly Jong : Mom, why don't you like Rich?

  Lindo Jong : Is Rich you afraid I not like? If I don't like your Rich, I act polite, say nothing, let him have big cancer, let my daughter be a widow. I like Rich, of course I do. To allow him to marry such a daughter!

  Waverly Jong : You don't know, you don't know the power you have over me. One word from you, one look, and I'm four years old again, crying myself to sleep, because nothing I do can ever, ever please you.

• Waverly Jong : Even at that age, I knew I had an amazing gift: this power, this belief in myself, to be better than anyone else. If someone was bigger than me, older than me, it didn't matter. And if they were mean, I could make 'em sorry.

• Rich : So, how'd your mom react when you told her about the wedding?

  Waverly Jong : It never came up.

  Rich : How come?

  Waverly Jong : She'd rather get rectal cancer.

• Lindo Jong : I could see her face looking at me but not seeing me. She was ashamed, so ashamed to be my daughter.

  Waverly Jong : Mom, what's wrong?

  Lindo Jong : Nothing, nothing. Only thinking, thinking about my mother, how much I wanted to be like her.

• Waverly Jong : As is the Chinese cook's custom, my mother always insults her own cooking, but only with the dishes she serves with special pride.

  Lindo Jong : This dish not salty enough. No flavor. It's too bad to eat, but please.

  Waverly Jong : That was our cue to eat some and proclaim it the best she'd ever made.