The main conflict in The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan is intergenerational and cultural conflict between mothers and daughters. The mothers are Chinese and tend to expect to control their daughters in a traditional manner. The daughters are Chinese-American, caught between two cultures, and they generally find their mothers' demands difficult to satisfy.

Jing-Mei Woo, for instance, is continually frustrated at her failure to fulfil her mother's ambitions that she should be a child prodigy. Meanwhile, Waverly Jong actually is a prodigy, an exceptionally gifted chess player. However, even she is unable to cope with her mother's desire to control her, which extends to telling Waverly what moves she ought to have made in a game she does not even understand.

The conflict between mothers and daughters is intensified by the setting in the United States of America, a society the second-generation immigrants have come to know better than their Chinese-speaking parents. The daughters are often called upon to interpret for their mothers and explain perspectives which they themselves cannot understand.