There are several literary styles, in which an author can decide on, to tell his or her story. One literary style an author can use is cradling, which is the telling of a story within a story. Authors intend to use cradling to reveal characterization. The author, Amy Tan, uses the literary style, cradling, in her novel, "Joy Luck Club", to enhance the characterization of Jing Mei Woo, of gaining her self-confidence, learning about her mother, and accepting her heritage.
             Cradling is used by Amy Tan to show how the character, Jing Mei Woo, has gained self-confidence through her life. In the telling of her story she says "For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be." Through what she said you can infer that she has given up on herself and does not believe she can be successful in her life, and that she is not like other people. She comes to be this way when she is not successful in her mother's expectations to be her personal best. You can perceive by her last two stories that Jing Mei Woo has gained confidence in who she is and in what she can do. This is expressed when she decides to go to China to meet her half-sisters, and tell them of their mother. She thought she could never go to China and describe, to her twin half-sisters, her mother's life. By the end of her story, within the story, she is now portrayed as a strong, confident person who can accomplish her life's tasks.
             Through the usage of cradling, Jing Mei Woo was portrayed as ignorant of her mother's life and all that she did. She claimed to know nothing about her, only that they could not agree on anything. When she finds out about her mother's search for her twin daughters she had left behind, and is asked to go meet them, she says, to the members of the Joy Luck Club, "What will I say? What can I tell them about my mother? I don't know anything. She was my mother.&qu...