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Summary
Summary
Master storyteller Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters in this New York Times bestseller.
" The Joy Luck Club is one of my favorite books. From the moment I first started reading it, I knew it was going to be incredible. For me, it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime reading experiences that you cherish forever. It inspired me as a writer and still remains hugely inspirational."--Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians
In 1949 four Chinese women-drawn together by the shadow of their past-begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks, eat dim sum, and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club.
Nearly forty years later, one of the members has died, and her daughter has come to take her place, only to learn of her mother's lifelong wish--and the tragic way in which it has come true. The revelation of this secret unleashes an urgent need among the women to reach back and remember...
Author Notes
Amy Tan was born on February 19, 1952 in Oakland, California. She received B.A. degrees in English and linguistics and a master's degree in linguistics from San Jose State University. She worked as a freelance business writer, but eventually turned to fiction. Her first book, The Joy Luck Club, won the Commonwealth Gold Award and was adapted into a feature film in 1994. Her other novels include The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, Saving Fish from Drowning, and The Valley of Amazement. She is also the author of a memoir entitled The Opposite of Fate and two children's books entitled The Moon Lady and Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Intensely poetic, startlingly imaginative and moving, this remarkable book will speak to many women, mothers and grown daughters, about the persistent tensions and powerful bonds between generations and cultures. The narrative voice moves among seven characters. Jing-mei ``June'' Woo recounts her first session in a San Francisco mah-jong club founded by her recently dead, spiritually vital, mother. The three remaining club members and their daughters alternate with stories of their lives, tales that are stunning, funny and heartbreaking. The mothers, all born in China, tell about grueling hardship and misery, the tyranny of family pride and the fear of losing face. The daughters try to reconcile their personalities, shaped by American standards, with seemingly irrational maternal expectations. ``My mother and I never understood each other; we translated each other's meanings. I talked to her in English, she answered back in Chinese,'' says one character. A crippling generation gap is the result: the mothers, superstitious, full of dread, always fearing bad luck, raise their daughters with hope that their lives will be better, but they also mourn the loss of a heritage their daughters cannot comprehend. Deceptively simple, yet inherently dramatic, each chapter can stand alone; yet personalities unfold and details build to deepen the impact and meaning of the whole. Thus, when infants abandoned in China in the first chapter turn up as adults in the last, their reunion with the one remaining family member is a poignant reminder of what is possible and what is not. On the order of Maxine Hong Kingston's work, but more accessible, its Oriental orientation an irresistible magnet, Tan's first novel is a major achievement. First serial to Atlantic, Ladies' Home Journal and San Francisco Focus; BOMC and QPBC featured alternates. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Chinese American daughters find conflict, love, and connection with their mothers, who are haunted by their early lives in China.
Guardian Review
I was a relative latecomer to writing fiction seriously - 35 when I attended my first fiction writers' workshop. A published writer named Molly Giles critiqued my 13-page story, informing me that I had not written a story. It had no consistent voice or storyline, but the beginnings of about a dozen stories and voices. And some of what I had written felt true and other bits were false. She circled the sentences: "There's one. There's another. Here's another. Pick one and start over." Instead of being dismayed that she had uncovered so many flaws, I felt my life change course. I could see the possibilities. Voice! Story! Truth! I had found my reason to write: the excitement of seeing the world both enlarged and with greater detail. I made a pledge to myself to write fiction for the rest of my life - that is, when I was not busy with my freelance business writing, which, at the time, averaged 90 hours a week. I was a practical person. I knew I still had to earn money. Fiction writing would earn me nothing but personal satisfaction. I gave myself a modest goal to be published in a literary magazine by the age of 70. I continued to write fiction and learn the craft of writing. But beyond the literary joys of writing, I had not found the deeper reason for the stories I would tell - not until my husband and I went to Hawaii with friends for the Christmas holiday. Among palm trees and fake Christmas trees, I was isolated from news of the world. But my two weeks in paradise was interrupted by our friends' announcement that they had retrieved a frantic message on their voicemail: my mother had suffered a heart attack and had been taken to intensive care. The message had come in four days before. I was numb with fear and guilt, believing she was already dead, and I began to grieve. It was now too late to know her, to make her happy, to tell her that I loved her and was sorry and grateful . . . Before I rang the hospital, I promised that if she was still alive I would undo all the regrets. I even promised myself that I would take her to China. An irritated voice broke through my despair: "Amy-ah! Where you? Why you not call me before?" "You're alive," I said in a choked voice. "Hah! You scared?" She sounded pleased. (If you ever want to make your mother happy, tell her you were worried sick about her.) I learned she had got into a fight with a fishmonger and when she leaned over the counter to point to the fish he should have given her, she bruised her ribcage and then drove herself straight to the hospital. She told me not to worry any more and to have a good time. My promise made only moments before, I felt, was the reason she was alive, and if I did not fulfil it, she still might die. When I returned, I gave my mother a freshwater pearl necklace. She admired it and murmured, "So expensive." It was not, but I knew she was talking about the amount of love it represented. From then on, I listened to her ramble for hours at a stretch about her life of regrets - about her first marriage, about my brother dying, then my father shortly after, about everything she could have prevented if only her mother had not killed herself, depriving her of maternal guidance on how to avoid disaster. Now, instead of my trying to change the subject to more pleasant matters, I asked her to tell me more. She related her mother's sorrow over a life without respect. She described watching her mother die after an overdose of raw opium. I asked her to tell me more. I saw her as the needy little girl who had wished to fly to heaven with her mother, the wounded girl who had become my fearful mother. I realised how crazy and strong she had been in her determination to protect me. I also kept my promise to take her to China, and there I allowed myself to become her little girl, listening to her warnings about the various ways I could ruin my life: being smashed flat on the road, or robbed blind by paying too much for dirty souvenirs, or poisoned by greasy plates and someone's unwashed hands. At times it was nearly unbearable. But I found I could also laugh at how predictable we both were and yet how much there was still to learn about each other. I could now see what there had been in the flawed 13-page story, with its dozen beginnings and voices. I wrote a new story, this one called "The Joy Luck Club", about a woman whose mother has just died and who regrets that she never knew who she truly was. The stories poured out. They were what I felt and had to say before it was too late. I had found my reason to write. Amy Tan will discuss The Joy Luck Club with John Mullan on Thursday at 7pm, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1. Tickets pounds 11.50/pounds 9.50. Kingsplace.co.uk. - Amy Tan Caption: Captions: 'The stories poured out. They were what I felt and had to say before it was too late' . . . The Joy Luck Club I was a relative latecomer to writing fiction seriously - 35 when I attended my first fiction writers' workshop. A published writer named Molly Giles critiqued my 13-page story, informing me that I had not written a story. It had no consistent voice or storyline, but the beginnings of about a dozen stories and voices. And some of what I had written felt true and other bits were false. She circled the sentences: "There's one. There's another. Here's another. Pick one and start over." My promise made only moments before, I felt, was the reason she was alive, and if I did not fulfil it, she still might die. When I returned, I gave my mother a freshwater pearl necklace. She admired it and murmured, "So expensive." It was not, but I knew she was talking about the amount of love it represented. From then on, I listened to her ramble for hours at a stretch about her life of regrets - about her first marriage, about my brother dying, then my father shortly after, about everything she could have prevented if only her mother had not killed herself, depriving her of maternal guidance on how to avoid disaster. Now, instead of my trying to change the subject to more pleasant matters, I asked her to tell me more. - Amy Tan.
Kirkus Review
An inordinately moving, electric exploration of two warring cultures fused in love, focused on the lives of four Chinese women--who emigrated, in their youth, at various times, to San Francisco--and their very American 30-ish daughters. Tan probes the tension of love and often angry bewilderment as the older women watch their daughters ""as from another shore,"" and the daughters struggle to free themselves from maddening threads of arcane obligation. More than the gap between generations, more than the dwindling of old ways, the Chinese mothers most fear that their own hopes and truths--the secret gardens of the spirit that they have cultivated in the very worst of times--will not take root. A Chinese mother's responsibility here is to ""give [my daughter] my spirit."" The Joy Luck Club, begun in 1939 San Francisco, was a re-creation of the Club founded by Suyuan Woo in a beleaguered Chinese city. There, in the stench of starvation and death, four women told their ""good stories,"" tried their luck with mah-jongg, laughed, and ""feasted"" on scraps. Should we, thought Suyuan, ""wait for death or choose our own happiness?"" Now, the Chinese women in America tell their stories (but not to their daughters or to one another): in China, an unwilling bride uses her wits, learns that she is ""strong. . .like the wind""; another witnesses the suicide of her mother; and there are tales of terror, humiliation and despair. One recognizes fate but survives. But what of the American daughters--in turn grieved, furious, exasperated, amused (""You can't ever tell a Chinese mother to shut up"")? The daughters, in their confessional chapters, have attempted childhood rebellions--like the young chess champion; ever on maternal display, who learned that wiles of the chessboard did not apply when opposing Mother, who had warned her: ""Strongest wind cannot be seen."" Other daughters--in adulthood, in crises, and drifting or upscale life-styles--tilt with mothers, one of whom wonders: ""How can she be her own person? When did I give her up?"" With lantern-lit tales of old China, a rich humanity, and an acute ear for bicultural tuning, a splendid first novel--one that matches the vigor and sensitivity of Maxine Hong Kingston (The Warrior Woman, 1976; China Men, 1980) in her tributes to the abundant heritage of Chinese-Americans. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
What a wonderful book! The ``joy luck club'' is a mah jong/storytelling support group formed by four Chinese women in San Francisco in 1949. Years later, when member Suyuan Woo dies, her daughter June (Jing-mei) is asked to take her place at the mah jong table. With chapters alternating between the mothers and the daughters of the group, we hear stories of the old times and the new; as parents struggle to adjust to America, their American children must struggle with the confusion of having immigrant parents. Reminiscent of Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior in its vivid depiction of Chinese-American women, this novel is full of complicated, endearingly human characters and first-rate story telling in the oral tradition. It should be a hit in any fiction collection.-- Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
Feathers from a Thousand Li Away | |
The Joy Luck Club | p. 19 |
Scar | p. 42 |
The Red Candle | p. 49 |
The Moon Lady | p. 67 |
The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates | |
Rules of the Game | p. 89 |
The Voice from the Wall | p. 102 |
Half and Half | p. 116 |
Two Kinds | p. 132 |
American Translation | |
Rice Husband | p. 149 |
Four Directions | p. 166 |
Without Wood | p. 185 |
Best Quality | p. 197 |
Queen Mother of the Western Skies | |
Magpies | p. 215 |
Waiting Between the Trees | p. 242 |
Double Face | p. 253 |
A Pair of Tickets | p. 267 |