Customer Reviews

Joy Luck Club

5 star:		(270)
4 star:		(158)
3 star:		(30)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(37)

 

 

THE JOY LUCK CLUB, a novel by Amy Tan, tells of the intricate relationships between two strong-willed generations, four tough, intelligent American women and their equally tenacious Chinese daughters. The four families are connected through the Joy Luck Club, a mah jong group that meets each week. After its founding member passes away, her daughter is asked to take her place at the table and the stories begin. Each of the eight women narrates two stories from her own point of view except for the deceased whose daughter tells her stories for her. The mothers relate stories about their lives in China, and the daughters tell of the trials that they face growing up as first-generation Chinese-Americans. The women that Tan has crafted are well developed and extraordinarily believable. She shows the strong and weak sides to all eight of her main characters. Her men however, are flat and are there simply as supporting characters. This is to be expected since this is essentially a book about mother-daughter relationships and how women bond. Therefore, it is my assumption that this book is aimed, for the most part, at the female reader. Tan's literary style is truly novel. The way this woman writes can't be compared to anything that I have read in recent years. The novel that I feel comes closest to mirroring Tan's subject matter is THE GOOD EARTH by Pearl S. Buck. As I was reading, I found myself continually drawing parallels between the two. Therefore, if you found Buck's novel enjoyable, Tan's will be a pleasure as well. At face value, I feel that Tan wrote sixteen incredibly interesting stories. It is the undercurrent that runs throughout the novel, however, that makes it a classic. No matter what race you are, or when your ancestors came to America, the themes that rings true to all women are the struggles that we see underscored by the fierce love that is so obviously shared between each mother and daughter. The topic has universal appeal. Who hasn't been ashamed of her roots at one time or another? In this case, the mothers are trying to instill their Chinese spirits into their Americanized daughters before their ancestry is lost forever. The daughters fight their mothers every step of the way under the pretense of independence from overbearing matriarchs. However, I got the feeling that the conflicts arise because the daughters are somewhat embarrassed by their Chinese heritage. They seem to want to be as stereotypically "American" as they possibly can. What they all come to realize at the end of the book, though to different degrees, is that what they have been battling against is something that can't be fought. The daughter of the deceased expresses all of their feelings best when she proclaims' "I see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood." This novel reminded me of an old quilt my grandmother currently owns that has been passd down for generations. Each square is beautiful enough to stand alone. Each has its own special meaning in the history of our family, but when delicately woven together with the others, creates such a masterpiece that it truly ties each of us together. You can understand what it means to be a part of our family be examining the blanket. I like to think that THE JOY LUCK CLUB is the start of Amy Tan's quilt. She is telling the women that came before her that they will not be forgotten. She is assuring them that she has captured their spirits. Her dedication at the beginning of the novel is what allowed me to arrive at this conclusion. "To my mother and the memory of her mother...You asked me once what I would remember. This and much more." This review cannot possibly do THE JOY LUCK CLUB justice. Tan is a truly gifted storyteller and her novels must be experienced firsthand. The highest compliment that I can give is that in the midst of the busiest summer of my life, with summer readings stacked high atop my desk, and the buzz of the alarm clock awaiting me in less than five hours, I couldn't help myself. I read it again.

Reviewed by Colleen Clancy Collen died in a car crash along with two of her classmates on September 22, 1998, the morning after she read this review to her senior English class at Notre Dame Academy, Hingham, MA. Her English class would like to pay tribute to her memory by publishing her work in the Amazon Student Book Review column.

Amy Tan's novel of many voices has become required reading in high school and college contemporary literature courses - and for good reason. Its intimate look at Chinese immigrants and their children opens up a wealth of questions about cultural acclimation in a country dominated by another race. Set in San Francisco and China, the novel begins with Jing-Mei ("June"), who has been asked by her father to take her recently deceased mother's place in the Joy Luck Club, ostensibly a mah jong gathering of her mother's closest friends, but also an investment club, symbolizing the merging of the two cultures. June agrees, although she doesn't feel she makes an adequate substitute for a woman who seemed so unlike her. When her "aunties" urge June to tell her sisters, women she has never met and who were left at the side of a road in China, about her mother's life, they are troubled when she confesses that she did not know her mother except as a mother. She sees that they fear that their own daughters might not know about them, and so she impulsively promises to find her mother's long lost children and tell them about their mother. In this way, the novel sets up its structure of interrelated stories. Although the stories of June and her mother Suyuan frame the others, those of An-Mei, Rose, Lindo, Waverly, Ying-ying, and Lena are no less important.

These women and their daughters form a complicated quilt of what it means to be a Chinese-American, whether born in China or in the United States, and they highlight the difficulties of bridging two cultures. The choices each woman makes are always difficult and often heart-breaking. Students might want to explore the difference in attitude between the Chinese women and their American daughters. Other topics for discussion include comparing and contrasting the relationships; the meaning of "Chinese blood" in the context of what unfolds; whether this is a true novel or a collection of stories; the ways in which the title refers not only to the actual Joy Luck Club but to the book in general; and the use of voice to convey characterization.

This accessible, well-written first novel is not Amy Tan's most accomplished (see The Kitchen God's Wife and The Bonesetter's Daughter), but it is her most widely read. Highly recommended for a general readership.

I read this book in Multi-Cultural Literature class. I think that Amy Tan is a truly gifted writer with a unique way of opening our imaginations to her world. This novel has 8 main characters. It's about 4 chinese women who came to America and how they have to change their ways. The other 4 chinese women are their daughters born in America. Each chapter is one of the characters point of view and their life story.

Ying Ying St. Clair: After being left by her first husband, marries her second husband who is an american.

Lena St. Clair: She is the daughter of Ying Ying. She is having marital problems with her husband Harold. Who wants to be treated equal. They have their own money and they split it down the middle.

Linda Jong: At a young age was in an arranged marriage, she later makes up a story that her in laws ancesters would be angry if she bare her husbands Child.

Waverly Jong: She is named after the street in which she lived in. She became a champion at chess, and realizing that it isn't so fun anymore.

An-Mei Hsu: She was raised by her Grandmother because her mother, although was alive was considered a "ghost" because she remarried after her first husband died. She has to decide whether she wants to leave with her mother after her Grandmothers death, or stay with her aunt and her brother.

Rose Hsu Jordan: She is dealing with her husbands divorce. She is fighting to keep the house that they both had lived in.

Suyuan Woo: She was the one who started 'The Joy Luck Club'. She decided to have 4 women gather around once a week, and eat a big feast, and laugh and talk about good times all through the night.

Jing Mei Woo: After her mother's death, she must go to China and meet with her long-lost twin sisters.

I definetly give this book an A+. Don't think that I've told you everything. That is not even the beginning. Not only are you enjoying a good book, but you are learning about Chinese Culture. I've said this many, many times, but this book is a "must" read...

Amy Tan writes about four mothers struggling through the hard times in life in order to live a better one in the future. The Joy Luck Club formed by four women in China allowed them to share their stories and forget their worries. These four mothers hoped that raising their daughters in America and raising them the American way will give them a more successful life. They hoped that their daughters will learn to take better steps in life, than to take the wrong ones that their mothers have taken in the past. But the relationship between a mother and a daughter is so deep that they learn that a piece of their mother's personality traits will always be with them. And no matter how Americanized a child may be raised, she will still see a Chinese part of herself inside. Amy Tan really has her own style of writing. She includes Mandarin lines which makes it interesting and her book is so detailed that it seems believable and very realistic. Each page is so touching that it makes me want to go onto the next to read what happens after. I would say that this is one of the best books I have read.

I would say this is nothing sort of genius. The juxtaposition of the mothers' and daughters' stories is very compelling. One of the most fascinating aspects of the novel is to be able to understand life in China through the stories of the mothers.

"In America I will have a daughter just like me. But over there nobody will say her worth is measured by the loudness of her husband's belch. Over there nobody will look down on her, because I will make her speak only perfect American English. And over there she will always be too full to swallow any sorrow." This was one of the many thoughts that four Chinese women had when coming to America. They all came looking for a better life and a better future.

This book takes place in San Francisco around the 1970's. The four women from China, Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair, form the Joy Luck Club. The Joy Luck Club is a gathering of four women, and each week, one of them hosts a party to raise money and they eat special foods that bring good luck. Then they would play mah jong and whoever won got the money. This was their way of keeping their spirits up through their hardships. This was also what brought Jing-mei "June" Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Waverly Jong, and Lena St. Clair, together.

A problem that they all share is that since the mothers were born in China and the daughters were born in America, there is more of an inability for them to communicate with each other. The mothers have the tragedies of their childhoods in China in their memories, and the daughters have lived safe and comfortable lives when they were children. This difference in background also helped in the lack of understanding between them. Throughout the novel, all of them recall events in their lives and the lessons they learned from those events or from the people around them. They recall big turning points in their lives that changed them and helped to make them the people they are today. In recalling these events and the lessons they learned, they deal with similar problems in their present day lives and grow as individuals.

This book was very well written and it is a good example of how people can learn from the past. No one should dismiss this book because they think that it's a book for Asian people to read. The relationship between the mother and the daughter and the lessons they learn can be applied to any culture. The book was a little hard to follow at first because it jumps around to different people a few times and it's easy to get the people and the stories confused. Something that might help is stopping before each chapter and looking back at the previous stories as a reminder of what else has happened to the person in their life and to help keep the individual's stories separated. Also, look at their mother's/daughter's story to help tie that family's history together.

The author did a great job of tying the different stories together. Each person's story was different enough to keep the reader interested and allow them to discover new things, but they were also similar enough to make sure that the stories related to each other and helped to achieve the same purpose. From reading this book, a person could take the things that the characters learned and apply it to their own life. A person could also gain a little more understanding of another culture and also the differences between two generations.

The Joy Luck Club is a classic book in Twentieth Century American Literature, and Asain-American literature. It follows the lives of four Chinese women in China during the 40's as well as their American-born daughters in California a generation later. The characters are Suyuan Woo and her daughter Jing-mei (who goes by "June"), An-mei Hsu and her daughter Rose Hsu Jordan, Lindo Jong and her daughter Waverly, and Ying-ying St. Clair and her daughter Lena. It is almost like a book of short stories, because each woman (and daughter) takes a turn or two at telling a story from her life. Each story eventually connects with other stories, but they can also be read alone and make complete sense. Four stories are grouped into one category, so they all are placed into fitting themes. The first grouping is under "Feathers From a Thousand Li Away", and deal with the mother's stories of living in China. The next is "The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates", in which the daughters are introduced and each speaks about her life as an Asian-American, and how each incorporates the legends, stories, and tradition of their mother's countries with modern life in their own. The third grouping is "American Translation", which delves furhter into the complications of living in two worlds at once. The last grouping is "Queen Mother of the Western Skies" and deals with issues of aging and the loss of innocence.

Tan's writing style is quite simplistic but the issues she addresses are important and deep. During the reading of this book one can grasp the contrasts between China and America, and can sense the problems and excitement of a Chinese mother raising an American daughter in a completely different environment than that in which she grew up, as well as being that Asain-American daughter. Another theme addressed in this book is that of mother-daughter relationships. All the relationships in this book are strained, and the women involved misunderstand and misinterpret one another because of the cultural differences even though they have genetic similarities.

I am glad I read this famous and often-talked-about book, however the writing style was so simple and the plots so easy to follow that I wish I had read it earlier. I think it would be a good book for teenagers, but if you are an adult who has never read it, I also recommend it to you. The issues addressed within it are timeless and thought-provoking.

I'll just come out and say it: I think this book is very good, and I think it will hold up well over time. There are a lot of different story lines running through The Joy Luck Club (TJLC), so how you rate it may depend on where you place your focus, but here's why I think it is so good:

SUMMARY
On the face of it, this book follows the intertwined lives of four families of Chinese immigrants and their first-generation American children. I was most drawn to the story of Jing-mei ("June"). After the passing of her often-distant mother (Suyuan), June suddenly takes an interest in getting to know Suyuan's circle of friends better. In the course of meeting with them weekly to play mah-jongg, June gradually develops a comprehension of her mother's very full, very different life in China so long ago. Suyuan's courage in the face of devastating adversity throws June's childhood memories into drastically different context. Eventually, June discovers the existance of step-sisters she didn't know she had, whom she ultimately travels to find.


THEMES WITH BROAD APPEAL
I'm neither Chinese nor a woman, yet I found I could not only relate to everything going on, but was frequently reminded of people in my own life. Parents the world over deal with pride and disappointment in their children. Each generation from the dawn of time has lamented how "kids these days" seem so quick to abandon sacred and meaningful old ways, in favor of vacuous and superficial fads. So often, progeny don't comprehend the hardships their elders endured. Children struggle with parental expectations, and the all many ways their parents seem "out of touch" and unable to fully appreciate the particulars of their lives. Every family has inter- and intragenerational friction, even power struggles, at times. Sibling rivalry is a universal experience among anyone who has siblings. For hundreds of years, immigrants from all walks have come to America, hoping to partake in the economic opportunities, and frequently wishing to establish a new life and a new identity here, but also hoping to instill in their children a sense of heritage and identity, and to see them carry on some of the traditions and treasured values of the Old World. How each of us manages (or doesn't manage) to navigate at least some of these issues is a large part of who we are. It's the stuff of our individual characters, and composes much of our lives' stories. I feel all these things in The Joy Luck Club, and I feel them sincerely. In that sense, this is a very human book. Just because most of the characters are women does not make this "chick lit". Likewise, the characterization of TJLC as niche "Chinese-American lit", merely because the characters happen to be Chinese is no more apt than calling Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward "a story about some white guys".

AMY TAN'S TECHNICAL SKILL AS A WRITER
At the center are four older women, all immigrated from China, who now meet weekly in their San Francisco neighborhood to play mah-jongg and gossip. They gossip about - what else?- their families... which introduces us to their children (all daughters). The mah-jongg backdrop turns out to be a very organic device for introducing characters. TJLC begins in present day, but various reminiscences start filling in back stories. Because the writing is sincere, and the characters have depth, what unfolds is a larger collage of the lives of four families, which is richer and more universal than just a pigeon-holed story about "immigrants", or "the Chinese-American experience" or "mothers and daughters", etc. Tan's writing is uncommonly fluid; characters emerge, take center stage for a while, and then slip off again into the periphery. Her real skill in this is in letting each character make enough of an impression so the reader will keep all the players straight. That was my experience exactly. Often when books have too many characters, I find myself thinking "now which one was this person again?" Not the case with TJLC; Amy Tan strikes just the right balance, gradually fleshing out each character, but also maintaining the momentum of the narration so it doesn't seem to get bogged down in a lot of expository dialogue or dissecting descriptions. I don't mean to gush, but too often stories of this scope tend to fragment as "the center cannot hold". Rooting everything back to the four women seems to averted that problem. Moreover, Amy Tan has a very liquid, readable style. We've all plodded through books that made us very conscious of the fact that we were sitting there, reading a book. We've all snapped out of a dazed state to find we've been staring, uncomprehending, at some word for seconds, maybe minutes. For me, The Joy Luck Club was at the other end of the bell curve: several times I glanced down at a page number to realize "Oh! I just blew through thirty pages like it was nothing!"

At this point, I was going to launch into (what I imagined to be) a deconstruction of some less favorable reviews of this book. On reflection, I don't think the The Joy Luck Club requires any such assistance. It's an excellent book, engaging and memorable; I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it has my highest recommendation.

Amy Tan creates a small short plot that takes up about 10-20 pages. The rest of the book is getting the reader very intimate with the characters and the situation of adapting to American life.

The characters of this book are real. The situations are also real. Anyone close to an Asian-American can attest to these types of stories. Tan does a great job of showing how the children grow up American and are unable/unwilling to relate to their parents. Teenage rebellion takes on new meaning when you are also rebelling against your parents culture. Tan does not paint china with elaborate imagery, but paints it in the readers mind with characters and actions that are foreign to western minds. The story is told in a non-linear method that adds to this foreign feel.

I would recommend this book to everyone. There is very little suggestive or violent content. Amy Tan deserves the praise that she has received for this book.

is not being able to read it for the first time again.

I picked this book up on a whim. It was on my freshman summer reading list and I figured 'what the heck, I don't know that much about Chinese culture'. And I was suprised.

The book is basically a bunch of linked stories about four woman and their daughters. These seven women (one of the mothers has recently died) tell two stories from their past, and for some of the daughters their present, that weave together to make one big Chinese modern fairy tale. My favorites had to be 'The Red Candle', 'Two Kinds', 'Rice Husband', and 'Magpies', but all were very good.

And even if you aren't Chinese, and don't know anything about them, Amy Tan's poetic language will basically float you through this book like a calm river. She writes with wonderful talent and I will definately be reading one of her books again, that will hopefully be just as good as this one.