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The Joy Luck Club: A Novel Kindle Edition

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 9,840 ratings

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

Amy Tan’s beloved,
New York Times bestselling tale of mothers and daughters, now the focus of a new documentary Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir on Netflix

Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.

With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.

Get to know this book

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Powerful as myth." —The Washington Post Book World

"Beautifully written...a jewel of a book." —The New York Times Book Review

"Powerful...full of magic...you won't be doing anything of importance until you have finished this book." —Los Angeles Times

"Wonderful...a significant lesson in what storytelling has to do with memory and inheritance." —San Francisco Chronicle

“Reading it really changed the way I thought about Asian-American history. Our heritage has a lot of difficult stuff in it — a lot of misogyny, a lot of fear and rage and death. It showed me a past that reached beyond borders and languages and cultures to bring together these disparate elements of who we are. I hadn’t seen our history like that before. At that time, we hadn’t seen a lot of Asian-American representations anywhere, so it was a big deal that it even existed. It made me feel validated and seen. That’s what’s so important about books like that. You feel like, Oh my god, I exist here. I exist in this landscape of literature and memoir. I’m here, and I have a story to tell, and it’s among the canon of Asian-American stories that are feminist and that are true to our being. It’s a book that has stayed with me and lived in me.” Margaret Cho

About the Author

Amy Tan is the author of The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life, Saving Fish from Drowning, The Valley of Amazement, The Backyard Bird Chronicles, and two children’s books, The Moon Lady and The Chinese Siamese Cat, which was adapted into a PBS television series. Tan was also a coproducer and co-screenwriter of the film version of The Joy Luck Club. Her essays and stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and her work has been translated into thirty-five languages. She lives with her husband in San Francisco and New York.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004IYISSK
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books; 1st edition (September 21, 2006)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 21, 2006
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1277 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 343 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 9,840 ratings

About the author

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Amy Tan
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Amy Tan is the author of The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life, and two children's books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa, which has now been adapted as a PBS production. Tan was also a co-producer and co-screenwriter of the film version of The Joy Luck Club, and her essays and stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Her work has been translated into thirty-five languages. She lives with her husband in San Francisco and New York.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D0pwe4vaQo

www.amytan.net

https://www.facebook.com/AuthorAmyTan

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
9,840 global ratings

Customers say

Customers find the book very emotionally engaging, insightful, and beautifully written. They also describe the storyline as captivating and wonderful for any mother or daughter. Opinions differ on comprehensibility, with some finding it easy and funny, while others find it slow and tedious at times. Customers also disagree on the characters, with others loving them and others finding it difficult to keep them straight.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

122 customers mention "Storyline"116 positive6 negative

Customers find the storyline captivating, thoughtful, and excellent. They also say it's a good story about a family and the trials they endured to become people. Customers also say the book is wonderful for any mother or daughter.

"...Amy Tan tells wonderful stories of the friends. She tells all about their days in China. She tells of their transitions to being Americans...." Read more

"...The book is a far richer story than the movie was. By that I mean that there is more background, more history, and much more Chinese culture(s)...." Read more

"...Good editing and it doesn't chop the stories up and take away from them like a lot of book to film adaptations do." Read more

"...Their stories are richly told, in their own distinct voices, and you can't help but be carried away with them as you read...." Read more

91 customers mention "Writing style"66 positive25 negative

Customers find the writing style beautiful, artful, and decent. They also appreciate the author's great method of dialogue, and say the book is fascinating, unique, and entertaining.

"...And the language used is beautiful to read. Amy Tan manages to evoke an entire milieu with her words. But the movie was what I was used to...." Read more

"I loved this Amy Tan book, it's an easy read and will have you drawn in right away to the story...." Read more

"Some writing and undelining. Not a problem. The book is perfectly useable for my research." Read more

"...It is well written and so very easy to get swept up in the lives of all of these women...." Read more

78 customers mention "Cultural aspects"78 positive0 negative

Customers find the cultural aspects of the book enlightening, rich, and entertaining. They also appreciate the different perspectives, attitudes, and cultural differences of the four mothers. They describe the book as heartwarming, beautiful, and intelligent. Customers also say the journey of Jing-mei is awesome and magical.

"...They live in San Francisco. The book is rich in Chinese culture. It’s insightful and heartwarming." Read more

"...I highly recommend this to everyone. It's a touching read that explores human nature, love, nurturing, and how important it is to listen to each..." Read more

"...By that I mean that there is more background, more history, and much more Chinese culture(s). And the language used is beautiful to read...." Read more

"...There's so much about this book I loved: the complex lives with rich backstory, the complicated relationships, the quirky personalities..." Read more

57 customers mention "Emotional tone"49 positive8 negative

Customers find the book very engaging, with humor, love, and unique situations. They also say the story is excellent, touching, and alive today.

"...The book is rich in Chinese culture. It’s insightful and heartwarming." Read more

"...I highly recommend this to everyone. It's a touching read that explores human nature, love, nurturing, and how important it is to listen to each..." Read more

"...A rich and life affirming look at relationships. Loved it.Magical !" Read more

"...It's an amazing, heartfelt book that covers the complexities of not just mother/daughter relationships but what happens when cultures clash." Read more

8 customers mention "Content"8 positive0 negative

Customers find the content of the book fast-paced, useable, and powerful. They also say it holds their interest and transports them to another world.

"Some writing and undelining. Not a problem. The book is perfectly useable for my research." Read more

"...I would highly recommend this book for any reader. It is an enriching and educating book." Read more

"This was a very well written story, Kept my attention, and touched my emotions. I highly recommend this beautiful story!" Read more

"...It was incredible refreshing and unexpected. Never a dull moment while reading." Read more

24 customers mention "Characters"15 positive9 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the characters in the book. Some love the characters and how their individual stories weave together, while others find it difficult to keep the characters straight.

"...lives with rich backstory, the complicated relationships, the quirky personalities (especially of the mothers), and the wonderful way Tan used those..." Read more

"...It switches around to various characters' stories without any real pattern that you can discern...." Read more

"...women's lives, the heartache and happiness of it all, the realness of the characters...." Read more

"...The characters and stories are all relatable in some ways, and confounding in others...." Read more

14 customers mention "Comprehensibility"5 positive9 negative

Customers are mixed about the comprehensibility of the book. Some find it well written, easy to understand, and funny, while others find it slow, tedious, and busy. Some also mention that the book is just short of boring and too hyped up.

"...however, make sure to figure out who is who, otherwise it is hard to follow along." Read more

"...It's lovely, and extremely easy to get into." Read more

"Took a whole lot of concentration and felt like I needed a map or cheat sheet to keep the characters straight!!" Read more

"...The ending was good but the book was to slow and repetitive for me. I was tempted to quit before the end, which I rarely do." Read more

13 customers mention "Pace"6 positive7 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the pace of the book. Some find it fast-paced, while others say it's too slow and repetitive.

"...The final story was heartwarmingly beautiful. It's a little difficult to keep up with who was the pianist and who was the chess player, etc.,..." Read more

"Slow but interesting story. Culturally refreshing. I read it for my Bookclub and we all agree that it is a women story...." Read more

"...Although it had some slow areas, it was worth the wait to reach the end of the story." Read more

"Very slow moving story! Gives some feeling of difference between 2 thought processes of two generations of Chinese immigrants!" Read more

Missing Pages.
3 out of 5 stars
Missing Pages.
Good book and read but….book came without pages. There should be over 300 pages in this book and mine came with 298 pages. The book ends mid-sentence and I am very disappointed in this. I got this book for school and now I don’t know what to do about annotations because I have to order another book and carry two to my classes.
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Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2024
The Joy Luck Club is a club where old friends meet to play mahjong. The friends form 4 corners of the table. One of the friends has died and her daughter will take her place. Amy Tan tells wonderful stories of the friends. She tells all about their days in China. She tells of their transitions to being Americans. They live in San Francisco. The book is rich in Chinese culture. It’s insightful and heartwarming.
3 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2024
When Jing-Mei Woo's mother dies, she is invited to sit in her place in The Joy Luck Club. What starts as an awkward inconvenience where she's forced to deal with her mother and her differences head-on becomes a journey through different generations, different truths, and cultural exploration.

My goodness, I have read this a few times now and each time, I cry, I laugh and my heart aches for all involved. This is not a simple story, rather a blending of different voices that show you peeks into dark secrets, lives seeped in tradition, and how in the longing to provide a better, safer environment, the children have stepped away from their parents.

It's beautiful, and I'm grateful that I was introduced to this in high school cause I don't know if I would have ventured into it on my own. I highly recommend this to everyone. It's a touching read that explores human nature, love, nurturing, and how important it is to listen to each other.
Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2012
I must have watched the film a dozen times. Something about it kept me enraptured. Maybe it was because I was myself a child of immigrants (Russian rather than Chinese). The movie spoke to me about the sadness of cultural conflict between a parent who tries so hard to instill a certain cultural awareness in a child who resists it. So I finally decided to read the book. While it was jarring, it was also a personal story that left me wondering about my own history and that of my parents. For that I am thankful to the author for sharing this story.

The book is a far richer story than the movie was. By that I mean that there is more background, more history, and much more Chinese culture(s). And the language used is beautiful to read. Amy Tan manages to evoke an entire milieu with her words. But the movie was what I was used to. I tried to put aside the images from the movie, but I kept returning to it and while reading I kept thinking to myself that this was not how it was in the movie.

So, the book. It is a story about 4 Chinese women and their 4 Chinese-American daughters. The book is set up in 16 chapters so that we get the perspective of all 4 mothers and their 4 daughters respectively, although since one mother has died, that part of the book is told from the perspective of the deceased woman's husband and daughter. In mainland China this woman, Suyuan Woo, was displaced during the war (Chinese-Japanese War during the 30s and 40s) and formed a Joy Luck Club that would play mahjong while sharing the joys and sadness in each others' lives. Now displaced again because of the Japanese invasion, Suyuan forms another Joy Luck Club in San Francisco in 1949, where she met the other 3 Chinese mothers through a local church.

In the book, and in the film, we see the backgrounds of the mothers in China. The stories are varied although there is an undercurrent of tragedy in all of them. Those were not easy times to live in China and certainly not as a woman. We are witness to an entire sociocultural world that somehow only gets transplanted in bits and pieces to the United States. This creates serious tensions in all four of the mother-daughter relationships as the mothers and daughters live in different worlds even while inhabiting the same space. So in addition to the usual generation gap, there is also a cultural gap. The mothers have all their history from China while the daughters all have their own emotional issues to deal with as children of immigrants in a new society. As they try to understand each other, the story progresses so that by the end, when we return to China, we see that an emotional bridge has been created between mother and daughter. A bridge that allows the gap to be crossed.
9 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2024
Ok, so I’m 35ish years late to the party on this one, but I loved it. It wasn’t at all about what I thought it was about. I only finally read it because one time it was $1.99 on Amazon so I figured what the heck.
Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2024
Loved this book came in great condition.
Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2023
Good book and read but….book came without pages. There should be over 300 pages in this book and mine came with 298 pages. The book ends mid-sentence and I am very disappointed in this. I got this book for school and now I don’t know what to do about annotations because I have to order another book and carry two to my classes.
Customer image
3.0 out of 5 stars Missing Pages.
Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2023
Good book and read but….book came without pages. There should be over 300 pages in this book and mine came with 298 pages. The book ends mid-sentence and I am very disappointed in this. I got this book for school and now I don’t know what to do about annotations because I have to order another book and carry two to my classes.
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3 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2023
Despite being aware of this book when it came out and all the acclaim it immediately garnered, I've been about twenty years late to this book. It was well worth the wait. And I'm sure I got more from it now than I would have then, as my own relationship with my mother has evolved over the years.

Because that's what this book is about: mothers who don't understand their daughters, and daughters who only very gradually begin to understand their mothers. Add to this a cultural shift from Chinese-born mothers to American-born daughters, and those relationships take on yet another distortion that challenges even the best of intentions to connect.

There's so much about this book I loved: the complex lives with rich backstory, the complicated relationships, the quirky personalities (especially of the mothers), and the wonderful way Tan used those characters to flip my view of the USA. "So-so security" rather than "social security" is one phrasing I'll always remember.

Perhaps because I was so eager to see what was happening with these characters that I read more quickly than I should have, or perhaps because the cultural differences between me and the characters were deep, but the characters were often blurred for me. I was grateful for the little cheat sheet, the character list, to help me keep everyone straight.

The Joy Luck club is everything wonderful you've heard it is -- but you'll get more than a good read out of it. Much more. It will touch you personally in ways you won't expect, and open your eyes to a world that's probably been invisible to you. This is a rare gift from a book, and one you won't want to pass by.
20 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Bob
5.0 out of 5 stars In the beginning
Reviewed in Canada on June 26, 2022
This was the book that launched Amy Tan's writing career and is truly outstanding novel that explores daughter/mother relationships (and that of families in general). I have been a fan of Tan's stories from the beginning and this book was purchased to introduce my eldest daughter to her writings. I can attest to the fact she shares my taste in good literature, and continues to rave about "The Joy Luck Club"
If you haven't experienced Amy Tan, then this book is a perfectly logical place to start!
Alice
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Edition of This Modern Classic
Reviewed in Brazil on June 9, 2021
The book arrived speedily and in perfect conditions. The cover is beautiful, as is usual with the Penguin Orange Collection. The cover has a matte finish to it, and the pages are of a not-too-white shade, which makes the reading comfortable. The stories of the four families are very interesting. So far, an excellent acquisition.
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Alice
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Edition of This Modern Classic
Reviewed in Brazil on June 9, 2021
The book arrived speedily and in perfect conditions. The cover is beautiful, as is usual with the Penguin Orange Collection. The cover has a matte finish to it, and the pages are of a not-too-white shade, which makes the reading comfortable. The stories of the four families are very interesting. So far, an excellent acquisition.
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2 people found this helpful
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Lucy
5.0 out of 5 stars One of my favourite novel
Reviewed in India on November 11, 2023
I really like the little stories written for each of the characters separately. Its easy to read and understand.
Elizabeth O
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and thought-provoking
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 18, 2022
This book has been sitting on my to-read list for a while now, so glad I finally managed to read it - it’s brilliant.

This novel explores the deep, complicated and strong bond between mothers and daughters. We daughters perceive so much of our mothers’ faults, our manner and tone often condescending at their ‘outdated, foreign ways’, yet, we have so much of our mothers in us. Their strength, selflessness and unconditional love for us is a huge anchor for us, yet we so often take them for granted.

Nevertheless, this story doesn’t paint a simple narrative that glosses over how this same strength and depth of a mother’s love can be tainted by their own imperfections too.

I also loved how this story also sheds light on both Chinese and American history.

I’d highly recommend this!
3 people found this helpful
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Na Go
5.0 out of 5 stars Me encantó
Reviewed in Spain on October 21, 2021
Es un libro que recomiendo a menudo, de los que te deja poso tras leerlo.

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