The Joy Luck Club

Author: Amy Tan

About the Author

Born in Oakland California

Grew up in San Francisco

Other works include: The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, and The Chinese Siamese Cat.

She now lives in New York with her husband and cat Sagwa.

Setting

The stories of the daughters take place in San Francisco.

The stories told about the mothers are told from different parts of China. Including: Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou.

The stories of the women date back to the 1910s when the mothers were born up to the 1980s when the daughters are grown.

History of the Joy Luck Club

Suyuan Woo founded the clubIt began in China as a way for women to come together and celebrate life during the Japanese attacksThe San Francisco chapter is made of four Chinese ladies who came to America to start new lives and escape their suppressive pasts. The club’s activities include a large meal and then a competitive game of mah jong – a game of dice and tiles.Stories are told around the table during the game which is ultimately what the book is about – a compilation of all the women’s life stories.

Maj Jong

Characters

MothersSuyuan Woo

An-mei Hsu

Lindo Jong

Ying-ying St. Clair

DaughtersJune Woo

Rose Hsu Jordan

Waverly Jong

Lena St. Clair

Suyuan Woo

Sits at the East of the tableThis is where things beginShe is the founder of the Joy Luck ClubShe wants only the best for her daughter be sometimes becomes overly criticalWhen the Japanese attack she is forced from her home and wanders for days with her twins strapped on her backShe must leave them on the street, and never see them againShe dies at the beginning of the book leaving her daughter to take her place in the club and to find her lost twins.

June-Mei Woo

Daughter of Suyuan WooHer mother pushed her to be a child prodigy at the piano when she was little but she never wanted to be anything but normalShe has no desire to be married or finish schoolJune becomes an advertising agentJune and Waverly are in constant competition

Auntie An-Mei

Sits at the south

When she was younger her mother was tricked into being a concubine for a rich man after her father died.

In her unhappiness, her mother commits suicide

An-mei too becomes overly critical and controlling of her daughter

Rose Hsu Jordan

Daughter of An-MeiWhen she was young the family took a trip to the beach and Rose was left in charge of watching her brothersHer youngest brother drowned and she forever lives in the memory of the guiltWhen she was an adult her husband, Ted, left her for another woman.Instead of keeping silent like her culture required, she stood up for herself and hired a lawyer in order to keep the house.

Lindo Jong

Sits in the westWas forced into an arranged marriage that was decided at her birthHer mother-in-law despised her because she wouldn’t have a son. She found out a way to get out of the marriage by tricking the family into thinking the contract was not valid.She went to AmericaShe is a very proud woman and is not happy when her daughter is embarrassed by her.

Waverly Jong

Lindo Jong’s DaughterWaverly was a child prodigy of chessShe won many tournaments and her mother became obsessed with her success.Fed up with her mother’s bragging Waverly quitsAs an adult Waverly’s husband left her with a young daughter and she has now met a new man in the same law firm.Rich, her fiancé, doesn’t make a good impression on the strict Chinese family, but is accepted anyway.Waverly is resentful at her mother’s ability to only look at the negative.

Ying-Ying

Sits in the NorthYing-ying was a spoiled child, spunky and full of life.When she becomes sixteen she believes that she can see the future.She marries a man who is significantly older than she who leaves her for a dancer. In her hurt she shuts herself off from loveShe comes to America where she meets her second husband and has Lena

Lena St. Clair

Her mother tells her that if she doesn’t eat all of her rice her husband will be pock faced. To keep away from a boy down the street she quits eating so that he would be so sick he would die.The boy died of measles.Lena became anorexic Later she married a man from her same architecture business who added up all the bills and tallied up who spent what. This caused many disagreements between the two.

Conflict

Mother vs. Daughter: Each daughter struggled with her mother’s expectations and criticalness. Daughters vs. Culture: The mothers where not allowed to marry again after their husbands left or died without adding shame to their families. Yet the daughters were all going through divorces, remarriages, not wanting to be married at allMother vs. Religion: each mother had her superstitions. They believed in God and yet they did not know doctrine. Mother vs. American Culture: Each mother had to cope with the changes that they saw in America and the affect America had on them

Plot

Each Character had their own plot. The plot was divided into stories and put in a random order. Therefore each action, climax, and denouement came at different times. Some at the beginning, some at the middle, and end.

Major themes

The Difference of ancient Chinese culture and American Culture

“Chinese people had Chinese opinions, and American People had American Opinions. Usually the American opinion was better.” –Rose“I was raised Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people’s misery, to eat my own bitterness” –An-mei The daughters defy their mothers, find jobs, divorce, and get their hair cut by homosexuals. The mothers are critical and only want the absolute best for their daughters

Chinese pride/OverachievementAmerican Laziness

Ying gets a job at a fortune cookie factory. She meets An-mei there and they laugh at the funny quotes that Americans think they use on a regular basis.

Themes Cont.

Struggle between religion and superstition“My mother believed in God’s will for many years. She said it was faith that kept all these food things coming our way, only I thought that she said, ‘fate,’ because she couldn’t pronounce that, ‘the,’ sound in ‘faith.’ And later I discovered that it was fate all along.Some believed that they could tell the futureIf a house was slanted a wrong way the baby would dieIf your earlobe is big then you will have a lot of wisdomIf your nose is long then you will have richesYet they all went to church with the missionaries in San Francisco

Themes Cont.

No matter how a daughter is raised she will become her mother

“And even though I taught my daughter the opposite she came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.” –An-mei Waverly fights her own desire, instilled by her mother, to be critical of her new husband. Rose fights her urge to be silent and allow her husband to walk out on her as her mother stayed silent when her mother died.Lena fights for equality in her marriage just as Ying-Ying fought to keep her freedom as a childWomen were suppressed in both cultures. All the women were expected to hold their tears and take what fate had dealt them.

Style

Vocabulary/diction:Tan used a lot of dialog to express the tension between the characters and the difficulty of the language barriersShe incorporated Chinese words into her dialog and then defined them to add affect to the themes.

Hulihuda: confusedHeimongmong: dark fogYing-Ying’s second husband didn’t know how to propose so he asked if her he she would spouse him. (a word he found on a fortune cookie placed by Ying)

When the characters were not using Chinese words the mothers all had strong dialects

“A mother is best. Mother see inside of you.” –An-Mei“Aii, so much money, so much.

Descriptive languageTan described things in a unique way

She didn’t use a lot of sensory detail but rather described the feelings of the characters.When reading the book, you could not see the place that action was happening without imagination but you could feel the despair that was taking place within the character.

– “ I felt numb, strangely weak, as if someone ad unplugged the current through me.”

She described the characters traits by presenting their actions.

– “Sometimes she would start to make dinner, but would stop half way, the water running full steam in the sink, her knife posed in the air over half-chopped vegetables, silent, tears flowing.”

The characters used many illustrations– “It was as if he were running to catch things before they

fell, only he would fall before he could catch anything.

Sentence StructureWhen the daughters are speaking they use long sentences, with several commas and sometimes run-ons. This is to point out the fluency of their English.

When the mothers speak they have short, choppy sentences and sometimes fragments

Order of eventsThey were sporadic and sometimes hard to follow but this added to the story telling affect.

Conclusion

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, Is a wonderful collection of stories that will make a reader think about how important family is and how their family affects their lives.