The Joy Luck Club

I was completely immersed in this novel. Through her exploration of Chinese-American culture, Amy Tan draws us deeply into the intricate relationships between the mothers in this book and their daughters.

Cross-generational and cross-cultural, Tan skillfully portrays the conflicts within these friendships—both among the mothers and between mothers and daughters—ultimately demonstrating the power of understanding and forgiveness.

An ugly cry is inevitable for this book. I read this book with good friends in a book club. We all saw the film adaptation and decided to read the book together. We shared our bawling moments as we discussed the story.

Yes, we all cried. The moms and daughters in this book demanded tears. Even the coolest friend in the book club, who never cried, succumbed to the diaspora in the book. I must confess that crying together in a book club was simply a cathartic experience.

How do our parents and their life stories shape us? How much of our psychological makeup is a response to events that they lived through? How does our parents’ history influence our own life choices?

All of these questions are taken up in The Joy Luck Club, which explores the relationships of four mother/daughter pairs. The mothers, four friends who meet for a weekly mah-jong game, harbor powerful hopes that their daughters will achieve all that they could not. Their daughters struggle under the weight of these expectations, each in their own way.

Tan structures this book like a symphony,… show more.

A tapestry of eight points of view, threading together the stories of three generations of women across two continents. Taps into universal themes through intimate and candid conversations between Chinese-American mothers and their daughters.

Through their interwoven accounts, we find that history comes alive most vividly, most memorably, and most poignantly in family relationships that transcend time, place, and life experience.

When it comes to the relationship between mother and daughter, you rarely communicate how you are feeling and because of that there is so much communication.

The mother may think she is not good enough for her daughter and vice versa. Being able to share their feelings and what they are going through can heal the traumas the mother and daughter faces while breaking the cycle. 

As Asian women we are constantly seen as emotionless robots when that is far from the truth.

This multigenerational novel took me from San Francisco to China. It's like a collection of short stories, with each story connected.

It tells about the lives of four Chinese immigrant women who arrived in San Francisco in 1949. They met through their church and once a week gathered to play mahjong and talk. They call themselves the Joy Luck Club.

Each lady tells their story and the circumstances that brought them to America, sometimes their accounts are brutal yet realistic. It’s a heartfelt novel about mothers and daughters, how generations differ, and conflict rises and falls like the ebbing tides.… show more.

An intricately written, and profoundly conveyed, multi-generational story that explores the complex yet loving relationships between mothers and their daughters. The author enchantingly weaves tales of four different women and their struggles in China with the modern lives of their American-born daughters. The way Tan delves into cultural conflict through the generations, and eventually has the characters evolve into more appreciation and kindness, thereby strengthening their familial bonds, really resonates with me and my experiences writing my book with my grandmother.

Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club is comprised of sixteen interwoven stories about conflicts between Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-raised daughters. One of The Joy Luck Club’s key components is the way in which food is intertwined with cultural identity and family dynamics. For the characters, food drives memory, sense of identity, nostalgia, and love. Food becomes the bridge between generations, symbolic talismans of good luck and fortune. Food is also the vehicle to express love, exert power, and celebrate life in a continuous struggle among the women characters to maintain relationships, and to make sure there is… show more.

This is the story of mothers and daughters everywhere but with a Chinese flair. And because I am Chinese, I have to include this beloved book! There is such heart and authenticity in Amy Tan’s intertwined stories of friendship and family. It was the first time I’d read something resembling the sort of relationship I have with my own mother, which my friends at school didn’t understand.