Amy Tan was born in America to a Chinese immigrant family. The story behind The Joy Luck Club is that Amy Tan’s mother had to leave her family (three daughters) in Shanghai and came to America. Yes, as you can understand, there is no story here that will make you happy or smile. But life is not full of happy things, and there is so much we can learn from literature thanks to good books like this one.
The book doesn’t like it when you take a break or a little swim in the sea. When you jump from section to section, you may find yourself confused about the characters. Still, the Joy Luck Club isn’t a bad book at all. Just don’t read on holiday and don’t take breaks too often. The fine details of the relations between Chinese mothers and daughters and, the families who migrated to America are just beautiful. It is a delight to read actually. I find the similarity between Turkish and Chinese mothers a bit scary. As for the fathers, I think they’re all the same all over the world. You can’t stop thinking about it. This was a detail that I was mainly focused for a long time.
I don’t think you’ll be mind-blown after reading The Joy Luck Club. I started thinking about my next read just five minutes after the book was over. But it can be a fun getaway for a little glimpse into the life of Chinese-American people and exciting aspects of mother-daughter relationships. Amy Tan is an excellent author, and this book may be a good choice if you want to read more about immigration and immigrants in general.
About the book: The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan’s moving and poignant tale of immigrant Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters that inspired the BAFTA nominated film.
In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters’ futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have never heard these stories, think their mothers’ advice is irrelevant to their modern American lives – until their own inner crises reveal how much they’ve unknowingly inherited of their mothers’ pasts.
About the author: Amy Tan
Amy Tan is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships and the Chinese American experience. Her novel The Joy Luck Club was adapted into a film in 1993 by director Wayne Wang.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
