Book Review: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Book Summary: For readers of Amy Tan's bestselling novel, The Valley of Amazement, revisit her classic tale of mothers and daughters

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.

Liana's Summary: The Joy Luck Club is a story following the past and present of four mothers and daughters in a struggle to bridge the culture gap between Chinese people and American people.

Rate(1-10): 8.5

This book was so good. Well, since I haven't read an actual book since February, it was kind of a struggle to read this book as quickly as I wanted to. Am I dethroned as Book Queen?  

This book is one of the reasons I'm glad to be Chinese American, because if I were a white girl I probably wouldn't have understood all the Chinese words and belief systems. 

This book was sad, funny, and meaningful all at the same time, like, whaaaaaaat. Amy Tan is truly an amazing writer. There were parts that had me laughing and my sister right next to me thought I was insane.

Auntie Lindo is my fave. She is awesome.

I guess in a way this book made me look at my relationship with my own mom, and I saw a lot of parallels. Which is kind of cool. But kind of not. Chinese customs are going to find a dominant position in these kinds of relationships, in which the mom came from China and the daughter was born in America...

There were four relationships, so 8 main characters. Funny thing is, although how each and every one of them had a unique history and unique talents that made them who they were, those mother-daughter relationships were super similar to each other.

But yeah, READ THIS BOOK. And not only because your high school English class demands it. (Me. But still, I would've read it even if it weren't assigned..)