The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

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Today I am reviewing The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. I read this book for the high school World Lit group I am in, and I also saw a play version of it.

Summary (from Amazon.com)
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.

My Review
I enjoyed many things about this book. I found it to be a unique look at the lives of eight women, and their relationships with their families and each other. The characters in this book were good, and each had a distinct personality. With the format of the book, I often found it difficult at first to remember who was who, and who was who's daughter, but I think it mostly sorted itself out. When I saw the play version, they did it a little differently (they had the first mother story and then the first daughter story for each set together), and I think it helped me keep track a little better. Also, by doing that, it made me realize that there were many connections between the mother's childhood experiences, and their behavior and reactions as an adult. I missed these connections when I read the book.

I very much enjoyed her writing style. It was quick to read and flowed well, but still managed to portray complex ideas and emotions with ease. I was impressed with how she was able to write about such different people and times, but still make them all feel like they were part of the same story. She manages to capture with words not just the women, but the relationships and the emotions that those relationships were built on.

In this book, the plot matters much less than the characters, which is rare. The plot that there is exists between the lines, and between the stories. In many cases, the most important parts of the plot were the ones never told. They are the ones that you must realize for herself. For example, one part that to me seemed very important plot wise, but was never said was the reason for Ying-Ying St. Clair's extreme reaction to her pregnancy, and the eventual loss of her child. This ties back to her first marriage in China, which her husband and daughter in America do not know about. When her first husband left her, she aborted their child she was pregnant with at the time, and now she feels that the loss of this baby is her punishment.

Who Should Read This Book?
I highly recommend this book. It is a wonderful look both at Chinese-American culture, but also, more importantly, at the importance of strong relationships between mothers and daughters. I would recommend this book to anyone, but I think women of all ages would find it particularly powerful.