The Joy Luck Club
by Amy Tanpublished
September 21st 2006
(first published 1989)
by Penguin (Non-Classics)
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binding
Paperback, 288 pages
isbn
0143038095
(isbn13: 9780143038092)
description
A stunning literary achievement, The Joy Luck Club explores the tender and tenacious bond between four daughters and their mothers. The daughters know...more
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Read in October, 2007
recommends it for:
anyone
The book started off with Jing-Mei Woo, who was asked to sit in as one of the four players in the Joy Luck Club. She was to replace her mother who had recently passed away. The Joy Luck Club consists of four women who played a common Chinese game, and base on what I have seen it is usually used for gambling. The Joy Luck Club is what develops the plot because it is where we get the stories of each of the women in it.
This book is separated into four sections. In all of these sections there ...more
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Read in August, 2008
Mothers and daughters. Mothers and daughters and families losing and finding each other across cultural boundaries. There's enough material there for Amy Tan to write a thousand books.
Suyuan Woo has died and left an empty place at the mah-jongg table. Her daughter, Jing-Mei "June" Woo is invited to join the game, which her mother named the Joy Luck Club. There must always be four men and four women in the club, and Jing-Mei's father has chosen her to take his wife's place. Thr...more
Suyuan Woo has died and left an empty place at the mah-jongg table. Her daughter, Jing-Mei "June" Woo is invited to join the game, which her mother named the Joy Luck Club. There must always be four men and four women in the club, and Jing-Mei's father has chosen her to take his wife's place. Thr...more
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Read in March, 2008
The Joy Luck Club is a tremendously well written book filled with passion, emotion, and love that arises from family interactions. This book is written in the form of eight vignettes, four from four different women (the mothers) and four from their daughters. This book concentrates on four Chinese American immigrant families that start this "club" for playing the traditional game of Mahjong. The story begins with June Woo who had just lost her mother to an aneurysm. She was chosen ...more
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Read in April, 2000
recommends it for:
Best Quality people
Ok, I admit it, I was obsessed with Amy Tan my first year of college. I learned all there was about her, read The Joy Luck Club, and finally I gave up hope.
As a freshmen, at Linfield College, I was astonished that Amy Tan could have possibly walked the same hallowed halls of Melrose, perhaps sat in the same offices in the English department, or read a book in Northrup's astro-turf room.
My daydreams were filled with her coming over to my dorm room to have tea and "talk literatur...more
As a freshmen, at Linfield College, I was astonished that Amy Tan could have possibly walked the same hallowed halls of Melrose, perhaps sat in the same offices in the English department, or read a book in Northrup's astro-turf room.
My daydreams were filled with her coming over to my dorm room to have tea and "talk literatur...more
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Read in January, 2000
recommended to Holly by:
My Mother
The Joy Luck Club is a tremendously well written book filled with passion, emotion, and love that arises from family interactions. This book is written in the form of eight vignettes, four from four different women (the mothers) and four from their daughters. This book concentrates on four Chinese American immigrant families that start this "club" for playing the traditional game of Mahjong. The story begins with June Woo who had just lost her mother to an aneurysm. She was chosen to r...more
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After I read The Joy Luck Club (summer required reading before sophomore English in high school), I started pestering my mom about her abandoned children in mainland China. I also declared that I would name my two kids after the aforementioned abandoned children: Spring Flower and Spring Rain.
My mom laughed in my face about the latter, saying no self-respecting Chinese would give their kids such pedestrian names, and would be mock-pissed about the former.
The truth is that The Joy Luck Cl...more
My mom laughed in my face about the latter, saying no self-respecting Chinese would give their kids such pedestrian names, and would be mock-pissed about the former.
The truth is that The Joy Luck Cl...more
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Read in March, 2008
recommended to Kristin by:
Rikki
I truly enjoyed Amy Tan's style of writing (this is the first book of hers that I've read). She has a way of saying things that evokes so much emotion and I truly admire that about her as a storyteller. I especially love how in blending the story of the Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters that she makes you feel as if you are a part of these women's lives and their culture and she draws you into their circle and into their individual psyches. I really understood and identified w...more
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Read in April, 2007
My mom really wanted me to read this book, mainly because of it's emphasis on the classic mother-daughter relationship. But I saw it more as a reflection on the mother's life before her child and how it sort of affected how she raised her daughter later on. I never really saw the daughter (with the exception of June) learn about their mother and hold a new understanding of her. The most the other girls caught was a sort of toleration of their mother.
Amy Tan is one of those writers who draws ...more
Amy Tan is one of those writers who draws ...more
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Read in September, 2005
I quite liked this, though not as much as the other work of Tan's that I've read (The Bonesetter's Daughter). Both of them deal with very similar themes - cultural identity, displacement, the problems facing the first generation children of immigrants, the problems of those immigrants themselves, how to hold onto your own culture in a vastly different land.
However, I felt as if The Joy Luck Club was a less powerful novel for me. I think that was not because Tan addressed those ...more
However, I felt as if The Joy Luck Club was a less powerful novel for me. I think that was not because Tan addressed those ...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in March, 2008
Amy Tan's novel tells a story about four female Chinese immigrants that came to America. It is written in the perspective of these four women and their four daughters. It is divided into four sections and in each section there are 4 chapters. Each chapter describes a character's experience during a time in America. While in America these character experience many difficulties and some discrimination. It described the relationship that these Chinese women had which weren't so great because they w...more
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Read in July, 2008
I have seen this on best books lists for a long time now and I finally got around to reading it. It is fabulous. The Joy Luck Club is a collection of reminiscences (about their life in China pre-war) of four Chinese immigrant women and stories from their American-born daughters about the relationship they do or don't have with their mothers and their chinese heritage. The vignettes are beautifully written and encapsulate perfectly a different culture and time that whisked me tantalizingly away f...more
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Title:
The Joy Luck Club
Author:
Tan, Amy
Publisher:
Ivy Books
Format:
Paperback (Cleaning Challenge)
BCID:
http://www.bookcrossing.com/jo...
No. of pages:
332
First sentence:
The old woman remembered a swan she had bought many years ago in Shanghai for a foolish sum.
This book was sent to my by the very generous hetku77 as part of chirel's Cleaning Challenge. I had wishlisted it after reading a description/revi...more
The Joy Luck Club
Author:
Tan, Amy
Publisher:
Ivy Books
Format:
Paperback (Cleaning Challenge)
BCID:
http://www.bookcrossing.com/jo...
No. of pages:
332
First sentence:
The old woman remembered a swan she had bought many years ago in Shanghai for a foolish sum.
This book was sent to my by the very generous hetku77 as part of chirel's Cleaning Challenge. I had wishlisted it after reading a description/revi...more
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2 comments
Read in August, 2008
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Read in October, 2007
recommends it for:
Anyone
I thought that this book was really good. The way that it had shown the stories of the moms and daughters made me want to read more. This book kind of reminds me of Maxine Hong Kingston's "Woman Warrior" because of the chapters splitting into different point of views. The different stories of the 2 generations kept me interested. The beginning stories of Jing-Mei's Mother and herself were most appealing to me because it has the quote that stuck out to me the most out of the whole b...more
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ok i admit that i saw the movie before i read the book.That should have never been done!
After reading this book i felt better about myself.Being born to a tibetan father and a chinese mother(how did that happen?) in India i had no problems with my identity because i belonged to a small community.But lately,okay couple of years ago, friends and relatives alike started confusing my identity.I was never messed up.I know who i am but others would confuse it.So this book is pretty much about the sa...more
After reading this book i felt better about myself.Being born to a tibetan father and a chinese mother(how did that happen?) in India i had no problems with my identity because i belonged to a small community.But lately,okay couple of years ago, friends and relatives alike started confusing my identity.I was never messed up.I know who i am but others would confuse it.So this book is pretty much about the sa...more
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Read in January, 1998
I love this book! As a first generation child in this country (my parents immigrated from Vietnam), I could really relate to the girls in the story. I was the girl who played piano, always being forced to practice. Although I loved music and was a talented pianist, I quit because I couldn't deal with the pressure anymore. It wasn't for my enjoyment, it was to please my parents (or at least that's what it seemed like). I think we all have ways of dealing with the pressures of childhood.
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Read in April, 2004
I watched the movie before I read the book, which made for an interesting reading experience. I cried my way through the movie but only started crying during the last few pages of the book. The story has been criticized as being untrue to the experience of growing up Chinese American. As one myself, I can see where she changed things to further a point in the story or to create a deeper emotional feeling. However, I can sympathize with the four women who recount their experiences growing up an A...more
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Read in February, 2007
I took an Asian History class in college and loved it. The Chinese culture has a way of drawing you in. Or maybe it wasn’t really Chinese culture; I wouldn’t know — maybe I can only see my American perception of Chinese culture.
Whatever it was — culture or only a facsimile of it — reading The Joy Luck Club drew me almost instantly. The book is written with prose and descriptions fitting of the characters — beautiful and lyrical but with hidden sorrows and bitterness. The plot (wa...more
Whatever it was — culture or only a facsimile of it — reading The Joy Luck Club drew me almost instantly. The book is written with prose and descriptions fitting of the characters — beautiful and lyrical but with hidden sorrows and bitterness. The plot (wa...more
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Read in June, 2008
This is one of those modern classics I never got around to reading until now. I preferred it to "Saving Fish From Drowning" though they both have their touching, sad, and darkly comic moments. I expected the plot to focus more on the club's actual meetings, but each chapter represents a new story about either a mother or daughter member's experience, either many years ago in China, or in the recent past as a Chinese-American immigrant in San Francisco (interestingly, the other Chinese-...more
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