The Joy Luck Club

by Amy Tan

This bird, boasted the market vendor, was once a duck that stretched its neck in hopes of becoming a goose, and now look!—it is too beautiful to eat.

She will know my meaning, because I will give her this swan—a creature that became more than what was hoped for.”

And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind. Now the woman was old.

And she waited, year after year, for the day she could tell her daughter this in perfect American English.

And because of their gifts, my parents could not refuse their invitation to join the church. Nor could they ignore the old ladies’ practical advice to improve their English through Bible study class on Wednesday nights and, later, through choir practice on Saturday mornings.

And always, I would be amazed to find the hills against the burning sky had not been torn apart.

hong mu, which is so fine there’s no English word for it. The

But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. How much can you wish for a favorite warm coat that hangs in the closet of a house that burned down with your mother and father inside of it? How long can you see in your mind arms and legs hanging from telephone wires and starving dogs running down the streets with half-chewed hands dangling from their jaws? What was worse, we asked among ourselves, to sit and wait for our own deaths with proper somber faces? Or to choose our own happiness?

Each week we could forget past wrongs done to us. We weren’t allowed to think a bad thought. We feasted, we laughed, we played games, lost and won, we told the best stories. And each week, we could hope to be lucky. That hope was our only joy. And that’s how we came to call our little parties Joy Luck.”

I was responsible, no matter who did it.

Then again, it seemed my mother was always displeased with all her friends, with me, and even with my father. Something was always missing. Something always needed improving. Something was not in balance. This one or that had too much of one element, not enough of another.

The East is where things begin, my mother once told me, the direction from which the sun rises, where the wind comes from.

But I often heard stories of a ghost who tried to take children away, especially strong-willed little girls who were disobedient. Many times Popo said aloud to all who could hear that my brother and I had fallen out of the bowels of a stupid goose, two eggs that nobody wanted, not even good enough to crack over rice porridge.

Popo said he watched me for any signs of disrespect.

Auntie said our mother was so thoughtless she had fled north in a big hurry, without taking the dowry furniture from her marriage to my father, without bringing her ten pairs of silver chopsticks, without paying respect to my father’s grave and those of our ancestors.

Instead, the village matchmaker came to my family when I was just two years old.

No, it’s not true what some Chinese say about girl babies being worthless.

This was a place for cooks and servants. So I knew my standing.

What was happier than seeing everybody gobble down the shiny mushrooms and bamboo shoots I had helped to prepare that day?

I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind.

I would always remember my parents’ wishes, but I would never forget myself.

It meant I couldn’t divorce and I couldn’t ever remarry, even if Tyan-yu died. That red candle was supposed to seal me forever with my husband and his family, no excuses after-ward.

And I want to tell her this: We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.

So I thought of Amah only as someone for my comfort, the way you might think of a fan in the summer or a heater in the winter, a blessing you appreciate and love only when it is no longer there.

blooming on my sleeve, the burning of the Five Evils. But now that I am old, moving every year closer to the end of my life, I also feel closer to the beginning. And I remember everything that happened that day because it has happened many times in my life. The same innocence, trust, and restlessness, the wonder, fear, and loneliness. How I lost myself. I remember all these things. And tonight, on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, I also remember what I asked the Moon Lady so long ago. I wished to be found.

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Strongest wind cannot be seen.”

discovered that for the whole game one must gather invisible strengths and see the endgame before the game begins.

I also found out why I should never reveal “why” to others. A little knowledge withheld is a great advantage one should store for future use.

The Double Attack from the East and West Shores. Throwing Stones on the Drowning Man. The Sudden Meeting of the Clan. The Surprise from the Sleeping Guard. The Humble Servant Who Kills the King. Sand in the Eyes of Advancing Forces. A Double Killing Without Blood.

“Is shame you fall down nobody push you,” said my mother.

“Check,” I said, as the wind roared with laughter. The wind died down to little puffs, my own breath.

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You’re scaring that poor little girl and her maid.”

a way for her to correct the imbalances of life. It’s been there for over twenty years.

his brashness; the assuredness in which he asked for things and expected to get them; his opinionated manner; his angular face and lanky body; the thickness of his arms;

Ted was going to be in one of those professions where he would be judged by a different standard, by patients and other doctors who might not be as understanding as the Jordans were.

We were all blind with the newness of this experience: a Chinese family trying to act like a typical American family at the beach.

And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.

But sometimes the prodigy in me became impatient. “If you don’t hurry up and get me out of here, I’m disappearing for good,” it warned. “And then you’ll always be nothing.”

For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.

And even worse, I never asked her what frightened me the most: Why had she given up hope?

stop it?” asks my mother. And

the same way I adored Shoshana. His love was unequivocal.

it. He expected nothing from me; my mere existence was enough. And at the same time, he said that he had changed—for the better—because of me.

When a husband stops paying attention to the garden, he’s thinking of pulling up roots.

I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too? If I see someone has a suspicious nose, have I not smelled the same bad things?”

How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.”

Wu Tsing liked foreign things because foreigners had made him rich.

because she was a widow, she was worthless in many respects. She could not remarry.

The gold side leaps with its fierce heart. The black side stands still with cunning, hiding its gold between trees, seeing and not being seen, waiting patiently for things to come. I did not learn to use my black side until after the bad man left me. I became like the ladies of the lake. I threw

Saint took me to America, where I lived in houses smaller than the one in the country. I wore large American clothes. I did servant’s tasks. I learned the Western ways. I tried to speak with a thick tongue. I raised a daughter, watching her from another shore. I accepted her American ways.