The Joy Luck Club is set in 1980's San Francisco and China during the 1930's and 1940's. When the novel begins Jing Mae-Woo's mother, Suyuan Woo, has passed away and Jing Mae's father asks if she would like to take her mother's place as a member of the Joy Luck Club. It's a club her mother and three friends started in 1949 when they were young Chinese immigrant women recently arrived in America. Every week the four would meet at each other's homes, bring food, sit down to a game of Mahjong and tell each other stories about their lives in China, the hopes for their children and their fears as well.
Fast forward to the 1980's and these women are now in their sixties and their daughters are in their 30's. The lives of the four daughters have hit a rough patch, each in a different way. The mothers are worried and feel their daughters have become too American and have forgotten what they have tried to teach them about Chinese culture and tradition. How are their daughters going to navigate the world if they don't know what their mothers have been through? It's a universal regret. We often don't ask our parents about their lives when they were young and when they are gone we wish we could.
But in the Joy Luck Club we hear the mothers' stories and for me the story that stood out was that of An-mei Hsu and her daughter Rose Hsu Jordan. When An-mei Hsu was a young girl in China her mother, who was forced into the life of a concubine, committed suicide. Rose Hsu Jordan is also trapped in a bad marriage to a husband who does not respect her and who is not faithful. Rose is afraid to leave him and her mother An-mei Hsu says:
"I know this, because I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people’s misery, to eat my own bitterness. And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was born a girl .... That was what people did back then. They had no choice. They could not speak up. They could not run away. That was their fate. But now they can do something else"
I also liked the story of Suyuan Woo and her twin baby daughters that she was forced to leave behind in China when the Japanese invaded. As in the movie this story has a very touching ending forty years later.
But the two remaining mothers, Ying-Ying St Clair and Lindo Jong are more problematic as role models. Not every mother is a fount of wisdom and sometimes you have to unlearn from your parents as well. So I am glad I read The Joy Luck Club. It's one of those books that new readers will be discovering fifty years from now and not many novels have that distinction.
I liked this book when I read it in 2004, Kathy. I also liked the film. I think I would enjoy rereading it. I have also read The Opposite of Fate, which is sort of a memoir but not. And I have The Bonesetter's Daughter on my TBR.
ReplyDeleteVery nice review, as usual.
Thanks Tracy, I did see a documentary about Amy Tan's life which included her mother's life and I can see why she was inspired to write The Joy Luck. I must read more of Tan because she writes very well and has important things to say about life.
ReplyDeleteI first picked up The Joy Luck Club in a bookstore in 1989. Even bought the hardcover first edition, brought it home and put it on the shelf. And it sat there for decades because every time I picked it up, it didn't appeal to me. Well, I finally read it in 2015 - and I understand what all the hoopla is about. This is a brilliantly constructed novel and it's a powerful one. It's easy to understand why it made Amy Tan a star.
ReplyDeleteHi Sam, I liked this book too and a friend has told me that The Kitchen God's Wife in which Amy Tan tells her own mother's story is equally good so I am going to put that on my list. Another book set in China that is one of my favorites is The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. It's not read as much anymore but recently after a span of decades I picked the novel up again and I loved it just as much as I did when I was in high school.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I don't think I've ever read The Good Earth but sounds like it's aged well, so I'll have to finally take a look at it. I think I have a copy of The Kitchen God's Wife somewhere around, but I've done quite a bit of purging in the last three or four years (literally a few hundred books out the door), so it's hard for me to be sure. I'll see if I can turn that one up, too.
DeleteI think you will like The Good Earth and I also really liked the movie as well with Paul Muni and Louise Rainer. Today they would rightly cast Asian actors but both Muni and Rainer did an excellent job and well worth the watch.
ReplyDeleteYeah the way you describe it - it sounds very good. And I need to read the novel as well. I liked the movie back then ... and would like to watch it again sometime. I like how it talks about the two generations and how the Chinese moms' lives were different but also sometimes had similar problems as their daughters. It's interesting to hear about their relationships. And I think we all can relate to it in some way.
ReplyDeleteHi Susan, I liled the movie too and the ending was at first sad but then so sweet when Jing Mae meets her older sisters who her mother had to leave in China. I hear that another novel by Amy Tan is also very good The Kitchen God's Wife.
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