The Joy Luck Club

Have you been, or will you ever be, a confused teenager? Do you have a mother? Do you totally not understand her, ever? Do you love her? Do you sometimes hate her? Do you have dreams? Wishes? Desires? Do you feel like you’re always falling short of your parents’ expectations? Do you feel like you know what’s wrong in your life but you just can’t fix it?

Structure Structure: Like a mahjong game, the novel includes four parts divided into four sections for a total of sixteen chapters. Each part begins with a short parable. Parable: a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, which illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles.

Three mothers and four daughters share stories about their lives in the form of vignettes. Vignette: a short impressionistic scene that focuses on one moment or character and gives a strong impression about that character, an idea, setting, and/or object. It's a short, descriptive passage that's more about evoking meaning through imagery than it is about plot.

Setting Time: 1920s-1980s Place: China, San Francisco (Chinatown)

Characters Mothers Daughters Suyuan Woo An-Mei Hsu Lindo Jong Ying-Ying “Betty” St. Clair Jing-Mei “June” Woo Rose Hsu Jordan Waverly Jong Lena St. Clair

Themes The challenges of cultural translation The power of storytelling The problem of immigrant identity Visions of America Control or lack of control over one’s destiny Sexism and gender roles Sacrifices for love

Amy Tan (1952- ) Born in Oakland, CA Her father and brother both died of brain tumors within eight months of each other. Amy learned about her mother's former marriage to an abusive man in China, of their four children and how her mother was forced to leave her children from a previous marriage behind in Shanghai. Joy Luck Club published in 1989

"Amy Tan's special accomplishment in this novel is not her ability to show us how mothers and daughters hurt each other, but how they love and ultimately forgive each other.“—Nancy Willard