Andrew Beck

Period 7 1/29/98

Mr.Luizzi

The novel The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan, is centered around a group of female Chinese immigrants. The book deals with the challenges that minorities must face while traveling to America and living in America. The plot involves a group of four Chinese women who have gathered weekly for forty years to play mah jong (a Chinese game using tiles) and boast about their children. When one of the women dies, it is the responsibility of her daughter to take her place. Yet in order to accomplish this she must learn about her mother's mystery as well as the stories behind the other women. While there isn't any real protagonist June Woo is the "heart" of the story. The novel consists of 16 short stories, two from each woman and two from their daughters, detailing their lives lives in China as well as their current lives in America. All the stories connect and reflect upon all that these women have accomplished to get to their present state.

The four mothers are Suyuan Woo (the woman who has died), An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong and Ying Ying St. Clair. Their daughters are Jing-mei "June" Woo ("main" character), Rose Hsu Jordan, Waverly Jong and Lena St. Clair. The novel begins with June reflecting upon when her mother was alive and soon begins to have doubts as to whether her mother really loves her. June begins to question all the things her mother had said to her and constantly turns these over in her head. One such example is when June recalls the argument she and her mother had about June dropping out of college and her being a failure. June begins to think that maybe the words her mother had spoken had meant something entirely different, yet now that her mother is dead she would never know the real truth. The book is largely focused on a mother-daughter relationship thus making the novel a very feminine book.

The stories each woman recounts, demonstrates how the caste system in China has women at the very bottom. Each story describes a different setting but the themes all relate. One is about a young girl who is forced to leave her family and go marry a foreign man a great distance away. She cannot dishonor her family and must become the "slave" of the mother in-law. Only through her conniving ways does she find away out. There is a strong honor and family code that is relayed in this novel. The relationships forged between mother and daughter are connected to the relationships between the mother and her mother and so on. In one particular story, a child is demoralized by a mean and old grandmother calling her own daughter a failure and a disgrace to the family. Some of the mothers are distant with their daughters because they do not understand the differences that are present when living in America as opposed to China. One mother wanted her daughter, Jing-Mei (June), to be the next Shirley Temple. When Waverly does not become a star the mother thinks of her daughter as a disgrace and the daughter resents that her mother is so greedy in only wanting her to be a national phenomenon for herself. These wounds never heal completely and the scars are reopened later in the novel when the daughters are grown women and the mothers are old degenerate grandmothers.