The Joy Luck Club is a great book. It tells the stories of four women who were born in China but were forced to leave due to various tragic circumstances, and their four daughters who were all born in America. The novel explores the cultural divide between the two generations of women and explores how national identity influences people's lives.

The daughters are all, to some degree, frustrated by their mothers' inability to shake off their anachronistic Chinese superstitious behavior (as their daughters think of it) and seeming reluctance to embrace the culture of their new home. The mothers despair at the willingness of their daughters to distance themselves from their heritage. Amy Tan writes all eight characters' viewpoints sympathetically and I never felt like I was being told which viewpoint was the 'correct' one. As with most things in life, it all comes down to the fact that there are pros and cons to any way of life, which is one of the reasons this life can be so hard to navigate.

The structure of this book is very clever, although it might go completely over your head if you're not at least passingly familiar with mahjong. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the game, the structure of mahjong is that four players have to play four hands of tiles each. The novel mimics this by having four larger sections, each divided into four smaller parts. Superficially, the book reads like a collection of interconnected short stories, rather than a cohesive novel, but the author interweaves these stories so adeptly that it all comes together by the end of the book

I found this book to be deeply moving and I even had tears in my eyes at one point. This was my first Amy Tan novel but I will definitely be reading more of her work in future.

P.S. - Gwendoline Yeo does an absolutely fantastic job reading the audiobook version. She switches between different voices and accents fluidly and seemingly effortlessly... and there are a lot of different voices in this book.

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. Through her mother's friends An-Mei, Lindo and Ying-Ying, Jing-Mei comes to learn about her mother's life story and secrets she never told. Jing-Mei's journey of discovery weaves in and out of the story of the other three women and their daughters, An-Mei and Rose, Lindo and Waverly, Ying-Ying and Lena. The three "aunties" who sit at the other corners of the mah-jongg table bemoan the breakdown in communication with their American-raised daughters, who seem to have all misplaced their Chinese identity. Lena and Rose are lost souls in disintegrating marriages. Waverly does seem to want to reclaim some of her Chinese culture, but can't get over old anger and misunderstandings. Only Jing-mei is ultimately able to transcend the generational and cultural gap between the mothers and daughters. She sheds her American name, June, and becomes Jing-Mei at the beginning of the book when she is first invited to take her mother's place in the Joy Luck Club. She is something of an ambassador between the younger American-born generation and her mother's friends. Still, she is unable to understand the message An-Mei, Lindo and Ying-Ying are trying to communicate to her, until she finally asks her father to tell her about her mother. When Jing-Mei's father tells her what her Chinese name means, she finally grasps her mother's history and legacy.

"The Joy Luck Club" is a beautifully written book, but it's more than that. I was swept up in the language at times, but I never lost sight of the underlying story - four women struggling to leave their reluctant daughters their "life's importance." Although it's a story that focuses heavily on the influence of Chinese culture on mother-daughter relationships, any woman can relate to its lovely and powerful message.

آمي تان تكتب عن الاختلاف بين الثقافات وبين الأجيال
عن الهجرة وصعوبات التكيف مع المجتمعات الجديدة
ومشكلة الهوية واختلاف الأفكار والمعتقدات بالنسبة للجيل الثاني من الأبناء
العلاقة بين أربع أمهات وبناتهم .. أربع نساء من الصين هاجروا إلى أمريكا
تحكي كل أم عن حياتها وعن المعتقدات الصينية والعادات والتقاليد المقيدة للمرأة
وتحكي البنات عن الحيرة ما بين الانتماء للأصل وبين النشأة وطريقة الحياة الأمريكية
حكايات ممتعة بأسلوب جميل وخاصةً أحاديث الأمهات وما يملكنه من قوة وذكاء في التعامل

Lately, I’ve had to write boring reviews — I just don’t have the inspiration to come up with something fun.

In *The Joy Luck Club*, Amy Tan unfolds the intricate world of mothers and daughters caught between two cultures – traditional Chinese heritage and American reality. The novel presents eight female voices – four Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters – who share their stories, struggles, and aspirations. A central conflict in the novel is the generational divide and the search for cultural identity.

The mothers – immigrants from China – carry with them painful memories, trauma, and wisdom forged through suffering. For them, family, honor, and sacrifice are core values. They try to pass these values on to their daughters but are often met with misunderstanding. The daughters, born and raised in America, are influenced by Western culture – they seek independence, self-fulfillment, and freedom of choice.

One of the most striking examples of this clash is the story of Jing-Mei (June) Woo, who must take her deceased mother’s place in the *Joy Luck Club*. She does not fully understand her mother’s cultural legacy, but as the novel progresses, she begins to realize the depth of her mother’s sacrifices. Her journey to China at the end of the novel symbolizes a return to her roots and the achievement of a balance between the two cultures.

Amy Tan uses symbolism – food, language, and family stories – to show how cultural identity is passed down not through lessons, but through memories, gestures, and deep emotion. The mothers speak with accents, but their words carry wisdom, and their silence carries pain. The daughters often struggle to “translate” their emotions into their parents’ language, but through storytelling, they discover the true meaning of belonging.

The novel raises the question: what does it mean to belong to two cultures? Tan doesn’t offer a definitive answer but shows that cultural identity is complex and deeply personal. It is neither fully Chinese nor fully American – it is something unique, shaped by experience, love, and intergenerational understanding.

In conclusion, *The Joy Luck Club* is not only a novel about the immigrant experience, but also a deeply human story about how we learn to listen, to remember the past, and to find ourselves in the stories of those closest to us. Amy Tan reminds us that cultural identity is not a given – it is a journey.





Pre_read

My first encounter with a Chinese author and Chinese characters...

The Joy Luck Club is:

...to hold parties and pretend each week had become the new year. Each week we could also forget the 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 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.

A mahjong table. Four positions to fill. The North, West, East and South. A game where the winner takes all, and the loser takes leftovers. Everyone's a winner. But there's a death, and the filling in by a daughter.

Four daughters. Four mothers. Eight lives. Eight stories to share. All connected by the Joy Luck Club.

The Joy Luck Club is a beautifully written poignant tale of Chinese women trying to fit in in America. It's highly inspirational, and I think everyone, even non-Chinese could use a little Feng Sui in their lives, in the form of The Joy Luck Club. Thus highly recommended!

The book is mostly depressing, but though this is fiction, one couldn't help but feel the women's despairs and pains. The book feels real, not just to the touch, but to the soul as well.

Heartwarming, and heart-wrenching. Bitter and sweet. The Joy Luck Club is a tale to be devoured and enjoyed by mothers and daughters. (but sons could enjoy this as well). And in the end, one could not help but be touched in the heart.

WARNING: For non-Chinese readers, who have no background with Chinese names, prepare a pen to jot notes, because a particular trouble of mine was I quite mixing the women up and couldn't tell who from who. My excuse, I am not Chinese. LOL! :)

4,5/5

Sorpresa. Creo que esta es la palabra que mejor podría definir mi experiencia lectora con esta obra de la que no esperaba nada y que me ha aportado tanto. Amy Tan publicó en 1989 “El club de la buena estrella” que más tarde fue adaptada al cine en una película bastante fiel pero que bajo mi punto de vista elimina algunas escenas o singularidades del libro que son clave.

Sorprende esa estructura tan diferente en la que tenemos fragmentos cortos en modo de pequeños relatos de las vidas de nuestras ocho protagonistas: cuatro madres chinas y sus hijas estadounidenses. Entre estas relaciones maternofiliales que siempre son mi punto débil, hay una enorme división cultural, un exagerado abismo abierto entre ellas y ante esa escasa capacidad de demostrar sentimientos y contar sus vivencias. Pero todas estas barreras se enfrentan a un vínculo ancestral, fuerte e irrompible basado en el amor.

Sorprende la maravillosa capacidad de Amy para crear un ambiente mágico que se apoya en las leyendas chinas más tradicionales y juntarlo con el drama y la tragedia dotando de esta historia, a la vez, de un realismo cotidiano. La emoción esta a flor de piel, los saltos en el tiempo y entre sus protagonistas es excepcional, hacen de esta una lectura mucho más especial e incluso te dan la opción de releer en un futuro la historia de otra manera.

Sorprende que al finalizar el libro sientas que necesitas mucho más de estas mujeres. Ojalá fuera uno de esos libros de mil páginas para seguir disfrutando de sus historias, sobre todo de esas madres luchadoras, de sus relaciones, sus fracasos, sus miedos, las supersticiones que las acompañan y ese embrujo tan especial del que cuesta desprenderse que te saca múltiples sonrisas.

Sorprende, para concluir y para repetir una vez más esta palabra que tan presente está en este escrito, que hoy en día y después de tantas y tantas lecturas siga emocionándome tras descubrir una nueva literatura, en este caso la china, mucho más sencilla y menos sensible de lo que pensaba (pensando que seguiría el estilo de la japonesa) pero no por ello con menos calidad. Brutal, emotiva y única.

The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan

The Joy Luck Club is a 1989 novel written by Amy Tan. It focuses on four Chinese American immigrant families in San Francisco who start a club known as The Joy Luck Club, playing the Chinese game of Mahjong for money while feasting on a variety of foods.

The book is structured somewhat like a Mahjong game, with four parts divided into four sections to create sixteen chapters.

The three mothers and four daughters (one mother, Suyuan Woo, dies before the novel opens). Stories about their lives in the form of vignettes. Each part is preceded by a parable relating to the game.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز سی و یکم ماه آگوست سال1996میلادی

عنوان: محفل شادمانی؛ نویسنده: امی تان (تن)؛ مترجم: مریم بیات؛ تهران، نشر البرز، سال1373؛ در شانزده و383ص؛ موضوع: داستان چینی های آمریکا مادران و دختران از نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م

عنوان اصلی کتاب «باشگاه جوی لاک»، است، در «ایران» با عنوان «محفل شادمانی»، با ترجمه ی سرکار خانم «مریم بیات»، در نشر البرز، لباس نشر بر تن پوشیده است؛ این داستان، توسط خانم «امی تان (تن)»، در سال1989میلادی، نگاشته شده است؛ داستان چهار خانواده ی مهاجر «چینی تبار آمریکایی»، در شهر «سانفرانسیکو» است، که یک باشگاه، به نام «شادی خوش شانسی (جوی لاک)»، بنیان مینهند؛ از این داستان، فیلمی نیز به کارگردانی «وین وانگ»، کارگردان «هنگ کنگی تبار مقیم آمریکا»، ساخته شده است؛ داستان طی یک سری «فلش بک»، از چهار زن جوان «چینی» میگوید، که در «آمریکا» به دنیا آمده اند، اما مادران آنها، در «چین» زاده شده اند، آنها به جستجوی بگذشته ی خویش، دلمشغول هستند؛ همین جستجوها، به آنها یاری میکند، تا مشکل رابطه ی مادر و دختری خود را، بهتر دریابند....؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 07/11/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 13/09/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

I really enjoyed The Valley of Amazement and I was looking forward to reading this. I really like Amy Tan's writing style and I felt really invested in all the character's stories. I was honestly disappointed when the book ended. I do wish we could have spent more time with the characters. It felt like we spent more time on some of the mother's back stories versus the others. I also feel like I related to the mothers more than the daughters, which seems contrary to a lot of people's experience with the book. It might just be because lately I've been considering what it means to be known by another person etc etc and so that just stood out to me while reading. Anyways definitely enjoyed this one.

Quite a few years ago, my mum told my kid sis (who was born eleven years and three months after me): "My immortality was assured after your birth."

Mystified, my sister asked: "Why?"

Mum said: "When a woman gives birth to a daughter, she gives birth to her own womb, ensuring the continuity of life. Therefore, a daughter is called atmaja ('self-born')."

This weird yet beautiful concept, especially relevant in a matrilineal society like ours, was in my mind throughout when I was reading this novel about mothers and daughters.

Chinese society is not matrilineal. But unlike the West, where the nucleus family rules the roost and patriarchy is the order of the day, mothers and daughters do share a bond across generations. In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan explores this bond, and how it weakens and breaks in the melting pot of the United States of America.

Suyuan Woo, wife of a Chinese military officer in Kweilin at the time of the Japanese invasion of China during the Second World War, invents the "Joy Luck Club" to keep her mind off the impending disaster. Four women would join to play mah jong, party with whatever food was available, and talk into the night, trading stories. She continues this after she immigrates to America, after facing unspeakable personal tragedies.

When Suyuan dies, her daughter Jing Mei "June" Woo is expected to carry on this tradition, with her mother's friends An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-Ying St. Clair - women from various walks of life, bound together only by memories of a distant Chinese past and their complicated relationship with their daughters. During one of these meetings, Jing Mei comes to know of two daughters her mother was forced to abandon in China: her twin half-sisters. Her mother had spent her whole life trying to locate them; but when they are finally found, she is no more. Now Jing Mei has to take up the mission.

Against this backdrop, the story of four mothers (Suyuan Woo, An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-Ying St. Clair) and four daughters (Jing-Mei Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Waverly Jong and Lena St. Clair) are narrated by the characters themselves - the narration switching between Imperial China before the war and 80's USA. These disjointed narratives give a kaleidoscopic feel to the story, and is extremely effective in conveying the wonderment and alienation of an expatriate from an ancient land in a country without a past. It is also an exploration of how mothers and daughters get estranged, but still remained joined together by an invisible thread.

Truly, the womb marches on...

I'm generally very wary of books about The Chinese-American Experience, because--well, names like Spring Lotus and Moon Blossom drive me nuts. So many books about Chinese culture flaunt their Chineseness, usually at the expense of other things that make a book good, like memorable characters and careful writing.

But I didn't hate _The Joy Luck Club_. The book as a whole is a collection of interlinked short stories, and it mostly works. Sure, some of the stories ("Two Kinds") have been anthologized to death, that's what we associate the book with. But Tan's writing, especially in the other stories that have been overlooked, is powerful, and the storylines and and characters are complex.

A pesar de que me esperaba algo totalmente distinto, la narración y las voces de los personajes me cautivaron por completo.
No tengo dudas de que las madres e hijas de esta historia se van a quedar conmigo por mucho tiempo.

The Joy Luck Club was an interesting book and certainly better than I first expected. It tells the story of four mothers and their respective daughters through different timelines and locations (USA and sometimes China). It explored different aspects of mother/daughter relationships and even characters (especially the daughters) learned more about their mothers meanwhile which impacted their character development.

I loved how Amy Tan portrayed those relationships, each was unique which its special hardships and difficulties but also joys and humor. I found it very realistic and sometimes relatable in a way. The daughters and their mothers are within the same society, so we also saw their interactions with each other and that was interesting by itself. I surely preferred some daughters over others but all were flawed and well-written.

It's actually one of the few audiobooks I'd recommend reading instead of listening to the audio. I got confused sometimes remembering who's who since all of the characters were told in the same voice and sometimes I missed the transition. Like I mentioned before, we had several timelines and multiple characters and I'm not gonna lie, I couldn't distinguish who's whom sometimes until I was well into the book. However, if you're like me, prefer to listen to fiction as audio and read other genres, then I think it's still worth a try because I enjoyed it anyhow. Something I should mention is that there are two editions of the audiobook, one narrated by the author (but uncomplete, at least on overdrive) and another read by Gwendoline Yeo. The second is your one. I compared the two narrations and honestly, Yeo's was better.