Amy Tan's very successful first novel was a national best-seller, a finalist for the National Book Award, and was made into a movie. It is a novel about four Chinese mothers who came to America during World War II, and their four Chinese/American daughters. The mothers quietly hold on to their past, their culture, and it's traditions, while adapting to their American life. They try to pass the essence of what is most important about their old culture on to their daughters, who, being born in America, are only interrested in American culture and lifestyles. They scoff at their mothers for acting too Chinese.

All eight characters, four mothers, four daughters, have a narrative in the story. It's a compelling story of mothers and daughters, the power of maternal love, and youth's struggle to establish independence, to find their own way. Mothers may be harder on their daughters than on their sons because they have already made the mistakes, and they know the pitfalls that await their daughters.

What was most enjoyable for me in the novel was the stories of the mothers, their past lives in China, from little girrls to adulthood, before they came to America. It's the story of their struggles with their own mothers, and how the impact of culture, traditions, and World War II shaped their lives.

I struggled somewhat with the structure of the novel. You have eight different narratives spread over four families, two countries, and a half century. Tying that all together, along with the secondary characters, was daunting at times. I read the book and listened to the audiobook at the same time. The accents and intonations of the narrator was a big plus.

4 solid stars.

What a lovely, bittersweet novel about mothers and daughters.

Somehow I had missed reading this bestselling book when it was first published, but I think it was actually more meaningful for me to read it later in life, after I had lost my mother to cancer. There were so many passages in the book that resonated with me that I used more than a dozen post-its to mark pages. Highly recommended.

I loved this beautifully written story about four Chinese immigrant mothers and their four Chinese-American daughters.

Jing-Mei is my favorite of the characters in this book. hows no interest in being anything else but herself. To me, she showed wisdom and strength of character, declining to shape her life into the life of a prodigy. This wasn't Jing-Mei's ambition -- more like, the ambition of her mother.

Altogether, author Amy Tan's wisdom and compassion shine through every page. Strongly recommended, powerful fiction; especially for women and all first-generation Americans.

Mothers and their daughters, difficult bonds, different generations, different cultures, brought together in this novel.

Four Chinese mothers and their four respective daughters tell stories about their lives, their weaknesses, and how they view each other. What is was like to grow up and it's wonderful to appreciate the different perspectives and strong stories that are portrayed.

I really wanted to love this book, it just felt choppy. I felt that the stories pulled the story apart, so it read more like a book of short stories (not a fan!) and I had a hard time reminding myself who went with whom. It was difficult to remember that these stories tied together, as most of them felt like they could've been stand alone stories of hardship. There were moments of triumph and moments where I wanted to hug these characters, ultimately, didn't fall as hard as I wanted to.

Oh wow, I've been thinking about this review for a while now and it's gotten to the point where I just have to write something, anything!

I really loved this book. It was a buddy read with my friend Carolyn, and it was a great choice for that as there is a lot to discuss and it's very interesting to see what stands out to someone else and why. I had actually read this before, but I only remembered the "lost babies". I had thought that was a revelation from the end of the novel, but it is mentioned right at the beginning, though followed up again later. The pleasing thing about this memory lapse was that so much of the book did feel new to me. When I first read it I found the stories of the mothers, and their lives in China, far more interesting, whereas this time I found the daughters in America just as compelling, though in different ways. With the mothers, I am learning about a country that I am not that familiar with, which is of course fascinating, but I ended up find the daughters trials and perspectives just as valuable.

I loved seeing the ways the mothers saw their daughters and vice versa, the things they understood and the things they missed. Each character's story felt vital and completely captivated me, even Waverly, who I disliked when she appeared in the stories of the other woman, proved to be an interesting character to follow.

The book comes in at under 300 pages but so much happens in it that it's quite incredible really. I had mean to read it just a chapter or two a day but I ended up with a free afternoon and spent the entire time completely caught up in what was happening, finishing the book before I'd even realised it! I was so pleased to reach Jing-Mei Woo's final chapter and read everything that took place in it. I have been reminded of just how much I enjoy Amy Tan's writing and will be seeking out more of her books.

I gave The Joy Luck Club two stars, but that ranking is based solely on my personal enjoyment of the novel. I feel, quite honestly, that I do not have any business judging the quality of Amy Tan's most famous work.

I am a white, bearded, slightly overweight, off-kilter, stay-at-home Dad/author who teaches part time at a Canadian university and full time at home. I love dark and violent American literature. I love speculative fiction. I love Aubrey/Maturin. I love Shakespeare. I love Keats and Byron and Blake. I love the Lost Generation.

What I know of China comes from indoctrinated Cold War disdain, my Marxist world view, martial arts movies, a few trips to Epcot center, my love for Asian cuisine, M*A*S*H*, bad television documentaries, and the contradictions that adhere to that bizarre list (oops! I almost forgot Big Trouble in Little China). So I recognize that I see The Joy Luck Club though a massive filter. There are countless removes between me and those beautiful ladies doing their "tiger-mom" bit between games of Mah-Jong and good eats.

I appreciated the window into an experience that I wouldn't otherwise have in my world; I sympathized with their stories and struggles; I pulled for their happiness and that of their daughters; I kept reading dutifully. But I never really felt myself understanding any of these women despite my desire to do so.

My two stars are my failure rather than Tan's. She did her job well. It just wasn't my pot of green tea. I wish it were.

The phases of life in which I've tried to/read "The Joy Luck Club": a 29 year mini reflection.

I have tried and actually read Amy Tan's masterpiece several times in my life, as far back as I can remember.

Early 1990s:

Being an abnormally precocious kid, I had begged one of my aunts to buy me this book for my birthday.

The now iconic film adaptation had been everywhere on TV ads as a must see film event, and this little boy from Florida wanted to know what all the fuss was about. But when I tried to read this novel at 10, naturally I did lose interest- at that time, reading this was way over my head.

Early 2000s:

As an undergraduate student, I took a survey course in Fiction. It was called "Interpretation of Fiction", and they were one of the first English professors I had ever taken that was not a white woman.

I was lucky enough to have had one black woman as a high school English teacher, but all my teachers had been white women, beginning in middle school.

This professor opened up my eyes and showed me the possibilities of what literature looked like, of how culturally relevant teaching mattered. She taught my class the chapters "Two Kinds" and "Rules of the Game" which changed my life. Being a man of color, I now read stories about women who struggled about their identities, their heritage, and their lives. What it meant to be caught in the middle of two worlds, two cultures.

I loved the banter between Waverly and June, of Auntie Suyuan and Auntie Lindo, watched the film version, and loved it. I saw myself represented on screen, and in text.

2005-2010:

I read "The Joy Luck Club" a couple of times during those five years. I must admit, and I've written this in past reviews I was influenced by readers out there who told me that they found Amy Tan's writing cliched, bothersome, and grating. It's as if all she did was show, tell, show and then be saccharine in her delivery.

I believed these people. I wanted to read what they felt was "good literature" and not cliched literature.

I later reflected that the writers they had most disdain towards were the big female writers of color such as Julia Alvarez, Isabel Allende, Sandra Cisneros, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, and Amy Tan. Jhumpa Lahiri was a favorite because according to some folks, she wrote like Alice Munro. Toni Morrison divided many.

Some thought Professor Morrison wrote too sloppily, or too abstractly. I had to hide my love of these women writers and bit my tongue and agreed- yes, Tan, Angelou, Allende, Alvarez and Cisneros were all cliched. Lahiri polished and amazing, Morrison, too polarizing.

2020s:

I have reread The Joy Luck Club as recently as now, May 2022.

I cannot even begin to write how wonderful and inspiring this novel is. I found myself immersed in the stories of these women that they now are in my brain, and I feel inspired once again to maybe start writing creatively again.

They are stories about love and family, the love between mothers and their daughters; of the pangs of assimilation, the resignation and celebration of The American Dream, and of the pain and anguish of having secrets, and ghosts that bind one another.

I personally related to the vignettes concerning Rose Hsu Jordan and Lena St. Clair. Just like them, I had relationships where I did not stand up to people who put me down, but passively gave up my own voice which led to simmering tensions and resentment.

Yes, Harold Bloom might not have liked this novel, and many literary snobs out there might find Ms. Tan's prose to be too simple- but I did not. I found her truth to be rewarding to read, and something to savor.

She writes with such rich imagery and her structure of weaving back and forth using flashbacks to show the points of view of each mother and daughter is affecting, "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"(Tan 73).

This sentence, out of so many wonderful quotes stood out to me because "The Joy Luck Club" has existed in front of me all my life, but I took its power and beauty for granted many times.

A reader can change their mind, and right now my mind's changed and I think that this is one hell of a beautiful, lyrical and bittersweet novel that comforts and nourishes, "I wanted everything for you to be better, I wanted you to have the best circumstances, the best character. I didn't want you to regret anything" (Tan 265).

Catch up review #3

I read n  The Joy Luck Clubn for the first time many many years ago, when I was a teenager in high school. At the time, despite my shared background with the characters in the interconnected stories (the “Americanized” daughter of Chinese immigrant parents), I was too young to fully understand the significance of the book from a cultural perspective. Re-reading this book now, as an adult, is a completely different experience for me, in large part due to the insights that I’ve gained from the 4 decades I’ve spent (and continue to spend) navigating my cultural identity.

Consisting of 16 interconnected stories narrated alternately by 4 pairs of Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters, Amy Tan’s debut novel is a powerful exploration of the struggle between the mothers and daughters to relate to and understand each other amongst the cultural and generational disparities that define their relationships. As I mentioned earlier, reading n  The Joy Luck Clubn this time around felt very different from when I did so in my youth — in addition to picking up on nuances with language that I didn’t notice previously, most significant was the resonance I felt in the experiences of the various characters. Not only did I recognize aspects of myself in each of the daughters, I also recognized the struggles in each of their relationships with their mothers — relationships fraught with misunderstandings, communication issues, unspoken hurt and pain, defiant silences, etc., yet ultimately rooted in love and the unbreakable bonds of family. Each story had a familiar experience or feeling that I recognized and related to. In the story “Without Wood,” for example, I understood exactly where Rose was coming from when she kept hesitating time and time again to tell her mother An-Mei about her impending divorce because she was trying to avoid the criticism, judgment, and unwanted advice that was sure to follow her revelation (avoiding criticism from our mothers is pretty much a way of life for many Chinese daughters). The story “Two Kinds” brought tears to my eyes because I understood acutely the sense of failure that comes with not living up to my mother’s hope and expectations (not to mention the argument about obedience and the expectations of a Chinese daughter that Jing-Mei has with her mother Suyuan echoes ones I’ve had in the past with my mom). In the story “Rules of the Game,” I commiserated with Waverly when her attempt to rebuke and defy her mother leads to her getting the silent treatment (which is something I’ve experienced countless times growing up). These were just a few examples among many.

But it wasn’t just the daughters’ experiences that I related to — the stories told from the mothers’ perspectives were also profound in the way they provided clarity to some of the cultural circumstances that informed the mothers’ lives, which in turn, affected their behaviors toward their daughters. In these stories, I was able to recognize some of my own mother’s experiences as well as things she’s told me in the past that, at the time, I may not have understood the significance — these stories then, had the effect of helping me reflect and make better sense of things.

Aside from being able to resonate with the characters’ experiences and feelings on a personal level, I also appreciated coming across so many cultural references in the book that I grew up hearing about — a few examples: the Moon Lady story, the tale of Old Mr. Chou (I was also told the tale when I was a kid), the superstition about rice husbands (this was a huge one in my family), the historical details about China from some of the mothers’ stories, etc.

With all that said though, the biggest thing that sets this book apart from so many others about the Chinese-American experience is the writing. Tan writes in a way that, on the surface, appears simple and straightforward, but when you look deeper, there is a masterful complexity to it that, quite frankly, blows my mind. In my previous review of Tan’s novel n  The Kitchen God’s Wifen, I touched on how brilliantly she uses the mechanics of language to create nuance and meaning — this is certainly the case here as well. At the same time, Tan’s writing is also thoughtful, meticulous, and sincere — all qualities that, to me, are absolutely necessary when it comes to books (and stories) about cultural experiences.

I’m usually not a huge re-reader, especially nowadays when I have so many books I haven’t yet read that I actually want to read. But some books are worth taking the time to re-read — n  The Joy Luck Clubn is definitely one of them.

One of my favorite books, The Joy Luck Club taught me quite about about Asian culture. Amy Tan masterfully describes her characters. They all became real to me, some I loved and some I loved to hate. The power of women is so beautifully displayed. A mother's love lies at the crux of this story. They are flawed, these moms, but protective and sometimes provocative in their attempts to shore their daughters' success.

It's not fashionable to profess a liking for The Joy Luck Club. In both academic and literary circles, Tan has been maligned for her seeming misandry and racial self-loathing, raked across the coals for her largely negative portrayal of Asian/Asian American men and for marrying off all her Asian American female characters to white men. She's been dismissed for writing "chick lit," lightweight family melodrama laced with orientalist cliches. She's even been accused of being politically reactionary. As Asian American literature scholar Erin Ninh states in her academic text Ingratitude, The Joy Luck Club conveniently ignores "America's systemic racial and economic discrimination... [It] must be understood as part and parcel of [an] assimilationist obfuscation of power." And yet. I have a soft spot for this book. Because, damn it, Amy Tan was a pioneer, a groundbreaker. When I first read this novel at age 14 or so, it really spoke to me. It thrilled me that someone was finally writing down some difficult truths of Asian American mother-daughter relationships, exposing the hidden realities of my private life to the public eye. Waverly Jong's tragic story of chess-playing and mother-daughter psychological warfare: how could anyone not find it unforgettable? The scene where Lindo Jong poisons her daughter's mind against the mink coat she previously loved: doesn't it perfectly sum up the complicated love/hate dynamic between two damaged women, intelligent and yet conditioned by society to waste their intelligence scheming against each other?

Así es como se cura una herida: empieza a cerrarse sobre sí misma, a proteger lo que duele tanto y, una vez cerrada, ya no ves qué hay debajo, eso que provocaba el dolor.

I feel kind of cheated out what could have been a great story by a truly dreadful narration on audible. Some of the voices were totally over the top and sounded cartoonish and listening to this one became a annoying and I gave up 30% in to the book.

Audible can make or break a book unfortunately this one didnt work for me as its difficult to concentrate on the words when the narrator is using cartoonish voices or on some of the characters and because this is a story where there are many characters and many stories this can become quite tedious. However the great thing about audible is you can return the book if for whatever reason you are not enjoying the experience and I think this is works pretty well as every now and again I come across a narrator that just takes away from a book.

While I didn't enjoy the audio version I dont think I will invest in the hard copy format as I found the structure of the story confusing and while I like books that examine mother and daugher relationships and stories where American Immigrants families tell their stories, I did find the story skipped around too much and I was having difficulty connecting with the characters. Again this may be down to the audio version but I am not feeling the love so not going to invest any more time or cash on this one.