This story demonstrates that no matter what your cultural background may be, we all experience the same things; death, family betrayal, disowning and so forth. This story takes the pain, hardships and struggles they endured and tells the story from each woman's point of view. It's poignant, saddening, joyful and painful all rolled up into one story that should be read.

This is a book about mother-daughter relationships, generation gap, immigration and child abuse. The stories of eight women are woven together, four mothers and four daughters. The story starts off with the death of one of the mothers. Her daughter takes her place in the ‘Joy Luck Club’, a mahjong club and from here starts the exploration of the pasts of all the mothers and daughters.

I really could not keep the women apart, especially the mothers. They all sound the same, blather on about filial obedience and superstitions and I really could not summon up any kind of empathy or sympathy for the mothers. I had to remind myself that they too had been abused, both by their families and circumstances of war, to retain the interest to read on. The stories of the mothers are fascinating as they struggle under difficult circumstances to make a life for themselves.

The child abuse depicted in this book is horrifying. Children are forced into hobbies, forced into being responsible for their siblings, kicked into submission, married off as children, forced to be child prodigies, shown off as trophies, and in short, get a raw deal from their mothers. In turn, they repay with distrust and distance, quite naturally. I have a problem with the author depicting this as a different kind of ‘love’. It’s not love, it’s abuse. There is no grey area here. The daughters all end up in bad marriages because of their inability to take control of their lives, which should be directly linked to the failure of the mothers to teach them how to communicate and be independent, but is not shown in the book. This is enabling child abuse.

Finding fault with their daughters seems to be a hobby with these women, even when they are grown up and are none of their concern. The right way to behave when someone invites you to their home is to accept graciously and behave properly, not point out the shortcomings of their home. They play mind games with their pre-teen daughters and call it ‘love’. For example, there is this woman who keeps discrediting her daughter’s amazing chess skills by saying it’s not her but some winds (?!!!). So when the daughter yells at her to stop doing that, she stops talking altogether and refuses to feed her! She drives her own child to illness. And finally, the 14 year old actually stops playing chess altogether. There are many examples of this kind. Another daughter stops playing the piano because she is practically forced and manipulated into it and develops a dislike for the entire thing and finally ends up being humiliated by her mother in front of an audience. And all this is shown as the DAUGHTERS’ faults. HOW?!!!!!!!!!!!! Is being a child a crime, according to the author?

The book goes with the premise that mothers know best, and the daughters gradually ‘understand’ why they were so mean. But that excuses nothing. Mothers do not know best, and just because daughters understand them as adults, it doesn’t mean the mothers were not wrong and nasty in the first place. They don’t even ask for forgiveness!

I somehow also feel that all Chinese women who immigrated to America would not have been complete psychopaths, irrespective of the problems they had faced. This book makes you think that every Chinese woman is born a psychopath, or becomes one the moment she gives birth to a daughter. These mothers actively ruin their daughters’ lives, criticise their daughters' spouses, endlessly interfere in their choices, seek to control their entire lives and somehow THEY are the victims?

Since this is a typical family-based story, the absence of the fathers and their roles in the daughters’ lives never being discussed is a problem. You tend to wonder if the fathers are with the mothers in the abuse or against them. Surely, they can’t have missed all the goings on in front of their noses? With one man, I can let it pass, but four blind men? The book doesn’t work without some input from the fathers.

Other than the child abuse issues, the plot and writing was not bad. It is a very good depiction of the lack of communication that immigrant mothers and local-born daughters often face, whatever the nationality. But I think it goes a little farther than that. These issues are also very prevalent in societies at change. Mothers who cling to old-world views and daughters who look forward to the future are bound to clash at some point, and the book brings that out nicely. The second half of the book is much better and the reunion between Jing Mei and her sisters was very nice. To sum it up, I could enjoy the writing of this author if there is no enabling of child abuse, but this book is not for me. I’ll try her other books, because I liked the writing style.

Updated November 12, 2018
I read The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan over five years ago and I remember enjoying the book a lot. I think when I discovered Amy Tan, I went on a binge of all the books she's ever read and I cannot say I was ever disappointed by her writing.

The Joy Luck Club focuses on four Chinese American family who live in San Francisco. The club was started when one of the mothers saw how lonely and displaced the mothers in her community was. The book is told in part by four mothers and four of their daughters, usually I do not like hearing from so many narrators but this format worked on so many levels.

When we receive insights in the mother's struggle how they left China and end up in the US, the sacrifices they had to make and the painful situations they all faced. We learn of their disappointments and their joy through their families and community. On the other hand, we get a look at how the daughters view their mothers, what it was like growing up with their particular mother and how their upbringing shaped their lives.

Overall, this is truly an amazing novel, my only complaint is that it was too short, I wanted to spend more time with these 8 phenomenal women.


April 2012
Enjoyed every minute of this book.

It's been nearly 20 years since I read The Joy Luck Club for the first time. I was in my teen years searching for meaning in my world's duality; being Korean and being American. For the most part, The Joy Luck Club helped me know that I wasn't the only person struggling with identity in a country that has a very big personality. However, I'm much older now. In fact, I'm as old as the adult daughters in this book. And what I found is that I related more to the book in a whole different way.

The story follows four women who back in the 1940s started The Joy Luck Club. It was a way for these four women to get together, share a meal and a story, play mahjong and bring a little joy and luck to their world. Each chapter is a different woman's story and then you get the stories of these women through their adult daughters' eyes.

I loved the theme of mothers and daughters. I loved hearing the stories of these mothers and how they made their own luck sacrificing a lot for their families and themselves. I mean, each story of each mother when they were younger and living in China were so good. Seeing them tell their unique story and how their mothers raised them were truly just a gem in itself. But then seeing the struggle these women went through before coming to America and having their children were so surprising as well.

And then finally seeing how their daughters view them! OMG, it was like daughter-ception. Despite the book written with a lot of Chinese culture, I feel like any person can relate to these stories. They can relate to the perseverance and strength to carry on despite the chips being down. It was really empowering to read and made me think of my own mom and grandmothers constantly.

I do want to bring up that this book is quite dated. The book came out in 1989, so some of the social commentary wouldn't be okay today. And I'm not talking about directly at the Asian American women (there was definitely some of that). There was one specific line where Waverly discriminates against a gay hair stylist because it was the height of the AIDS epidemic. It wasn't even necessary! I just thought it was a little rude to include a stereotype like that, but at the same time I wonder if Amy Tan did this to show you that Waverly's beyond her own race's stereotypes and more "American" than her mother. Who knows, but it was surprising to see.

Probably the only thing I didn't realize is that I was reading eight different stories. While a couple of them had some overlap, each of these women lived a very different life with different decisions to get to where they are. It wasn't hard to keep track of all of them, but I felt like the way this book was formatted almost disconnected the women from each other. I think it was the separation of the stories that made me feel like these are eight separate accounts rather than one cohesive story.

Such a great read and I read this over Mothers' Day Weekend. It was the perfect book for the occasion.

Soo...I did NOT like this book. But I am going to point out its strengths. I think Tan excels when she writes about what she knows; in this case, what it's like to be a daughter to an immigrant mother. Her strongest elements of this novel was the relationship between Waverly and her mother. That was spot on and executed spectacularly. It was the most realistic part of this novel, in my opinion. I saw myself in Waverly when I was in high school. I still see it now.

Now, let's get on to allllll the bad parts.

First, let’s start deconstructing the orientalist gaze. I felt like this book portrayed Chinese people as an embodiment of the word “Oriental.” There were so many scenes and images that were set in China that were just so ridiculous. It encouraged a view of China that was ancient and backwards and ignorant. One scene that bothered me especially was when a daughter cut off a piece of her flesh and fed it to her dying mother as an act of love. I discussed that scene with my parents and they said it was “not good” that this was being used to represent China. My dad instead told me about a folk tale that talked about an act of true love for one’s mother that he said most Chinese people would know and recognize. It would’ve been the perfect example and oh, it did NOT involve cannibalism.

Second, the Chinese dialogue was cringe. I translated them in my head because some of it was so flowery and angsty in English, I thought in Chinese it would make sense. Guess what? It didn’t. No one talks like that.

Third, moving away from China and to the United States, there was this dichotomy that the Chinese way was “bad” and the American way was “better.” How about not holding one culture to a higher ideal? Every culture is different.

Fourth, stereotypes aside, I found the shifting first person POV weakened the book. All the voices blended together, especially the women from China. For a novel famous for focusing on mother-daughter relationships, I found it difficult to keep track of which mother was which woman. In doing so, I felt that it lost the character’s potential for individuality.

Written 30 years ago, this book was groundbreaking and basically launched modern Asian American literature. This was what made so many people feel seen, validated, and heard. This paved the way for authors like Celeste Ng to emerge, for even more representation. It feels almost "wrong" to criticize the very person who made it possible to have more Asian American literature in circulation that allows us to read her work critically and to make such criticism. It's a weird feeling and it's unfair that Tan carried the weight of an entire community on her shoulders. Still, this is my honest opinion. I didn't like Joy Luck Club and that is that.

Wonderful exploration of the fragile link of mothers and daughters, and how we women torture ourselves and how society joins in on the cruelty.

3.5 stars

I didn't love this one like I hoped I would... I really liked it! But I didn't love it, the narration just didn't click for me unfortunately!
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The story of 4 sets of Chinese-American mothers and daughters is told through 16 vignettes, exploring the sometimes rocky mother/daughter relationships, the experiences of raising a daughter in America, and the stories of the mother's childhoods in China.
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By far the most compelling chapters for me were those of the mothers' experienced and difficulties in China, followed by the daughters as children. I could have read a book twice the size solely on those stories! I found the daughters' adulthood stories just a teensy bit dull. Overall though I really enjoyed the peek into the immigration scene in America of Chinese people, and how the parents try to bring up their daughters 'in American circumstances but with Chinese character'.
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The narrative was just too choppy for me, it felt like a mash of short stories and I normally don't get on well with shorts. Still some captivating storytelling within this book though! I'll definitely read more of Amy Tan.

Beautifully written stories of Chinese immigrant mothers and their American daughters living in San Francisco - full of myth, confusion, and passive aggressiveness.
And the enforced invisibility of women everywhere:
“For all these years I kept my mouth closed so selfish desires would not fall out. And because I remained quiet for so long now my daughter does not hear me….All these years...running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. And because I moved so secretly now my daughter does not see me.

And I want to tell her this: We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.

I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.”
Ying-Ying

“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.”
An-Mei

This culture is not “other” to me - the majority of my neighbors in SF were Chinese; I shopped at Chinese markets, celebrated Chinese holidays, suffered endless fireworks, ate fantastic food, and bought my house for a bargain price because it was on a corner and had a four in the address. But the amount of outsized fear, and frankly loathing that lingers everywhere in these stories- invisible but always present; dangers, absolutes, arbitrary rules. Indeed, death by a thousand cuts.

But when one of the daughters returns to China with her elderly father - and feels immediately Home when she’s never been there before, it made me wish I had a Home country to go to. One with a history beyond genocide and greed, one with something unchanging and essential to hold on to, something good.

And who wouldn’t love to have their dead, our beloved ancestors, as spirit ghosts, guiding, loving, protecting - looking out for us in this chaotic, unfair world?

5***** and a ❤

This was the first Amy Tan book I read and I have been a fan every since. While there is a cultural divide to Tan's writing - the Asian experience and history, even Chinese sayings - there is a universality to the way she describes the mother/daughter relationship. The early dependence, the years of bickering to develop independence, the slow realization of your mother's truth, the final respect for your mother's background, her struggles, how she came to be your mother and always will be.

4.5 stars. I loved this. I'm pretty sure that I saw the movie many years ago when it came out, but I didn't remember anything. I plan to watch it again now. These are beautiful stories about the lost culture between generations of mothers and daughters.

"They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds “joy luck” is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation."

I loved learning more about the Chinese culture but what I loved most was how these stories also had a universal quality. Even though the religions, superstitions and cultures are very different, many of the problems faced in these stories are ones I recognize in families here whether or not they have 1st generation immigrants. The gulf between generations may not be as dramatic when they remain in the same country, but they are still have similarity.

I was fully absorbed in all 4 of these mother/daughter stories. This is the first book of Amy Tan's that I've read but it won't be my last

Amy Tan's book deploys the intensely subjective viewpoints of four American-born Chinese daughters and their Chinese mothers. The inter-generational relationships are turbulent. The narratives take the form of paired monologues. The mothers speak contemplatively about the past, harsh histories of starvation, unspeakable tragedy and emotional carnage that steeled their resolve to give their daughters a better life. These histories give the present-day scenes of mundane complaints and hyper-critical carping a softened context invisible to the four daughters. From their truncated vantage point each daughter can only see her own fierce tiger mother, hopelessly foreign and out of place. Their mothers' candor feels brutal and what is intended as aspiration for something better always feels like disappointment.

The structure of the story muffles the individuality of the characters. Instead, what comes alive are a series of separate vignettes: An-mei's tragic mother, manipulated into being a third concubine to a rich, repugnant old man; Suyuan Woo's futile aspirations to nurture a piano prodigy like the one on the Ed Sullivan Show; Lindo Jong's clever escape from a bad marriage; Ying Ying St. Clair's childhood epiphany about the Moon Festival lady. The reader feels an intimacy with this older generation that seems to escape their unhappy daughters.

Nevertheless, the daughters, Jin-Mei (June), Rose, Waverly and Lena are sympathetic characters. Their desire for independence from such strong willed women begins in childhood and is still being played out in adulthood. The dialectic between compliance and individuality, anger and guilt, reverberates with extra pain because the two generations here come, literally, from two different worlds. When Rose's therapist asks: “'Why do you blame your culture, your ethnicity?'” he is missing the point. Instead, the problem is more accurately diagnosed by Jing-Mei who reflects: “My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each other's meaning and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more.” One of those perplexing utterances of her mother Suyuan was: “'Once you are born Chinese, you cannot help but feel and think Chinese.'” It's a truth that each of the four daughters will struggle to unravel as they relate their stories.

Of the four daughters, Waverly was my favorite. She was both the most unlikeable and the funniest. Unable to confront her mother Lindo Jong with the fact that she is engaged to a non-Chinese, she contrives to draw Lindo into her apartment. The evidence that she and Rich are living together is obvious and abundant. Frustrated, Waverly finally demands: “'Aren't you going to say anything else?....About the apartment? About this?' I gestured to all the signs of Rich lying about. She looked around the room, toward the hall, and finally she said, 'You have career. You are busy. You want to live like mess what I can say?'”

Waverly then schemes to get Rich invited to the house for dinner where she plans to announce the engagement. Her convoluted stratagem is brilliant. She leverages Lindo's competitive pride in her cooking by getting Auntie Suyuan to invite the pair over for dinner first. Of course, Lindo is not to be outdone and an invitation arrives the very next week when she hears how Rich praised Suyuan's cooking. A whole series of faux pas ensues: “But the worst was when Rich criticized my mother's cooking, and he didn't even know what he had done.” As was the custom, her mother fishes for compliments by disparaging her own cooking, declaring: “'This dish not salty enough, no flavor.'....This was our family's cue to eat some and proclaim it the best she had ever made. But before we could do so, Rich said, 'You know, all it needs is a little soy sauce.' And he proceeded to pour a riverful of the salty black stuff on the platter, right before my mother's horrified eyes.”

Amy Tan is a wonderful storyteller. She mixes all the ingredients in just the right proportions: Humor, pathos, the cadence of broken English, the metaphors of Chinese expression, myths, ghosts, luck and choice, and the interplay between Chinese and American expectations are all brought into play. She has often been criticized for male bashing. I never found this to be the case. Her female characters are too strong and never depicted as victims. Even the daughters have found themselves in unhappy relationships because of specific choices, choices their mothers want them to take responsibility for. I love Amy Tan's writing. This was her first novel. It was published in 1989 and still feels fresh and vibrant.

This is a beautiful book, full of beautiful stories that center around four Chinese women (pre 1949) and their lives in China before they come to America, settle in California and have daughters of their own. Now their daughters are grown Chinese-American women, each with their own story to tell.

Seperately each of these tales is powerful and moving in it's own right but woven together they form a rich, evocative tapestry that gently, gracefully illuminates the bond, often threadbare, that exists between generations and vastly different cultures.

I love the way the author allows the reader to find their own connection, their own enlightenment in this narrative of fierce love and misunderstanding.