Following her mother’s death, June Mei Woo has replaced her mother Suyuan at her monthly mahjong game. Suyuan started this game and Joy Luck Club when she first immigrated to the United States as a way to maintain her Chinese culture in a new country. The other families who joined her– the Hsus, Jongs, and St Claires– became like family as together they celebrated festivals, children’s birthdays, and indoctrinated the next generation in Chinese culture. Yet, June Mei and her friends from the group, Waverly, Rose, and Lena, for the most part were interested in achieving the American dream, oftentimes at the expense of their mothers who worked hard to preserve their Chinese cultural existence. It is also only at these meetings that these four ladies could pour out the sorrows of the life they left behind in China, including extended families who stayed in villages while these fortunate ones moved to Shanghai and Hong Kong and then to the United States. Away from these intimate gatherings, even the daughters of these women did not know much about their mothers’ lives in China. It is at the opening of the book that June Mei finds out that her mother had twin daughters in China who she abandoned as babies and after all these years, they have been found. Much to June Mei’s chagrin, the older women urge her to travel to China to meet her sisters and teach them about their mother’s heritage.

While much about immigration experience, The Joy Luck Club is also about both the younger and older generation’s path to self discovery. Tan uses a vignette format to alternate stories between the younger and older women, with June Mei’s voice serving as a voice between the two. I enjoyed learning about life in pre-revolutionary, rural China and the hardships that drove the Chinese to immigrate in the first place. Once in the United States, however, the protagonists strove to preserve the same language, food, culture of the China that they were quick to leave behind. The fact that none of their daughters chose to marry Chinese men attests to the generation gap between first and second generation immigrants of any ethnic group. As in many cases, when the children move toward middle age, then they become interested in their parents’ heritage, as is the case here. Unfortunately, it does change the gap that had been created when the children shunned their culture in exchange for life as normal Americans.

What was most enjoyable for me in the novel was the stories of the mothers, their past lives in China, from little girls 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.

Amy Tan’s writing is devastatingly simple. Her diction is not all that convoluted, but the drama and tension she manages to create through her choice of words is astounding. After reading certain sentences and phrases I stopped and thought dang. That was deep. Tan’s deceptively simple writing style is realistic and piercing and poignant all at once. “So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. the pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter’s tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter.”

The theme that struck me the most while reading the novel was the inter-generational loss that afflicted the characters. The misunderstandings that occurred and all the things that were lost in translation were truly tragic – and still are tragic in contemporary society. However, after finishing the book and tearing up at the bittersweet endings, I’ve come to the conclusion that what really matters is the love one feels for their child and the longing to leave one’s legacy with their son or daughter in order for them to succeed.

While I had difficulty discerning the characters from one another while reading the book – I had to constantly reference the front section to keep myself from utter confusion – overall I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a bittersweet story about Chinese culture or the unbreakable bond between mothers and daughters.