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Summary: Love, Hardship, and Insparation
Review: I love this book! It is amazing. It is filled with so much passion and love as well as pain. It shows the love of four mothers and daughters. It also shows the pain endured by many Chinese people during the Chinese revolution. This book is emotional and amzingly well written. I could bairly put it down. I think this book is well suited for any mother or daghuter feeling disconnected with ther own love. This book is probably one of my all time favorites!
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Summary: Joy Luck Club Reviews
Review: Amy Tan has a great way of expressing the many relationships between mother and daughter. You feel a certain connection to each one of them as their past unfolds before your eyes, containing their pain, happiness and secrets they have kept for years. You understand the Chinese way is literally "to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, and to eat [your] own biterness." She also leaves you with a great ending that makes you satisfied in a sense that everything was resolved.
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Summary: More Asian exoticism for the Non-Asians and the white washed
Review: Amy Tan is no doubt a great writer, however unknowingly to the "Non-Asians and the White Washed", it's a book which has been a hurt and one of many constraints on the Asian American community. For approximately 3 years, I have been teaching a course on Asian American literature. Many of those who have been my students have read The Joy Luck Club beforehand, and I will no doubt credit the book for spurring many of their interests in Asian American literature. However, I find it unfortunate that a lot of them also come in with negative stereotypes of Asian American men (past and present) totally based on the fictional accounts within this book. Amy Tan, overall, is an excellent writer. However, I advise all of you to NOT take this book as a general account of Asian America. If you would like to learn more about the history of Asian Americans, I highly recommend "A Different Mirror" by Ron Takaki and "Asian American Dreams" by Helen Zia -- both whom are highly respected Asian American non-fictional writers and educators.
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Summary: the big wake up call asian style
Review: I loved the book! It made me feel so at home with the thought of making mistakes and being the family screw up.It taught me about the old ways of the women back in the 1900's in ancient China. Between the 4 mothers and the 4 daughters there is a great difference in their behaviors and values. Throughout the whole novel Amy Tan brilliantly illustrated the times, the settings and how the events occurred.The mothers were strong willed, highly strict in the old ways of tradition, and held true to their beliefs. The daughters adapted well to the new and modern ways of the Americans, but sadly along the way lossed the meaning in what their families trully represented.The somewhat lossed daughters were eventually saved by their overbarring mothers with the traditions of their ancestors.
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Summary: A wonderful read!
Review: Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club is a marvelous novel. The writing style is deceptively simple, the characters are human and likable, and the plot swift and compelling. I heartily recommend this book to anyone. This is a best seller for a very good reason.
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Summary: what took me so long to read this?
Review: After letting the book sit on my shelf for more than a year, I finally decided to give The Joy Luck Club a chance. All I knew is that it had something to do with the Chinese, Amy Tan was a well regarded author, and there was a movie made of the book (which I have not seen). That's it. I didn't quite know what to expect and when I saw the chapter list, I saw that there would be multiple narrators (a technique that can work very well). I'll be honest, I don't remember a single character name and even during the book, I had a hard time remembering which character was which. From the details provided in each chapter's narration, I knew who was talking, but I didn't know the name. The Joy Luck Club is a story of mothers and daughters. The Club itself was formed by four Chinese women who had emigrated from China to America (separately) and did not know anyone in the country. It gave them a chance to become friends and share in each other's lives. This was perhaps 40 years before the chapters dealing with their children. One of the members of the original Club died, and her daughter was invited to take her place. The Club, among other things, sits and plays Mah Jong late into the night and the game requires four players. Each member of the club and their daughters tell their own stories and the story of their parents. This reveals both how they came to be where they are and also how they view their family dynamic. Some are more satisfied with their lives than others, but in all cases the story is intelligent and interesting. This was Amy Tan's first novel and the only one that I have read that she has written. Already I can tell that Tan is a major talent and an author from whom I look forward to reading her novels. While The Joy Luck Club will not make my "favorite novels" list, this is still a very, very good novel. Knowing what the subject matter is, if this interests you, give it a shot.
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Summary: Amazing
Review: Though I got a little confused about who was who, this was one of the best books I have read. I was about 14 (which could explain why I got confussed) and it put everything in perspective for me. I was exposed to people who had very disfucntional relationships and I think that was what kinda broke me out of my shell. It was an amazing story that I definitely recommend.
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Summary: RULES OF THE GAME
Review: Okay, so i have not read The Joy Luck Club, but rather an excerpt from it entitled "Rules of the Game." I read this in school. It is about Waverly Jong, a young Chinese-American girl growing up in Chinatown. She is a chess prodigy, beating everyone. Win after win, her mother begins to brag aboout her, showing her off to everyone else. There were many morals, themes, etc. inside of the story. i thought it was a pretty good story. I am Asian. However my classmates, all who are white, took from this story different things. Instead of only seeing a girl with these struggles, they saw a CHINESE girl. I thought, "Yeah, she's Chinese. So what?"
But then they went into the Asian stereotyping. "I have an Asian friend-she's real smart too." "Yeah my friend is Asian, he gets such good grades." "Uh huh, my friend who is Asian is the best at math!"
This angered me soo much, and completely ruined the story for me. Stereotyping ANYONE is so wrong and hurtful and annoying! Please, if you read this, stop!
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Summary: Eh.....
Review: This is the story of 4 Chinese mothers and their daughters. The mothers all grew up in China, listening to stories of spirits, dragons, etc and being brought up on the principles of Chinese mysticism. The daughters grew up in California, USA, where American practicality and christian ideals were at direct conflict with the way the mothers were raised. The mothers what the best for their daughters. They want their children to grow up with Chinese character under American circumstances (seeing how America is much more liberal than China during this time). The end result is a semi-interesting novel about personal experiences and the life lessons they brought. All in all, I thought it wasn't THAT great. I certainly would not read this story again for many, many years.
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Summary: A Joy to Read
Review: This was the first novel that I have ever read by Amy Tan and it was outstanding. She did a masterful job of explaining how this group of four women came together and became known as the Joy Luck Club. Each of the four women has a daughter and there is a section of the book for each of the eight women in which you hear in great detail about past experiences and how they relate to the events that were then unfolding in each of their lives. For me, it was this type of character development that really brought this novel to life. The author also gave the reading audience the opportunity to take a peek into a new and different culture. I especially liked the way the mother's would prefer to talk in their native Chinese dialect and the daughters spoke in very fluent English. This was, no doubt, a byproduct of their having been raised primarily in America. The way that the four mothers used the Mahjong table as not only a means of playing a game but also as a way to reflect on their past and share their hopes and dreams for their own daughters was wonderful. It allowed them to forget, even if only for a few hours, about the tragedies and heartache that they had all been through and allowed them to bond with one another. Each of the women represented a wind direction at the Mahjong table and when the time would come that they would pass away, as Suyuan Woo did early on in the novel, the respective daughters of those women would then assume their role at the table. To me, there was never a dull moment in this book and I know that I will be reading it again and again. I definitely recommend this book to anyone, especially those who are reading an Amy Tan novel for the very first time.
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