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Summary: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan is a truly remarkable book...
Review: "Intensely poetic, startlingly imaginative and moving, this remarkable book will speak to many women, mothers and grown daughters." This book is about four, Chinese women, who migrated from China and to America, during the confused time of war, between Japan and their country. Each women experiences very hard and sad time in her girlhood, but they migrate to America with big hope of a new life. However, they were forced to live unstably as immigrants in America. They also struggle for confrontation with their daughters who were born in America. But they can overcome these difficulties with their positive attitude not to leave their hopes. We can see the ideas and sense of values of Chinese women in this book. This book gives readers courage and hope. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan is truly a remarkable book. It is a novel that deals with the relationships between mothers and daughters and also the conflicts between Chinese and American cultures. A delight to read, this novel involves the reader as it progresses through the stories of these four mothers and four daughters. These characters deal with issues such as rape, divorce, failure, abandonment, and many more. Throughout this novel, by dealing with these issues, the daughters learn to understand their mothers' views on life. The Joy Luck Club is a collection of short stories, arranged into chapters with an individual theme - love. The stories are all diverse, which keeps the book interesting, yet they still intertwine and relate to each other. Along with the chapters being in different themes, the book is grouped into four segments containing four chapters, one chapter per segment from each of either the mothers or daughters. The mothers and daughters have extremely different outlooks on life, which are shown though the chapters from their own perspective. These outlooks and different perspectives add to the depth of the cultural conflict between the American daughters and Chinese mothers. I could not put this novel down once I opened it! As a result of reading this novel I have learned to really treasure the mother-daughter relationship. This novel holds a truly remarkable story that helps one to appreciate human diversity and understanding. It is honestly one of the best books I have ever encountered. The Joy Luck Club is priceless.
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Summary: The Joy Luck Club
Review: The Joy Luck Club is the story of four Chinese women who have moved to California to escape times of war in China. Over the years they have come to know each other through the Chinese Baptist Church, and meet once a month as the Joy Luck Club. The Joy Luck Club gives the women and their families the chance to mingle and celebrate their Chinese culture with traditional dishes and customs. Now that Suyuan Woo has passed away, it is her daughter, Jing-mei's turn to participate in the club and to learn about her heritage and her past.
Amy Tan's novel tells the tale of these strong women and their four daughters sharing the hardships of a different culture, failing relationships, and family conflicts.
Each chapter is told from the point of view of a different woman with different stories about growing up in San Francisco's Chinatown. Every story contains ties to ancient Chinese rituals and family traditions, including the Chinese game of mah jong, the red candle that must stay lit at both ends to grant marriage to a couple, and the place where the Moon Lady can make all wishes come true.
Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club is an excellent novel that tells the story of Jing-mei discovering herself and the importance of love and family bonds. Every character seems real and each situation is important to the life of the Chinese. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the life of other cultures, loving families, and realistic conflicts.
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Summary: Everybody can Relate to this Novel.
Review: I felt so many variations of emotions when I read this novel. I cried, laughed, hated and loved. It was a spectacular story about 4 girls and their mothers and there were so many situations in which I could relate to my own life. This book discusses family expectations, life successes and failures, war, marriage, divorce, death, life, and discovered secrets. It's a fast read and an enjoyable one and I highly recommend this novel!
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Summary: Another review....
Review: The Joy Luck Club is a beautiful book about, as you can tell from the other reviews, the relationships between four Chinese women (Suyuan, Lindo, An-mei, and Ying-Ying) and their American daughters (Jing-mei, Waverly, Rose, and Lena- respectively). In the beginning, Suyuan has died, and her daughter is now to take her place in the little "club" her mother and these other women have formed. She has also found her long lost half sisters in China (left behind by her mother 20-35 years ago), who are expecting to see their mother come to China to see them, for they do not know that she has died. As each of the women see Jing-mei try to think of a way to break it to her sisters that their mother has died, their stories begin to unravel, as well as their daughters'. Lindo was seperated from her mother at the age of 12 to be wed to a mean, teasing husband and in the process, a cruel, unrelenting mother in law, but escapes the marraige cleverly. An-mei leaves her grandmother's house to go to her mother's husband's house, where she is 4rth wife and looked down upon. Ying-Ying was abandoned by her husband and became severly depressed. Suyuan had to leave her two baby daughters on the side of the road in hopes that someone would find them because she tought she would die while running away from the Japanese. They all came to America, in hopes of raising daughters free from sorrow. The result was daughters who did not understand their mothers' tribulations and sorrows and now make the same mistakes, and in some cases, have become their mothers. Beautifully written in soft but powerful words, I recommend this book to anyone. Trust me, it's not just any mother daughter book.
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Summary: Beautiful
Review: Although there are already alot of reviews of this book, I have to add my voice. This novel is one of my favorites of all time. I couldn't put it down. The struggles between the mothers and daughters to understand one another and relate to one another is something I can relate to, as I think many women can, even though many readers will not relate to the cultural issues. The relationship between a mother and daughter is one of humanity's most complex, and Tan does an exquisite job of capturing the dynamic. I could relate to the struggles of the four daughters to connect with and live up to the expectations of their mothers. I also loved the imagery in the novel; it is some of the most beautiful, lyrical prose I have ever had the pleasure to read. I highly reccommend this book -- it should especially appeal to women who have had complex, occassionally conflictual, relationships with their mothers.
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Summary: Wonderful book
Review: I'm the president of a book club, and I chose this book partly to appease my female members. The book started out slowly and the simple English was somewhat boring, but once the story began and the characters were fully introduced, I couldn't put it down. This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. It teaches us about the Chinese and their mother-daughter relationships, but also helps us understand our own parents and children. The novel is written in a mix between narrative and myth, which makes it all the more intriguing and enjoyable.
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Summary: The Joyluck Club
Review: The Joyluck Club is a sad and an entertaining book. It's a book about four mothers who taught their daughter what their Chinese culture's like. The mothers move from one place to another and learn their new life there. They try to teach their daughters, their chinese life even though they know english pretty well and were born in United States. They still have a part of chinese in them.
I would recommend this book to anyone! this book is a great book.
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Summary: what do you know about your own family history?
Review: In some ways it seems redundant to add to the other reviews of this book-- but I recently revisited it, having read it over ten years ago, and was reminded of why I loved it the first time. The structure of Tan's narrative-- going back & forth between time lines and mother/daughter stories-- made it more interesting. The way women repeat the mistakes of our mothers if we do not know them, the way women are taught (not just in Chinese American but all American) to keep disappointment to yourself-- all of these themes rang true for me, too.
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Summary: a treasured learning experience
Review: Reading The Joy Luck Club is something I will always remember. Amy Tan unfolds the Chinese-American culture right before your eyes as she develops eight complex characters. The book tells of mother-daughter relationships in four families. Each mother writes 2 stories and each dughter does the same. The daughters' stories deal with the hardships of being a first-generation Chinese-American while the mothers' stories deal with the pain of watching their daughters forget their Chinese heritage. I would recomend this book to any female it would be a great read for a mother and daughter to share together.
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Summary: ancient yet meaningful...
Review: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan tells an ancient, yet meaningful story about four mothers and daughters. The mothers all come from China as immigrants to America, in the hope that they can forget their sorrowful pasts and plant their future hopes in America. The four daughters grow up as Chinese Americans, their hair and faces look Chinese, but inside they are Americans. To their mothers, they have lost the Chinese spirit. The four families meet each week to play mahjong and have meals together; they call it The Joy Luck Club. However, when one of its members is dead, Ying-ying, the daughters is asked to replace her mother's position in The Joy Luck Club. At a weekly gathering, a secret of Ying-ying's mother is revealed. Through the members of the Joy Luck Club, Ying-ying could finally trace her mother's Chinese spirit back. The way Amy Tan tells the story is really unique, the whole book is made up of numerous short stories by the mothers and the daughters. The author does a great job on narrating the struggle and pain behind each woman's back, and the misunderstandings between the mothers and the daughters waiting to be solved. As mentioned in the book, the mothers hope that their daughters can be raised in American circumstances with Chinese spirit, but their American born daughters seem to forget their roots. I can relate myself to the daughters in the book, because our mothers all have the same hopes and thoughts for their children to be successful. And sometimes her intentions put me under a lot of pressure, and I feel that my mother just wants to criticize everything I like. But after reading the book, I somehow realize that it's my mother's way of telling her own story and her spirit given by her mother. On my way reading the book, I actually get confused by the characters because there are eight of them, and it is hard to keep track of all the names though I enjoyed it a lot. I highly recommend this book to everyone who's interested in Chinese culture and traditions, or anyone who has been struggled to understand the mother-daughter relationship.
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