Book Review: The Joy Luck Club

 

My interest of Chinese culture and society has led me to the reading of “The Joy Luck Club”. Written by Chinese-American author, Amy Tan successfully poured her cultural thoughts and experiences through the story of four Chinese immigrant women (Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, Ying-ying St. Clair) and their daughters (Jing-mei “June” Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Waverly Jong, Lena St. Clair).

Back in time, due to some affairs the women (the mothers) left the hometown, China, headed to California, US, wishing for a better life. Later they founded a group called “The Joy Luck Club”. A club where they wished joy and luck in their new land as immigrant, played mahjong (Chinese traditional boarding game), shared stories, ate Chinese food, and even invested together.

Tan as the author then tried to portray immigrant life, consists of culture clash and mother-daughter relationship as the main issues of the novel. The four women as mothers who born in China and raised in Chinese way then always see the world by their Chinese eyes, while their daughters didn’t. They are americanized by the fate that they born and raised in America. Thus, that sometimes later lead to some argumentations and misunderstanding between the mothers and daughters caused by generation gap.

In my opinion, this novel also implicitly tells how strong women are: how these four mothers faced and held their pain in the past since they had their personal issues back in China and keep their secrets untold to their daughters, which cracked the fact that sometimes children don’t know much enough about their mother.

Each character’s story was written in a single chapter, so the whole novel’s like a puzzle that contains different stories from each characters continuously. The way Tan arranged the novel so, was somehow fascinating yet confusing, because at some points, readers have to look back to previous page just to figure out the names or part they forgot. Regardless from that, the novel is a good one, bittersweet and heartwarming for bringing such a cultural issues inside.