Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780804106306
ISBN number: 0804106304
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 352
Printing Date: June 01, 1990
Publishing house: Ballantine Books
Release Date: April 30, 1990
Sale Popularity Level: 159550
Studio: Ballantine Books
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
'Brilliant....Each story is a fascinating vignette, and together they they weave the reader through a world where the Moon Lady can grant any wish, where a child, promised in marriage at two and delivered at 12, can, with cunning, free herself; where a rich man's concubine secures her daughter's future by killing herself, and where a woman can live on, knowing she has lost her entire life.'
WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD
A stunning literary achievement, THE JOY LUCK CLUB explores the tender and tenacious bond between four daughters and their mothers. The daughters know one side of their mothers, but they don't know about their earlier never-spoken of lives in China. The mothers want love and obedience from their daughters, but they don't know the gifts that the daughters keep to themselves. Heartwarming and bittersweet, this is a novel for mother, daughters, and those that love them.
Amazon.com:
Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's 'saying' the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. 'To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable.' Forty years later the stories and history continue.
With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan is a very unique novel that I would recommend anyone to read. Amy Tan uses a clever style of writing throughout this novel. It consists of many mini-stories that are combined into one.
In the beginning of each story, the page has a name above the title. This represents either the mother or daughter involved in the story. On the second page of contents there are two separate lists. One is a list of the four mothers, Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair. Also there is a list of the four daughters, Jing-mei "June" Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Waverly Jong, and Lena St. Clair.
Even though at very first it is a little tough to understand her style of writing, Amy Tan has a connection between all of the mothers and daughters that are in the individual stories. Amy Tan discusses the Chinese culture and mother/daughter relationships. Every mini-story is connected to each other, in that way.
The author's style of writing drew me into this novel because I was curious to figure out how she would tie everything together.
The Joy Luck Club is a novel that is basically centered on mother/daughter relationships.
All together there are four mothers and four daughters. Each mother wants their daughters to grow up in America and have opportunities, but also retain their Chinese values and customs.
"I am to replace my mother, whose seat at the mah jong table has been empty since she died two months ago." This quote is stated at the very beginning of the novel by the daughter Jing-mei Woo. Even though she isn't very happy about "replacing" her mother, the rest of her family assumes she will carry on the tradition and she feels obligated to do so.
"I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these two things do not mix?" stated Lindo on page 289. Lindo and her daughter, Waverly, have a troubled relationship. Lindo wanted to be liker her own mother as she was growing up, and she is hurt as she sees Waverly doesn't want to be like her mother at all.
In a Chinese society, women were taught that it was an honor to become like their mother. However, in an American society, the goal is to become our own person.
What exactly is the Joy Luck Club? It's a club initially created by four Chinese women, who were recent immigrants to San Francisco that became united to share unspeakable losses and dreams.
The four women, in the city of Kweilin, took shelter from the Japanese raid. They wanted and needed to raise the spirits of one another. "What was worse, we asked among ourselves, to sit and wait for our own deaths, with proper somber faces? Or to choose our own happiness?"
"We feasted, we laughed, we played games, lost and won, we told the best stories. And each week, we could hope to be lucky. That hoe was our only joy. And that's how we came to call our little parties Joy Luck."
Those women were often terrified of what to expect from the raid, but it never showed on their faces.
Amy Tan, the author of the Joy Luck club, that was placed nine months on the New York Times Bestseller List, established a powerful and mesmerizing novel.
Rated by buyers 
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My very first Amy Tan book and probably my last. Joy Luck Club is mostly fluff. This book offers little to the reader.
Writing style is not particularly good.
No interesting insights into Chinese Americans.
Nothing educational about China, the old country.
Not particaularly well researched.
There are lots of better books to read if you are interested in any of the above areas. Ha Jin, a Chinese American is an outstanding writer. You will learn a lot about China and be entertained. "Wild Swans" is an very educational non-fiction that reads like fiction. I recommend skipping this one and going for the better quality books.
Rated by buyers -
I read this book a little over a year ago for my ap english 2 class. I really
liked how it displayed the Chinese culture and values. It is basically a book of mother-daughter relationships. There are four mothers and four daughters. The mothers are Chinese women who immigrated in the United States. The daughters are Chinese-American. It shows how people (like those in the United
States) tend to take their heritage for granted and just label themselves as Americans. When in reality your heritage will always be there and when you finally except wonderful relationships and things can come out of it.
thank you for your time,
Loran
Rated by buyers -
I am a high school freshman in the United States. I was assigned to choose one of five novels and read it throughout this semester. This novel, The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan was my very first choice because the story is about Chinese culture plus Mandarin is my native language. I believed that I would enjoy reading something that relates to my culture and actually I did. It is different from other novels since the whole story is separated into different little stories and put in different orders. Each little story represents a mother and daughter's marriage or family conflict.
In my opinion, the conflicts are caused because of mothers' and daughters' generation gaps and growing backgrounds. The mothers grow up in China where has many traditions and rules to follow. However, the daughters who grow up in San Francisco can choose their lives and want to be what they want to be. This makes the mothers think their daughters have lacks of consideration about their own lives. Therefore, the mothers want to control their daughters' lives since they used to follow those rules which tell them to do all the things considerable.
This novel has magic because every time I read this novel I would compare the way mothers treat their daughter in the book and the way my mother treats me. I would also ask questions to my self by saying "Does this mother use the same way to treat her daughter as the way my mom treats me?" The answer can be varied. Some of them are yes and some of them are absolutely no. For example, the way Suyuan's mother tells her that it's too late to change the reality that she is her mother makes me think it can be the way my mother tells me. For the reasons that, this statement makes sense that it's impossible to change the reality of a blood relationship so I would also accept this very logical sense. However, Lindo's mother left her in a rich family in order to gain some respects back makes me think it is not the way my mother would ever done to me. Since my mother sacrifices a lot in order to raise me up and lets me receive the best education, she wouldn't want to destroy the bitter that she has eaten and pave that she has built for me. Therefore, I recommend this book for teenagers to read because it is an inspired book that can make adolescences to think about their lives and observe their surroundings
Rated by buyers 
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The Joy Luck Club had stayed with me all these years even when I examine my own personal life in the current time. I had read the book when I was in the seventh grade and had a remarkable teacher. She was Mrs. Lattimer (and yes, she was white), a Harvard graduate teaching at an impoverished neighborhood from where I used to grow up. Sometimes, I wondered why she never taught at one of the more prestige middle schools even right now. Still, it was a book that we middle school students had to read and analyze. The class was actually an advance seminar class. Even to this day, I am surprised that we middle school students got a chance to watch a rated "R" movie. It was a "never" to watch a rated "R" movie. The only movies that I can remember watching that were rated "R" were movies in my former AP english literature class-Othello (which actually contained nudity). It's funny because from what I recall, I had couple of friends from the regular classes and they have never seen a rated "R" movie shown in an educational setting. Perhaps being in a gifted class really did come with all the special privileges(even though I was never identified as "gifted"; I was recommended). It just seemed that every book my classmates and I read in AP english could never resist incorporating some kind of sexual element. Indeed, the literary works were very great. And of course, sex is also shown in this movie.
Besides the entertainment value of the movie and the book, as well as the complex relationships between the mothers and the daughters, it was certainly a movie about survival. Presently, as I sit in my comfortable room, I could only relate to the need to survive and live a fulfilling life, a life that is so wonderful and full of bliss. Life is about survival. The word "survival" will always vibrate and echoe inside my ears and in my mind. It is a word that summarizes the very essence of life. When you're child or an adolescent, it is about surviving through school. Once you graduate from high school, a new level of survival comes into play; and that is to make a living. Let's face it. Life really does center around making a living. We all need and want to live a life free from having to live a low standard of living like poverty and shortages of healthy food and crapy material possessions. Virtually everyone desires to have a career and be financially stable. In times where the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer, insecure feelings arise and stays in tact somewhere in our minds. The desire to be married to wonderful wife or husband, the desire to feel safe living in a dream home, the desire to not feel frieghtened when you are heavily sick, the desire to give your children and your grandchildren the best possible life, and the list can go on forever...-Indeed, let's face it, MONEY MAY NOT BE EVERYTHING, BUT IT IS CERTAINLY SOMETHING WE ALL STRIVE TO OBTAIN IN ITS VARIOUS FORMS. Money does have its value contrary to the popular belief that you hear about how money isn't everything or how money can't buy love. Like the feather of the swan-This feather may look like any other feather and seem worthless, but "it comes from a far away distance and contains all of my good intentions."
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