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A review by taylor_broek
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
3.0
Following 4 Chinese American mothers and daughters in San Francisco this story is told in rotating parts by each character along with parables about Mahjong, the game that ties all of the families together. Mother daughter relationship are already hard but adding in extremely difficult Chinese histories, immigration, and the customs and traditions that can get lost between generations born in different countries you get a whole lot of issues. This book explores the many different types of possible relationships and the relationship from each characters point of view as well. The age of this book does show through in a few areas but over all is still a good and moving story about 4 mothers and 4 daughters. The layout is a bit challenging at times to follow and I often had to flip back to the index to remember the mother daughter matches as the chapters also often go into grandparents and other friends/family stories. I was surprised that all of the daughters and remaining mothers didn’t come together in the end but it did make it read more realistic because the daughters are a different generation. Born in America & with their parents often keeping their heritage and family history to themselves in an effort to assimilate the daughters don’t really know their mothers and don’t really understand how big the cultural gap is between their generations.
With each of the members of the joy luck club being chosen do to their exceptionally hard pasts their stories also showed remarkable, unimaginable strength and could shed a light on the way that they were now if they would fully share those stories with their daughters. Their delusional positivity & playing mahjong in the worst of times saved their lives and bonded them for life. That all agreed “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? "So we decided to hold parties and pretend each week had become the new year. Each week we could forget past wrongs done to us. We weren't allowed to think a bad thought. 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 hope was our only joy. And that's how we came to call our little parties Joy Luck.”
They all seemed to struggle with their relationships & often had completely different realities about it. “I already knew what she would do, how she would attack him, how she would criticize him. She would be quiet at first. Then she would say a word about something small, something she had noticed, and then another word, and another, each one flung out like a little piece of sand, one from this direction, another from behind, more and more, until his looks, his character, his soul would have eroded away. And even if I recognized her Strategy, her sneak attack, I was afraid that some unseen speck of truth would fly into my eye, blur what I was seeing and transform him from the divine man I thought he was into something else.”
~Dated quotes~
When I failed to become a concert pianist, or even an accompanist for the church youth choir, she finally explained that I was late-blooming, like Einstein, who everyone thought was retarded until he discovered a bomb.
“You mean you still go to that guy on Howard Street.. Aren't you afraid?" Waverly asked.
I could sense the danger, but I said it anyway: "What do you mean, afraid? He's always very good."
"I mean, he is gay, He could have AIDs.
And he is cutting your hair, which is like cutting a living tissue Maybe I'm being paranoid, being a mother, but you just can't be too safe these days. . . .” Waverly said.
And I sat there feeling as if my hair were coated with disease.
Others
"Well, I don't know if it's explicitly stated in the law, but you can't ever tell a Chinese mother to shut up. You could be charged
as an accessory to your own murder."
With each of the members of the joy luck club being chosen do to their exceptionally hard pasts their stories also showed remarkable, unimaginable strength and could shed a light on the way that they were now if they would fully share those stories with their daughters. Their delusional positivity & playing mahjong in the worst of times saved their lives and bonded them for life. That all agreed “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? "So we decided to hold parties and pretend each week had become the new year. Each week we could forget past wrongs done to us. We weren't allowed to think a bad thought. 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 hope was our only joy. And that's how we came to call our little parties Joy Luck.”
They all seemed to struggle with their relationships & often had completely different realities about it. “I already knew what she would do, how she would attack him, how she would criticize him. She would be quiet at first. Then she would say a word about something small, something she had noticed, and then another word, and another, each one flung out like a little piece of sand, one from this direction, another from behind, more and more, until his looks, his character, his soul would have eroded away. And even if I recognized her Strategy, her sneak attack, I was afraid that some unseen speck of truth would fly into my eye, blur what I was seeing and transform him from the divine man I thought he was into something else.”
~Dated quotes~
When I failed to become a concert pianist, or even an accompanist for the church youth choir, she finally explained that I was late-blooming, like Einstein, who everyone thought was retarded until he discovered a bomb.
“You mean you still go to that guy on Howard Street.. Aren't you afraid?" Waverly asked.
I could sense the danger, but I said it anyway: "What do you mean, afraid? He's always very good."
"I mean, he is gay, He could have AIDs.
And he is cutting your hair, which is like cutting a living tissue Maybe I'm being paranoid, being a mother, but you just can't be too safe these days. . . .” Waverly said.
And I sat there feeling as if my hair were coated with disease.
Others
"Well, I don't know if it's explicitly stated in the law, but you can't ever tell a Chinese mother to shut up. You could be charged
as an accessory to your own murder."