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A review by mudder17
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
4.0
3 stars for the audio, 4.5 stars for the book.
So I started listening to this on audiobook, but I kept losing track of who was narrating, and therefore whose story I was following. Part of it was the quality of the recording, which was not very clear, and part of it was that the narrator had kind of a soothing voice and I just kept losing track. This was the audiobook that was not narrated by the author and was unabridged. The only thing I appreciated about the narration was being able to hear the Chinese words pronounced correctly. Although I don't speak Chinese, I grew up speaking Taiwanese and hearing Chinese, and certain phrases sound the same to me and I recall the meaning, even if I can't translate them into English. As one of the daughters says in the book, there are some phrases she knows the meaning of in Chinese, but she doesn't know of an equivalent English phrase. In any case, after about 15% with the audiobook, I gave up and got the digital and started reading it that way. But after about 25%, my loan period ran out, so then I had to wait a few weeks to get the book back, lol. So I started this book again yesterday and ended up finishing it today and there is much that feels familiar to me about being the child of immigrants and experiencing the mix of American and Taiwanese cultures. Like some of the daughters, I regret not knowing my family's native language fluently, and I regret that my half Taiwanese half Caucasian daughters know very little about their Taiwanese heritage. Reading this book brought back a lot of memories. Although both of my parents were raised Christian and my dad was a Christian pastor, Christianity in Taiwan was only found in ~3% of the population, at least up until the '90s, from what I remember. So I still remember some of the superstitions that my mom used to tell us about our ear shapes or forehead shape, etc., that were linked to good fortune or higher intelligence and so forth. It took a while for me to get wrapped into this book, partly because of the circumstances of how I read it, but once I settled down and focused, I found myself wrapped up by the story and the different characters. By the time I got to the 40% stage, I didn't want to stop until I finished the story. In many ways, this is a book of interconnected short stories that depict the Asian American experience. It's been years since I read this book and I didn't remember much about it at all, so it was good to read this through my 2020 lens. I think someone who is not familiar with the Asian culture might find it a bit hard to get into, partly because of all the Asian names and the sprinkling of Chinese words, but I definitely appreciated it and enjoyed it quite a bit.
So I started listening to this on audiobook, but I kept losing track of who was narrating, and therefore whose story I was following. Part of it was the quality of the recording, which was not very clear, and part of it was that the narrator had kind of a soothing voice and I just kept losing track. This was the audiobook that was not narrated by the author and was unabridged. The only thing I appreciated about the narration was being able to hear the Chinese words pronounced correctly. Although I don't speak Chinese, I grew up speaking Taiwanese and hearing Chinese, and certain phrases sound the same to me and I recall the meaning, even if I can't translate them into English. As one of the daughters says in the book, there are some phrases she knows the meaning of in Chinese, but she doesn't know of an equivalent English phrase. In any case, after about 15% with the audiobook, I gave up and got the digital and started reading it that way. But after about 25%, my loan period ran out, so then I had to wait a few weeks to get the book back, lol. So I started this book again yesterday and ended up finishing it today and there is much that feels familiar to me about being the child of immigrants and experiencing the mix of American and Taiwanese cultures. Like some of the daughters, I regret not knowing my family's native language fluently, and I regret that my half Taiwanese half Caucasian daughters know very little about their Taiwanese heritage. Reading this book brought back a lot of memories. Although both of my parents were raised Christian and my dad was a Christian pastor, Christianity in Taiwan was only found in ~3% of the population, at least up until the '90s, from what I remember. So I still remember some of the superstitions that my mom used to tell us about our ear shapes or forehead shape, etc., that were linked to good fortune or higher intelligence and so forth. It took a while for me to get wrapped into this book, partly because of the circumstances of how I read it, but once I settled down and focused, I found myself wrapped up by the story and the different characters. By the time I got to the 40% stage, I didn't want to stop until I finished the story. In many ways, this is a book of interconnected short stories that depict the Asian American experience. It's been years since I read this book and I didn't remember much about it at all, so it was good to read this through my 2020 lens. I think someone who is not familiar with the Asian culture might find it a bit hard to get into, partly because of all the Asian names and the sprinkling of Chinese words, but I definitely appreciated it and enjoyed it quite a bit.