Grab the Lapels

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Thanks to the success of the movies Everything Everywhere All At Once and Crazy Rich Asians, I’ve had books by Asian and Asian American authors on my mind. Recently, I read and reviewed The Hole, which is from Korea. Then, I picked up The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, which seems like one of those original novels that showed American readers we can engage with and enjoy Chinese culture.

Published in 1989, the novel has a slew of characters. A woman, Suyuan Woo, who was born in China and fled the Japanese invasion during WWII, moved to San Francisco. In China, she and her friends started “the joy luck club,” which consisted of playing mah jong and eating the meager food they had. Other people asked how they could laugh or seek joy in such miserable conditions, but they did. When she moved to California in 1949, Suyuan started up the club with other Chinese immigrants.

These women all have children, though the focus is on their daughters. How are Chinese-American daughters different from Chinese-born mothers? They are of the same blood but different worldviews. Can they understand, or even know, each other?

At the beginning of the novel, set in the 1980’s, Suyuan has passed away, so her daughter, Jing-mei (“June” for the Americans) has been asked to take her mother’s place in the joy luck club. From there, the novel breaks down into seven narrative perspectives. An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair are the women from China, plus Suyuan, whose story is repeated by her daughter. The stories are about their lives before marriage, or leading up to it. All four faced what looks to American readers like tragedy, often the result of cultural norms in China that appear cruel to U.S. readers. For example, after An-mei’s mother became a widow, she she married a wealthy man. As his fourth wife, she is labeled the third concubine (after his wife and the first and second concubines). As a result, her family says she is dead to them, a ghost. If An-mei leaves with her mother, she will become a ghost, too.

Or, the story of Lindo, who is married off to a man who doesn’t want her, but her main role is to be a servant to her mother-in-law. Lindo was chosen as the son’s bride when they were children. Eventually, she uses her cunning to convince the family her marriage is not good by appealing to the rules and norms of Chinese culture and escapes the relationship. When I was reading, it felt like problems occurred when characters were shamed, and I don’t see much need for shaming people in conditions they did not choose, or had little choice in. Thus, it was hard to understand the character’s miserable, sad situations when it feels like people could decide to stop being cruel.

Sections two and three of The Joy Luck Club follow the four daughters: Jing-mei (“June”), Rose, Waverly, and Lena. All four feel oppressed by their mothers, and by having one foot in Chinese culture and another in American, all four struggle to fit in with their peers. At home, they still face Chinese social norms, many of which read as manipulative and cruel to this American reader. For instance, when Waverly, a chess champion, tires of her mother, Lindo, bragging about Waverly as if the girl’s success is Lindo’s own, Lindo quits speaking to her. No matter how she tries to cajole Lindo, Waverly cannot resume communication. Much like a master chess player, Lindo is always one move ahead of her daughter, creating friction in the relationship that looks like a case of punishment and pride to me. What is Lindo trying to teach Waverly through silence?

Overall, the main complaint I have with the novel is it reads more like short stories. Because there are eight major characters and two timelines (past and present) in two countries (China and U.S.), it’s hard to keep them straight. Even now, writing about the girl playing chess, I had to look back at the book to remember which daughter that was, and then again to confirm who her mother is. It’s easy to read one chapter and enjoy the immersive storytelling, but because I may not see that character’s perspective again for two sections, it’s easy to forget what happened to whom.

Also, a struggle I have with reading books about cultures so different from my own is I can’t quite comprehend what the person is trying to accomplish. When Waverly gets engaged, she doesn’t tell her mother. She’s worried her mother will point out all of her fiance’s flaws until he is diminished in Waverly’s eyes.

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 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.

When I read this quote, I wonder if the mother is trying to make Waverly see flaws that she’s too in love to notice, or if the mother thinks no one is good enough and everyone should be criticized, so we really know what we’re getting. Have you ever met someone who refuses to give compliments because then surely the complimented person will get a big head and become insufferable? Maybe those people are like Waverly’s mother. In American culture we pretty much accept that if we tell our friend or family member that they’re dating or marrying the “wrong” person, they’re going to get married anyway, and we’ve likely ostracized ourselves as a result. Even if we’re right, we try to respect the decisions of our loved ones. And it’s true: planting a seed, a small criticism, about someone can, for many of us, turn into something vile inside ourselves.

In the end, I wasn’t wild about The Joy Luck Club, but I did realize I’m interested in how Tan’s other novels would read if they focus on one or two main characters instead of eight. I’ve added The Bonesetter’s Daughter to my list, because Tan certainly can write interesting characters and stories; I just want more focus on fewer people.

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Published by Grab the Lapels

I'm a graduate of the MFA fiction writing program at the University of Notre Dame, which inspired me to follow along with trends in teaching, publishing, and reviewing. I also have an MA and BS from Central Michigan University. I used to teach composition, creative writing, and literature in higher education, then did a brief stint at a civic theater, followed by two years at a references desk at a public library. I'm now working toward my ASL Interpreter license.

26 comments

  1. I’ve read (listened to) a couple of Amy Tan. Not Joy LuckClub, but Bonesetter’s Daughter a few years ago. She writes a lot of detail about old China and ‘new’ Chinese community in US which is interesting, though I don’t actually remember the stories.

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    • Previously, I’d only read a short story, which was much more like one chapter from The Joy Luck Club. The novel doesn’t really go together for me, so I think Tan’s strength is the short story.

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  2. I enjoyed this, but I think my edition was marketed as short stories, or the blurb said it was interlinked short stories. I definitely remembered it as stories rather than a novel. If it had been marketed as a novel, I don’t know if I would have enjoyed it so much – which is interesting, because it’s the same book, but it goes to show that what you’re expecting can influence your experience, I guess!

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  3. I read this when it came out and remember enjoying it, but then it felt she just kept writing the same book for a while.

    I did see this as a novel because the characters are all connected, but I suppose it could be called connected short stories.

    I think she conveyed the mismatch between generations very well. Good questions re Lindo and Waverley though it’s so long since I read it that I can’t answer them with any authority BUT my sense is that Chinese parents are pretty tough (have high expectations) when it comes to their children and that includes their choice of partner. Waverley knows her mother.

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  4. I remember loving The Bonesetter’s Daughter as a teenager. I think Tan’s books are often thematically quite similar as I think that one is about a mother-daughter relationship too.

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  5. Oh my this does sound like a busy book! Too many characters to keep track of, that would annoy me too.

    I too struggle with reading books about other cultures that seem unfair to certain segments of society (almost always women). On one hand, I want to learn about other cultures and remain open-minded, but on the other, I can’t just turn off my discomfort with shaming people for something they have no control over, which is a theme that comes up again and again in certain cultures (at least, in the older members of those cultures), but I’m hoping that kind of prejudice is changing with the times.

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    • I think The Joy Luck Club would have hit better for me if it were a short story collection, and the tales about the mother and then her daughter were right next to each other instead of four separate stories about mothers and four separate stories about daughters. Each individual story is enchanting, but the whole time I was trying to remember the connections between families.

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  6. This seems to cover some of the same territory that she wrote about it a later novel, The Kitchen God’s Wife – namely the gulf in understanding between mothers and daughters. It wasn’t as fragmented as the Joy Luck Club seems to be though I did get confused about who was who. I enjoyed it but not so much that I felt I wanted to read any more by Tan

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    • Before reading this novel, I had only read short stories by Tan. I am now convinced that she is an excellent short story writer, but that her novels don’t quite come together. In fact, another blogger mentioned that in her country (I think England) the novel was marketed as short stories.

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  9. I think I read this a long time ago and I know I’ve seen the movie. My mom really liked both though I think living in China had a lot to do with that for her. I am remembering another book I read – Wild Swans by Jung Chang. It too follows multiple generations of Chinese women across culture like this but focuses on a single family so I remember it being simpler to follow. You might enjoy it if you were looking for something similar but with characters you could get more attached to.

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    • Woooo, I went to add Wild Swans to my TBR because it sounds interesting, but then I noticed it’s almost 700 pages! It’s three generations so that’s about 230 pages per person, which sounds more like a trilogy than one memoir.

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      • I don’t remember it being that long! It’s been many years since I read it but I seem to recall the largest focus is on the grandmother character, the first generation, which was the most interesting to me anyway. But I can agree with being turned off by that length!

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