The Joy Luck Club

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Joy Luck Club
Author Amy Tan
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Novel
Publisher G. P. Putnam's Sons
Publication date 1989
Media type Print (Hardback and Paperback)
Pages 288 pp
ISBN ISBN 0-399-13420-4
For the film, see The Joy Luck Club (film).

The Joy Luck Club (1989) is a best-selling novel written by Amy Tan. It focuses on four Chinese American immigrant families who start a club known as "the Joy Luck Club," playing the Chinese game of Mahjong for money while feasting on a variety of foods. There are sixteen chapters divided into four sections, and each woman, both mothers and daughters, (with the exception of one mother, Suyuan Woo, who dies before the novel opens) share stories about their lives in the form of vignettes. Each section comes after a parable.

In 1993, the novel was adapted into a feature film directed by Wayne Wang and starring Ming-Na, Lauren Tom, Tamlyn Tomita, France Nuyen, Rosalind Chao, Kieu Chinh, Tsai Chin, Lisa Lu, and Vivian Wu. The screenplay was written by Amy Tan and Ronald Bass.

Contents

[edit] Plot summary and Reception

As the novel opens Jing-Mei "June" Woo has just lost her mother, Suyuan, to an aneurysm. She is asked by her mother's three friends to take Suyuan's place in their Mah-Jong foursome and their "Joy Luck Club". The novel unfolds with interspersed chapters by each of the three remaining members of the Club and their American-born daughters. Lindo and Waverly Jong began their war over Waverly's childhood chess stardom and the effects it has on every aspect of Waverly's adult life. An-Mei Hsu recounts the tragedy that gave her strength, and worries that her daughter, Rose, lacks the same determination. Lena St. Clair tries to care for her eccentric mother, while her mother recounts a secret history that has allowed her to see more deeply than her daughter imagines. Through it all, June Woo tries to piece together the stories that her own mother can no longer tell, and to be faithful to her mother's memory despite their sometimes rocky relationship. This story of the bonds between mothers and daughters has been popular with female readers.

[edit] Criticism

Though her book has been widely praised by critics, it has been criticized by noted Asian American author Frank Chin for perpetuating racist stereotypes. [1] [2] [3]

[edit] Characters

[edit] Mothers

  • Suyuan Woo
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Suyuan lives in Kweilin (Guilin) while her husband at the time served as an officer in Chungking (Chongqing). She starts the original Joy Luck Club with her three friends to cope with the war. On the day of the Japanese invasion, Suyuan leaves her house with nothing but a bag of clothes, a bag of food, and her twin baby daughters.
During the long journey, Suyuan leaves her daughters under a tree hoping that they might be rescued. She crawls off expecting to die, but is rescued herself. She later remarries, comes to America, forms a new Joy Luck Club, and has more children, but her abandonment of the twin girls haunts her for the rest of her life. After many years Suyuan learns that the twins were adopted, but dies of a brain aneurysm before she can meet them. It is her American-born daughter Jing-mei who fulfills her long-cherished wish of reuniting with the twins.
As Suyuan dies before the novel begins, her history is told by Jing-mei, based on her knowledge of her mother's stories and what the other members of the Joy Luck Club tell her.
  • An-Mei Hsu
An-mei is raised by her grandparents during her early years after her widowed mother shocks the family by becoming a concubine to a wealthy man after her first husband's death. After An-mei's grandmother died, she lives with her mother in the home of her mother's new husband, Wu-Tsing. An-Mei learns that her mother became Wu-Tsing's concubine through the manipulations of his favorite concubine known as the Second Wife, who arranged a plan for An-mei's mother, still in mourning for her husband, to be raped by Wu-Tsing. The stigma left An-mei's mother with no choice but to marry Wu-Tsing and become his fourth wife. She later lost her baby son to Second Wife, who claimed the boy as her own child to ensure her place in the household. Second Wife also tried to win over An-mei, giving An-mei a necklace made of "pearls" that her mother later revealed were actually glass by crushing one with her foot.
Wu-Tsing is a superstitious man, and Second Wife took advantage of this by making false suicide attempts and threatening to haunt him as a ghost if he did not let her have her way. According to Chinese tradition, a person's soul comes back after three days to settle scores with the living. Wu-Tsing was afraid to face the ghost of an angry wife. After Second Wife used a suicide attempt to prevent An-mei and her mother from getting their own household, An-mei's mother successfully committed suicide herself. She timed her death so that her soul would be due to return on the first day of the new year, a day when all debts must be settled lest the debtor suffer great misfortune. With this in mind, Wu-Tsing promised to treat his fourth wife's children, including An-mei, as if they were his own by an honored first wife. When Second Wife attempted to disrupt this, An-mei crushed the necklace beneath her feet to show her awareness of all the deception and to symbolize her new power over Second Wife.
An-mei later immigrates to America, married, and gives birth to children. Her youngest son Bing dies in a drowning accident at a young age.
  • Lindo Jong
Lindo is a strong-willed woman, a trait her daughter Waverly attributes to her having been born in the year of the Horse. When Lindo was only twelve, she was forced to move in with a neighbor's young son, Huang Tyan Yu. She married him when she was sixteen. She soon realized that her husband was just a little boy at heart and had no sexual interest in her. Lindo began to care for her husband as a brother, but her cruel mother-in-law expected Lindo to produce a grandson. She restricted Lindo's activities, eventually ordering her to remain on bed rest until she could conceive and deliver a child.
Determined to escape this situation, Lindo carefully observed the other people in the household and eventually formed a clever plan to escape her marriage without dishonoring herself or her family. She managed to convince her young husband's family that he was actually fated to marry another girl who was already pregnant with his "spiritual child" (in reality, the girl was pregnant and abandoned), and that her marriage to Huang Tyan Yu would only bring bad luck to the family.
Freed of her first marriage, Lindo decided to immigrate to America. She married a Chinese-American man named Tin Jong and has three children: sons Winston and Vincent, and daughter Waverly.
Lindo experiences regret over losing some of her Chinese identity by living so long in America (she is treated like a tourist on a visit to China), however she expresses concern that Waverly's American upbringing has caused a barrier between them.
  • Ying-Ying St. Clair
From a young age, Ying-Ying is told by her wealthy family that girls should be meek and gentle. She begins to develop a passive personality and repress her feelings. Ying-Ying marries a man named Lin Xiao, not out of love, but because she believed it was her fate. Her husband becomes abusive and openly has relationships with other women. When Ying-Ying discovers that she is pregnant around the time her husband abandons her, she takes revenge by killing his son before he is born and moving in with the poor relatives in the country.
After 10 years, she moves to the city where she meets an American man named Clifford St. Clair. He falls in love with her, but Ying-Ying cannot express the strong emotion after her first marriage. He courts her for four years before she agrees to marry him after learning that Lin Xiao had died, which she takes as the proper sign to move on. She allows him to control most aspects of her life, mistranslating her words and actions, and even changing her name to "Betty." They give birth to two children, one daughter, Lena and a stillborn son.
Ying-Ying is horrified when she realizes that Lena has inherited her behaviors and trapped herself in a loveless marriage with a controlling husband. She finally resolves to tell her daughter her story in the hope that she will be able to break free from the same passivity that ruined her life.

[edit] Daughters

  • Jing-mei "June" Woo
Jing-mei has never fully understood her mother and seems directionless in life. In childhood her mother used to tell her that she could be anything she wants and she wanted June to be genius like other children. At the beginning of the novel, June is chosen to replace her mother's seat in the Joy Luck Club after her mother's death. At the end of the novel, June is still trying to deal with her mother's death, and she visits China to see two half-sisters whom her mother had been forced to abandon when the Japanese attacked China.
  • Rose Hsu Jordan
Rose is somewhat passive. She marries a doctor, Ted Jordan. After a malpractice suit, Ted has a mid-life crisis and decides to leave Rose, who he married more to spite his mother. When Ted comes for the divorce papers, she finds her voice and tells him that he can't just throw her out of his life, comparing herself to weeds in his garden, once so beloved, now unkempt and filthy. She wants to hire a good lawyer and fight for possession of the house, which she eventually wins.
  • Waverly Jong
Waverly is an independent-minded and intelligent woman, but is annoyed by her mother's constant criticism. Well into her adult life, she finds herself restrained by her subconscious fear of letting her mother down. During their childhood, June and Waverly become childhood rivals and their mothers compare their daughter's accomplishments. Waverly was a chess champion but she hated when her mother used to show off her talent so because of this argument of her mother taking all her credit, she quits chess.
  • Lena St. Clair
Lena's husband, Harold, is an Caucasian man who demands financial "equality" in their marriage. They are co-workers, but Lena is an associate while Harold is a partner so he has a larger salary than she does. However, he insists that all household expenses be divided equally between them. Harold believes that by making everything equal, they can make their love equal as well but Lena is frustrated with her life.

[edit] Table of contents

(Name of chapter is followed by the name of the narrator whose perspective is used for that chapter)

[edit] Feathers from a Thousand Li Away

  • "The Joy Luck Club," Jing-mei "June" Woo
  • "Scar," An-Mei Hsu
  • "The Red Candle," Lindo Jong
  • "The Moon Lady," Ying-Ying St. Clair

[edit] The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates

  • "Rules of the Game," Waverly Jong
  • "The Voice from the Wall," Lena St. Clair
  • "Half and Half," Rose Hsu Jordan
  • "Two Kinds," Jing-mei "June" Woo

[edit] American Translation

  • "Rice Husband," Lena St. Clair
  • "Four Directions," Waverly Jong
  • "Without Wood," Rose Hsu Jordan
  • "Best Quality," Jing-mei "June" Woo

[edit] Queen Mother of the Western Skies

  • "Magpies," An-mei Hsu
  • "Waiting Between the Trees," Ying-Ying St. Clair
  • "Double Face," Lindo Jong
  • "A Pair of Tickets," Jing-mei "June" Woo

[edit] References

  1. ^ Come All Ye Asian American Writers of the Real and the Fake
  2. ^ The Joy Luck Club
  3. ^ Review: The Joy Luck Club

[edit] External links