THE JOY LUCK CLUB
- by Amy Tan
- [rated by PBS readers as #42]
- 352 pages
What a nice, interesting read. Of course, I’m imagining that I have run out of descriptive terms about writing about 20 summaries ago! And if that is true, then please accept my apologies.
Dauntless, my run on sentences will continue to run on!
The first sensation I had starting this was how wonderful it was to have an interesting read again! But no, that’s not quite right. Before the interesting read, there was a preface by Amy Tan, tucked into this edition that celebrates the novel’s 30th anniversary.
Amy’s note is delightful and newsy about parallels with her own mother and her surprise that this has resonated on this deep a level with the public. The intro is written well, her being a good writer and all, and really primes you for the book.
Then the book begins with the almost insanely inviting premise of four Chinese women who have played mah jong together for decades. There is a chart in the front to follow, with the four mothers and their four daughters.
Tan says in the beginning that many of the tales contained within are based on reality, but that doesn’t diminish her amazing storytelling. Both true and false stories can be interesting or boring. I’m sure we have all heard both kinds of them.
She then backs up from the initial real time story and moves to telling each woman’s story, separately. It feels as if she had pulled each one away from the game and put on the tape recorder.
About a third of the way in, it is these stories and the way she tells them that really have my admiration. Each woman’s story is immediately to the point and with the greatest bang for your buck, dealt out of the uniqueness of their experience, compared with white America of the time.
The telling of the stories is just magnificent! She constructs wonderful tales. Simple, elegant, unique.
Always feeling the need to represent for my demographic of “mature women who can’t remember shit,” I will point out that, though each character’s story is separate and wonderful, when it’s over, it’s over and the book moves on, leaving me to pretty much forget one story and one woman from the next. Then she goes into each daughter and the mother of that daughter figures in, obviously, but not with any throwback to the mother’s story! So I feel a little bit like I should be making a flow chart with each story on it. But I’m a third in and who knows how this whole thing could come together?
DONE.
Wow. What an amazing storyteller Amy Tan is. Every detail and image is hand picked to further her story in the richest, most dramatic way possible.
Last night, I was looking at a bunch of titles on Audible and came across Water For Elephants. And the message came through. The reason that book works so well is because it grabs you and puts you in a thorough, bright and unique life – the circus. You can forget everything about that book, but you’ll never forget that life.
Joy Luck Club is the same. There is a richness that will remain in every reader’s head long after putting the book away.
My prevailing thought in reading it was that I should never again complain that my mother didn’t understand me. It is scary the openly hostile way that these mothers are attempting to make sure their daughters get the trappings that they had wanted, often up to the expense of their souls.
The generational love is always present but with so much bleak history it is difficult to have or to hold. And that is what Tan wants – to understand the adversarial, passive / aggressive way that concern is shown and administered.
And yet, this is, in the end, not just a Chinese story.
When my parents divorced as I was growing up, I remember thinking that I was part of a new wave of kids who were the first to see that the pictures of success that our parents had thought were the things worth fighting for and getting, were no solution to their pain and estrangement at all.
And the younger generation of women here were just like me. The house, the family, the car, the picket fence – these things didn’t give our parents what they promised. So we were forced to live, looking for other things. This story highlights that divide and how it played onto the Chinese / American landscape.
I was still a bit confused by the jumps between families but I could tell that she was too good a writer to not end in a large, healing, Universal way. And she did, with a trip to China that healed.
A lovely book with amazing, gigantic yet tiny stories throughout. I’m so glad to have read it.
And I still want to learn how to play mah jong!
I read this one SO long ago that I cannot even remember if I saw the movie prior to reading it, or vice versa. Either way, one made me do the other. AND, while I have forgotten most of the detail now, I do remember loving both, and that it made me read more of Amy Tan.
Dang. I want to read it again, because it’s been decades, and you’re right — I remember nothing but the mother/daughter themes and the world of the book, and exactly none of the details. I’m going to need another lifetime to get through all the books you make me want to read and reread.