City News

In the aftermath of a war that left hundreds dead and homeless, four Chinese families band together and move to America to overcome the pain and grief of their past.

Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club is a powerful collection of short stories that compare the lives of four Chinese mothers - Lindo Jong, An-Mei Hsu, Suyuan Woo, and Ying Ying St. Clair- and their Americanized daughters- Waverly Jong, Rose Hsu Jordan, Jing-Mei (June) Woo and Lena St. Clair respectively. As there are many characters with their own stories, I’m going to summarize the stories of the 2 most important characters, as these stories are where the other characters’ stories’ build off of.

An-Mei Hsu:

During her childhood, An-Mei lived with her aunt, uncle, and grandmother, as her father died when she was young and her mother decided to marry a well-known womanizer from a foreign city (leading to her expulsion from the family) . When she was separated from her mother after the marriage, a pot of boiling hot water spilled on her and she ended up getting blistering scars on her neck. Her grandmother later died from an illness (after explaining the several gory things that would happen to her if she left with her mother), leading to her mother coming back to the house for the funeral. An-Mei knew that disturbing things would happen to her, but she wanted to challenge that myth, so she escaped her suffering and went to her stepfather’s house. The house was much larger than the family house she was raised in, and her stepfather had 4 wives. The second wife had the most power in the house, as she controlled the use of his money and often faked suicide to get what she wanted. When An-Mei’s mother remarried once again, she was actually forced to by the scheming of the second wife, as she was already a widow at the time and could not remarry due to Buddhist customs. Not only that, her stepfather wanted a male successor, so the second wife wittingly took An-mei’s younger brother away from her mother. To end the suffering she endured, she killed herself in front of An-mei so she could get her revenge in death. 

Suyuan Woo:

When the war hit and the Japanese invaded her home of Nanking, Suyuan Woo escaped to her dream vacation area of Kweilin. She no longer viewed it as a beautiful place however, as the cramped and utterly disgusting lifestyle of refugees like her along with the critical situation made her strongly dislike the place. The news was very unreliable, and when the Kuomintang finally reported that the Japanese were coming to Kweilin, Suyuan escaped with her family heirloom mahjong board and her twin daughters (this was before June was born). As she progressed on her escapade, she was forced to leave everything she owned behind. After the war, she was the founder of the Joy Luck Club, where the group of four mothers could play mah jong and laugh their sorrows away. The Joy Luck Club later relocated to San Francisco, where Suyuan lived her last years before dying. 

I really liked how all of the characters had their own special characteristics, as the overwhelming amount of material in this book was easier to remember when I memorized what each character’s personality was. However, the amount of material in this book is insane and very hard to remember unless you reread the chapters multiple times or have good memory. I liked this book a lot for it’s captivating story elements, but I was willing to reread the same chapters for hours just to gain total understanding of what happens in each chapter. I can’t say the same for other teens my age or older.

Anyways, this book is generally a lot darker than most adult novels out there, so I wouldn’t really recommend this book to people who like action and thriller novels (the 2 genres of fiction that I normally review).  It was a unique experience for me to compare the cultural differences of the mothers and daughters, so I would honestly recommend this book to readers who love character development and an overall conflict that isn’t as drawn out but still shapes the story in a major way.

Checkout The Joy Luck Club from the Newport Beach Public Library.