The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan
Who hasn't heard of the Joy Luck Club? I first heard of it as a movie in the 90s. I still haven't seen the movie...but after reading this I will probably give in and pay to rent it on Amazon Prime.
I believe this is Amy Tan's first novel, the story of a Mah Jong playing group of four Chinese American women, who uprooted their lives in China for different reasons and came to San Francisco to start a new life. These are stories of their lives, and also included are stories of their daughter's lives, told in each character's point of view. We get little pieces of their past and present, and each story when stitched together, creates a bigger picture
I don't know why it took me so long to pick up this book, since I love learning about Asian culture as well as Chinese-American history. The first of Amy Tan's books I read was Saving Fish from Drowning, and I enjoyed that one as well, so I had to move this one up on my TBR list, and am glad I did.
The author, using the Chinese mothers and Americanized daughters, writes from two culturally different perspectives. The mothers have a definite traditional Chinese perspective including superstitions and just different thought processes. The daughters have more American perspectives and don't always understand or appreciate their mothers or what they experienced before they got to the point of life where they now are in the book. That's something that I appreciate. We don't all have the same perspectives or thought processes, because we don't all have the same life, or the same history or culture. But if we just try to listen and understand, we can learn to connect.
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