Book Tuesday: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

The Joy Luck Club is sixteen interlocking story of four Chinese immigrant women and their daughters. The story starts when the four Chinese women meet at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco. They agreed to meet to play Mah Joh and they called these meetings the Joy Luck Club. The novel is divided into four sections. Two section focus on the mothers and two sections focusing of the daughters.

The first section is about life changing event in the lives of the four Chinese immigrant women. The section starts with Suyuan Woo and the lost of her twin daughters during World War II. It continues with the story of An-Mei Hsu and her mother, it is follow by Lindo Jong who cunning ways saved her from a lifetime of unhappiness and it finishes with Ying Ying St Clair who tells the story of how she fell into a lake during the moon festival.

The second section is about the childhood stories of the American born daughters of the four Chinese immigrant women. It starts with Waverly, Lindo's daughter and how she recalls being a national chess champion and her relationship with her mother. The second story is of Lena St. Clair, Ying Ying's daughter and how she relates to her mother when her mother had nervous breakdown. The third story is of Rose Hsu Jordan, An-Mei's daughter, she tells the story of how her mother lost her faith in god after her younger brother drowned. The section concludes with Jing Mei's story and how her mother, Suyuan had a lot of expectation of her and pushed her to be like Waverly, only to have disappointing results.

The fourth section of the story involves the lives of Waverly, Lena, Rose and Jing Mei as adult. In this section we see the four American daughter trying to lead their lives with their disappointment and  how their mothers influences helped them change those disappointment. The final section returns to Suyuan, Lindo, Ying Ying and An-Mei where they revealed different aspect of the stories that were told in the first section.

The Joy Luck Club is an excellent book that should be read by any person who parent immigrated to American. More than anything this book is about the difference in generation and cultures when they clash and how they are connected with one another.