AP English Literature
Section Analysis
The Joy Luck Club
The Joy Luck Club is a work of fiction that contains sixteen short stories divided into four
sections. Each short story is told in a different point of view from a daughter or a
mother.
Themes:
Assimilation and the American Dream
Language as a barrier and a bridge
The generational and cultural gap or bridge
Section 1
o Joy Luck
 Background information about the origins of The Joy Luck club and June’s
mom told from the viewpoint of Jing-Mei Woo (June Woo)
 1st meeting of the Joy Luck Club since the death of June’s mom, Suyuan.
 June’s father invites her to the join the club
 She sits at east side of table where everything begins in her mother’s spot
 The “Aunties” pool their money to send June to China to meet her sisters
she didn’t know about and tell them about her mother
 Aunties act desperate for June to travel and tell her sisters everything she
can
 It is very important for the sisters to “know” their mother
 Auntie Lin was Suyuan’s best friend
 Introduced to: Jing-Mei Woo – Daughter of Suyuan
 Jing-Mei’s father  Auntie An-Mei and Uncle George Hsu
 Auntie Lindo (Lin) & Uncle Tin Jong
 Auntie Ying-Ying St. Clair
 Uncle Jack – Auntie Ying’s Younger brother – she invited
him to the Joy Luck because her husband has passed away
 The reader gets background information about June’s mother, Suyuan,
her first marriage or first life, her two babies she left behind and the story
that she tells June.
 June doesn’t believe her mother’s story because she changes the ending
each time
 Is it ironic? That Suyuan died from an aneurism when her husband and
friends say that she died with a “thought on her brain” or “Her thoughts
killed her”. Are they looking into the literal ideas that the brain was too
packed and it burst?
 Look at first page of Joy Luck for June’s father’s explanation of his wife’s
death.
o Scar
 Told from Auntie An-Mei’s point of view
 Auntie to June (Jing-Mei)
 Popo is An-Mei’s grandmother and An-Mei’s mother left her with Popo
when she re-married
 An-Mei’s father died; she never met him. She only knows of him from a
framed photo on the wall
AP English Literature
Section Analysis
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The Joy Luck Club
When her mother remarried she was a “concubine”
 A concubine is described as: (in polygamous societies) a
woman who lives with a man but has lower status than his
wife or wives.
 An-Mei was physically and mentally abused as a child by her Auntie
 Popo (grandmother) told a lot of different stories that meant something
other than what An-Mei implied. – Middle of page 34
 An-Mei has one sibling – a brother
 She is scared on her throat from the night that her mother left their house
 They had made soup and her mother and grandmother were
fighting
 An-Mei was stuck in the middle and was trying to get to her
mother when the soup fell on her
 That was the last time she saw her mother
o The Red Candle
 Told from Lindo Yong’s point of view
 Auntie to June (Jing-Mei)
 The village matchmaker came to her house when she was just two years
old and her family promised her to marriage
 Her mother did not give her a lot of affection because she told her and
acted as if she was not her daughter because she was already promised
to another family (page 45)
 When she was 12 years old their family home flooded and they were
forced to move.
 Her family figured 12 was old enough and Lindo moved in with her future
husband and his family
 Her new family treated her as a servant
 She was married at 16 and told she needed to have a baby within a year
 Never slept with her husband because she figured out that he did not like
women
 Devised a plan to make her new family think that it was their idea to get rid
of her because the candle went out on the night of their wedding
 She was freed from them and her husband re-married to the servant girl
who was impregnated already
o The Moon Lady
 Told from the viewpoint of Ying-Ying
 Auntie to June (Jing-Mei)
 She had a rich family because she and her other young siblings all had an
Amah who took care of them instead of her mothers and/or father
 Has many siblings but calls them by numbers because they are her
father’s children from other mothers (Concubines) but the same father
 Her family travels to the moon festival on Tai Lake
 Moon festival is like a play or show and an all day camp out on boats.
 The show is performed after dark in front of the moon
 At the end of the play people pay which is probably what pays for the
show
AP English Literature
Section Analysis
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The Joy Luck Club
Ying-Ying is very rambunctious and curious
She falls into the lake and is picked up by another boat
She is scared and can’t find her family, the rescuers leave her on the
shore of the lake thinking her family will look for her
She sees the moon lady at the end of the show and runs to her to make
her wish and discovers that the moon lady was a man acting
She forgot these memories growing up but now that she is old, she is
remembering the beginning of her life again
Her wish was to be found
 This has multiple meanings
 Has she been found in her adult years?