The Joy Luck Club
Author: Amy Tan
About the Author
Born in Oakland, California
Grew up in San Francisco
Other works include: The
Kitchen God’s Wife, The
Hundred Secret Senses,
and The Chinese Siamese
Cat.
Setting
The stories of the daughters take place in
San Francisco.
The stories told about the mothers are told
from different parts of China including
Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou.
The stories of the women date back to the
1910s when the mothers were born up to
the 1980s when the daughters are grown.
History of the Joy Luck Club
Suyuan Woo founded the club.
It began in China as a way for women to come
together and celebrate life during the Japanese
attacks (WWII).
The San Francisco chapter is made of four
Chinese ladies who came to America to start new
lives and escape their tragic pasts.
The club’s activities include a large meal and then
a competitive game of mah jong – a game of dice
and tiles.
Stories are told around the table during the game
which is ultimately what the book is about – a
compilation of all the women’s life stories.
Maj Jong
Characters
Mothers
Suyuan Woo
An-mei Hsu
Lindo Jong
Ying-ying St. Clair
Daughters
June Woo
Rose Hsu Jordan
Waverly Jong
Lena St. Clair
Suyuan Woo
Sits at the East of the table
This is where things begin
She is the founder of the Joy
Luck Club
She wants only the best for
her daughter be sometimes
becomes overly critical
When the Japanese attack
she is forced from her home
and wanders for days with her
twins strapped on her back
She must leave them on the
street, and never see them
again
She dies at the beginning of
the book leaving her daughter
to take her place in the club
and to find her lost twins.
Jing-Mei/June Woo
Daughter of Suyuan Woo
Her mother pushed her to
be a child prodigy at the
piano when she was little
but she never wanted to be
anything but normal
She has no desire to be
married or finish school
June becomes an
advertising agent
June and Waverly are in
constant competition
Auntie An-Mei
Sits at the south
When she was younger her
mother was tricked into
being a concubine for a
rich man after her father
died.
In her unhappiness, her
mother commits suicide
An-mei too becomes overly
critical and controlling of
her daughter
Rose Hsu Jordan
Daughter of An-Mei
When she was young the
family took a trip to the
beach and Rose was left in
charge of watching her
brothers.
Her youngest brother
drowned and she forever
lives in the memory of the
guilt.
When she was an adult,
her husband, Ted, left her
for another woman.
Instead of keeping silent
like her culture required,
she stood up for herself
and hired a lawyer in order
to keep the house.
Lindo Jong
Sits in the west
Was forced into an
arranged marriage that
was decided at her birth
Her mother-in-law
despised her because she
wouldn’t have a son.
She found out a way to get
out of the marriage by
tricking the family into
thinking the contract was
not valid.
She went to America
She is a very proud woman
and is not happy when her
daughter is embarrassed
by her.
Waverly Jong
Lindo Jong’s Daughter
Waverly was a child prodigy of
chess.
She won many tournaments
and her mother became
obsessed with her success.
Fed up with her mother’s
bragging, Waverly quits
As an adult Waverly’s
husband left her with a young
daughter and she has now
met a new man in the same
law firm.
Rich, her fiancé, doesn’t make
a good impression on the
strict Chinese family, but is
accepted anyway.
Waverly is resentful at her
mother’s ability to only look at
the negative.
Ying-Ying St. Clair
Sits in the North
Ying-ying was a spoiled
child, spirited and full of
life.
When she becomes
sixteen she believes that
she can see the future.
She marries a man who is
significantly older than she
who leaves her for a
dancer.
In her hurt she shuts
herself off from love
She comes to America
where she meets her
second husband and has
Lena
Lena St. Clair
Her mother tells her that if
she doesn’t eat all of her
rice her husband will be
pock faced. To keep away
from a boy down the street
she quits eating so that he
would be so sick he would
die.
The boy died of measles.
Lena became anorexic.
Later she married a man
from her same architecture
business who added up all
the bills and tallied up who
spent what. This caused
many disagreements
between the two.
Conflict
Mother vs. Daughter: Each daughter struggled
with her mother’s expectations and criticalness.
Daughters vs. Culture: The mothers were not
allowed to marry again after their husbands left or
died without adding shame to their families. Yet
the daughters were all going through divorces,
remarriages, or not wanting to be married at all
Mother vs. American Culture: Each mother had
to cope with the changes that they saw in America
and the effect America had on them
Major themes
The Difference of ancient Chinese culture and American
Culture
“Chinese people had Chinese opinions, and American People
had American Opinions. Usually the American opinion was
better.” –Rose
“I was raised Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to
swallow other people’s misery, to eat my own bitterness” –Anmei
The daughters defy their mothers, find jobs, divorce, and get
their hair cut by homosexuals.
The mothers are critical and only want the absolute best for
their daughters
Chinese pride/Overachievement
American Laziness
Ying gets a job at a fortune cookie factory. She meets An-mei
there and they laugh at the funny quotes that Americans think
they use on a regular basis.
Themes Cont.
Struggle between religion and superstition
“My mother believed in God’s will for many years. She
said it was faith that kept all these food things coming our
way, only I thought that she said, ‘fate,’ because she
couldn’t pronounce that, ‘the,’ sound in ‘faith.’ And later
I discovered that it was fate all along.
Some believed that they could tell the future
If a house was slanted a wrong way the baby would die
If your earlobe is big then you will have a lot of wisdom
If your nose is long then you will have riches
Yet they all went to church with the missionaries in San
Francisco
Themes Cont.
No matter how a daughter is raised she will become her
mother
“And even though I taught my daughter the opposite she came
out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and
she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was
born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going
up and down, but all going the same way.” –An-mei
Waverly fights her own desire, instilled by her mother, to be
critical of her new husband.
Rose fights her urge to be silent and allow her husband to walk
out on her as her mother stayed silent when her mother died.
Lena fights for equality in her marriage just as Ying-Ying fought
to keep her freedom as a child
Women were suppressed in both cultures. All the women were
expected to hold their tears and take what fate had dealt them.
Style
Vocabulary/diction:
Tan used a lot of dialogue to express the tension
between the characters and the difficulty of the language
barriers.
She incorporated Chinese words into her dialogue and
then defined them to add effect to the themes.
Hulihuda: confused
Heimongmong: dark fog
Ying-Ying’s second husband didn’t know how to propose
so he asked if her he she would spouse him. (a word he
found on a fortune cookie placed by Ying)
When the characters were not using Chinese words the
mothers all had strong dialects
“A mother is best. Mother see inside of you.” –An-Mei
“Aii, so much money, so much.
Descriptive language
Tan described things in a unique way
She didn’t use a lot of sensory detail but rather
described the feelings of the characters.
When reading the book, you could not see the place
that action was happening without imagination but
you could feel the despair that was taking place within
the character.
– “I felt numb, strangely weak, as if someone ad
unplugged the current through me.”
She described the characters’ traits by presenting
their actions.
– “Sometimes she would start to make dinner, but would
stop half way, the water running full steam in the sink,
her knife posed in the air over half-chopped
vegetables, silent, tears flowing.”
The characters used many illustrations
– “It was as if he were running to catch things before
they fell, only he would fall before he could catch
anything.
Sentence Structure
When the daughters are speaking they use
long sentences, with several commas and
sometimes run-ons. This is to point out the
fluency of their English.
When the mothers speak they have short,
choppy sentences and sometimes fragments
Order of events
They were sporadic and sometimes hard to
follow but this added to the story telling affect.
Each group of stories had an overall theme.