The Joy Luck Club
Ratings166
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings166
Average rating3.8
Four mothers, four daughters, four families, whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's telling the stories. In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters' futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have never heard these stories, think their mothers' advice is irrelevant to their modern American lives – until their own inner crises reveal how much they've unknowingly inherited of their mothers' pasts.
With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.
Reviews with the most likes.
I know this book is ultra famous, but it didn't caught my attention until this year. I wanted to read a book about characters who were dealing with culture and heritage problems, so when I read the synopsis of this book, I was delighted. This book, is an amazing example of how family, values, traditions and cultural beliefs can be hard to understand, especially if you were born in a culture and live in another.
I liked some stories more than others, but overall it was a very pleasant read. I've learned a lot about Chinese culture and traditions, and it made me realize my own situation. I liked the family dynamics portrayed in each story and how they worked everything out.
I think this book should be read by anyone who wants a deeper understanding of life in general.
I won this book through GoodReads and I thank to publishers for providing me this copy. My review isn't influenced by this fact.
I first read this 20 years ago. It's a wonderful book, and it occurs to me now that it's really more of a novel in stories than a novel. The chapters stand alone nicely and make a satisfying whole.
I loved that every chapter was its own mini story, and each story so beautifully written and engrossing. I cried at the end.
