Title/author: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Publication Information: New York: Ballantine, 1989.
ISBN #0-8041-0630-4
Suggested Module/Thematic Use:
The Immigrant Experience in the United States
World Languages
Author biography: Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California in 1952, shortly after
her parents' emigration from China. The Joy Luck Club was written in 1989. Recently, Amy Tan has revealed that
some elements in it (the depression of one of the mothers, one daughter's return to China, for example) were autobiographical.
She has written several other novels since The Joy Luck Club, including The Kitchen God's Wife, which is
an expansion of one of the stories in this novel. Along with Maxine Hong Kingston's memoir The Woman Warrior,
this book was considered to have inaugurated a new wave of writing by Asian American writers and especially Asian American women.
Summary: Four mothers who form the "Joy Luck Club" (a group
that gathers to play mah-jongg and tell stories of their native
China) describe their often tragic experiences in China.
Their American-born daughters' lives, though more prosperous,
are marred by divorce and other difficulties. The mothers
and daughters eventually work through their conflicts to reconciliation.
The book ends with a daughter's return to China to meet relatives
she had never met.
Target Audience: High School
Genre: Fiction
Length: 337 pages
Availability: Paperback $7.99 (Available at Borders and on Amazon.com)
Commentary: There is also a movie of this novel, for which Amy Tan collaborated
on the screenplay. The movie is rated R only for one brief sexual scene.
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