A captivating tale of both the immigrant experience and mother-daughter relationships, The Joy Luck Club tells sixteen interwoven stories of four Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-raised daughters in 1980s San Francisco, California.
Each of the book's sixteen chapters tell stories of hope, loss, oppression, hardship, identity, pain, inequality, conflict, and the problems between the generations of mothers and daughters due to significantly different cultural backgrounds and experiences.
The Joy Luck Club originally began in 1949 by Suyuan Woo, who brought three other immigrant wives - An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair - together to feast on dim sum, play mahjong, and exchange the stories of their past. Together, these four women became the Joy Luck Club, and eventually, they each raised an American born daughter: Jing-mei Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Waverly Jong, and Lena St. Clair.
These four womens’ daughters struggle with being able to tell the stories of their mothers’ past with the same ingenuity and clarity that they have heard of them throughout their childhood. They want to break away from their mothers’ wants, hopes, and desires, and figure out who they are without them, but at the same time, they want to be able to remember. The past that all of these girls have lies within their mothers. And though their mothers have so many stories about the past, their daughters are too busy trying to exceed their parents' expectations of thinking Chinese and acting American in a multicultural household to stop and listen.
Meanwhile, the four Chinese mothers are filled with so much pride and love for the country they grew up in and their past despite facing so much inequality, loss, and hardship. They are trapped in the past, in stories, in pain and in hardship, so much so that they cannot truly understand the America that they are raising their family in. They are able to tell the stories of their own mothers so well, but will their daughters even be able to do the same for them?
The path to self discovery and understanding your past is difficult and complicated, and it cannot be done alone. The mothers and daughters of The Joy Luck Club must come together to understand their identities, defeating the high expectations that come with the American dream for both immigrants and their American raised children, and more importantly - overcoming the generational and cultural barriers and tensions that span across oceans and continents and searching deeper for something else that spans across oceans and continents too: love.
📚📚📚📚📖 - a beautiful must read!
Happy Reading!
Neerja
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