The East is where things begin.

It's difficult to explain the impact of this novel without getting too sentimental. I'd heard of Amy Tan, of course, but never read her novels until my mother bought them for me in high school. This was an unusual occurrence for her, as she hadn't bought me a book since I was very little. I like to think that maybe she identified with this tale about mothers and daughters and all their difficulties, and that she thought I might, too...and that maybe knowing each other's perspectives might help us better understand one another. But describing this as a book about mothers and daughters really doesn't do it justice.

To be sure, it is about two generations of women, one rooted in China and the other raised in the U.S. But it's also about the individual stories of these women and how they came to find their strength to overcome tragedy and war. And it's about the thousand and one misunderstandings that come between a mother and child. Tan's novel is steeped in Chinese culture and has incredible detail and characters. Each time I read it, not only am I reminded about my heritage, but I'm astounded at how many small truths it contains.


The Story

The Joy Luck Club was a gathering began by Suyuan Woo, during the Japanese occupation of China where food was scarce and the threat of bombing was in the minds of many. It was a means for the members to forget their troubles for a short while, to laugh and celebrate life and what they did have. Suyuan reasons:

"It's not that we had no heart or eyes for pain. We were all afraid. We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. How much can you wish for a favorite warm coat that hangs in the closet of a house that burned down with your mother and father inside of it?"

Tan's novel has seven narrators, three mothers and four daughters. In the four sections of the book, they alternate telling their tales, first mothers, then daughters, then the mothers. And oh, what tales they have to tell! An-Mei Hsu recalls growing up in China and the disgrace of her mother who became the third concubine of a rich man. Lindo Jong describes her arranged marriage and the harsh treatment she received at the hands of in-laws before devising her own clever way to escape. And Ying-Ying St. Clair tells of the celebration of a Moon Festival when she was four years old, when she loses, then finds her family. The stories the daughters tell are equally intriguing, and set in the U.S. Waverly Jong speaks of her beginning as a chess champion and the pressures she felt from her domineering mother, whom she now fears to tell about her engagement to a Caucasian man. Lena St. Clair tells of how she grew up shadowed by her mother's fears and entered into an inequal marriage. Rose Hsu Jordan describes her mother's faith and anguish a the death of a child, and her own anguish at her divorce. And Jing-Mei Woo recounts of her struggles to please her mother, and how painful it was to never measure up to her expectations.

There are many stories contained in The Joy Luck Club, and the first is told by Jing-Mei Woo, daughter of Suyuan, two months after Suyuan's death. At a present-day meeting of the Joy Luck Club, Jing-Mei (or June, as her Americanized name goes) is to take her mother's place at the eastern corner of the Mahjong table. And the East is where things begin.


The Good Stuff

Tan's strengths are language and characters, hands down. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I'm Chinese, and in a similar position as the daughters in the story. But nowhere have I ever read fiction that is so caught up in the mindset of any given culture. Reading this novel is like walking through San Francisco's Chinatown--which for me, will always be THE quintessential Chinatown. The sights, sounds and scents call to you and evoke so much feeling of familiarity. Tan even has the cadences of speech down. I grew up with "aunties" (not blood/marriage related, but close friends of my parents, like in the story) who often mingled their English and Chinese, who exclaimed "Aii-ya!" and tacked on an "ah" to the end of words that seemed to serve a similar purpose as the French "n'est-ce-pas". Tan's dialogue rings absolutely true to my ear.

Even better are her small descriptions, the tiny details. It might be something as simple as a description of a woman preparing food:

"She is stuffing wonton, one chopstick jab of gingery meat dabbed onto a thin skin and then a single fluid turn with her hand that seals the skin into the shape of a tiny nurse's cap."

Or it could be the way she describes fleas, "jumping up in the air--pah! pah! pah!--like little spatters of hot oil". Whatever it is, Tan's prose often reads like poetry, and I go slowly so I can savor the wonderful imagery.

Each chapter could almost stand on its own as a short story, they are so well-crafted. My favorite would probably be An-Mei Hsu's tale, which begins in her uncle's house and progresses to life with her mother, who is the fourth wife of a rich man in the chapters "Scar" and "Magpies". The scar refers to a burn from boiling soup An-Mei received when her mother first returns home and reveals her disgrace in remarrying. It is this scar An-Mei's mother touches to remind her daughter of who she is, and she goes off to live with mother, despite the warnings of her aunt and uncle that to go is to share her mother's shame. As an adult and mother, An-Mei mourns her daughter's sadness at her divorce and how her daughter Rose believes she has no choice:

"...I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other peoples' misery, to eat my own bitterness. And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way1 Maybe it is because she was a 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 in the same direction. I know what it is to be quiet, to listen and watch, as if your life were a dream. You can close your eyes when you no longer want to watch. But when you no longer want to listen, what can you do?"

Long ago, An-Mei's mother told her the story of a turtle in the garden pond who ate her tears as they fell, then opened its beak to let out seven pearly eggs from which flew seven singing magpies. The birds also began to drink the pond of tears. This, An-Mei's mother explained, was how life worked. Your tears did not wash away your sorrows, they only fed someone else's joy. An-Mei tells the same story to her daughter, saying that her mother, Rose's grandmother died because she truly had no choice, and no opportunity to speak up and change her fate. Rose, she says, does have a choice. She can live her life like a dream, or she can wake up and try to understand what has already happened.

Not only is this a fine lesson, it's a lesson told in a beautiful story of how An-Mei's mother literally sacrificed herself so that her daughter could be strong, and how the death of her weaker spirit taught her daughter to shout instead of whisper. Each chapter told by a mother is like this, with wonderful stories and allegory used to illustrate each point.


"Mom, is that you?"

Despite the presence of so many narrators, each (in time) has a strong individual voice, each with their own obstacles, flaws and triumphs. June is the perfect beginning narrator, as it is her mother who created the club. It is June who must fulfill her mother's goal of tracking down the twin girls she lost long ago in China, the babies she was forced to abandon along the roadside while fleeing the destruction of war.

What strikes me most about the people in this novel is the same thing that appeals to me concerning dialogue. The characters ring true. So true, in fact, that I swear Tan must know my mother personally. Obviously, she doesn't, but what the author does know is the dynamics of the Chinese mother-daughter relationship. It's difficult to explain how complicated this is to someone who hasn't experienced it first hand, but this book is an excellent introduction. There were so many times when I recognized my mother in the characters of Suyuan Woo and Lindo Jong, in particular. She shares their tendency to be forceful and at times domineering, wanting the best for her children and yet not knowing how to best connect with them on a personal level so that mother and child are always at odds.

There are many things in TJLC's daughters that I identify with as well. I too, have felt the same pressures Waverly and June have to succeed, to the point of feeling a little burned out. I too, have rebelled at what I perceived to be my mother's expectations of me, and have been wary to tell them of the man I fell in love with, a non-Chinese several years older than I. And I too, have often felt far removed from my mother, so much so that it's hard for me to say who she is.

This situation in particular recalls the dismay of the aunties when June says she does not know her mother. This becomes important when belatedly, the girls, June's half-sisters, are found too late, after Suyuan has passed away. Auntie Ying insists that June must tell them about their mother, and is saddened when June protests. "Not know your own mother?" cries one Auntie, "How can you say? Your mother is in your bones." June looks at the aunties and understands their fear. They are scared, she explains, because they see their own daughters in her, ignorant of all the things their mothers went through, and the lessons they had hoped to teach them.

This is great stuff. The challenge of having distinct characters (eight of them, counting Suyuan, whose story is primarily told by her daughter and husband) must've been a monumentous one. How to portray all these women, who all have similar stories and backgrounds? And yet, Tan manages. It is difficult at first to keep track of all the mothers and daughters, but if you read carefully, you see that each mother and daughter has their own separate personality and problems. The "voice" of Lindo Jong and Ying-Ying St. Clair comes through particularly strong--the first woman saddened by her daughter's lack of understanding and the second a fragile-looking creature with the heart of a tiger.


The Not-so-Good Stuff

There are only a few shortcomings in Tan's novel, none that bar my enjoyment of the book, but some that might be troublesome for others. One of the problems is the number of characters. As I mentioned earlier, it can be difficult keeping track of them all, although I found it easier with multiple readings of the novel. But since some of the mother's and daughter's stories are similar (unhappy childhoods, war, bad relationships), it's also easy to get them mixed up. I'd recommend going through the book slowly, and taking the time to make sure all the characters are straight in your mind. In my edition, (a paperback one with pictures from the movie on the cover) there is a list of characters separated into mother/daughter categories.

The second problem is one I've heard other people remark upon, and I have to agree--Tan's novels in general seem to have a shortage of positive, well-defined male characters. It's not that there aren't sons, brothers or fathers in TJLC, it's just that they don't have a fraction of the development that the female characters have. As much as June's mother is a major part of her life, her father is nearly invisible in comparison until the very end of the novel, when he fleshes out the story of how his wife Suyuan lost her children. And this is pretty much the same for the other husbands/fathers in the novel. Lena St. Clair's father is a rather absent-minded mind oblivious to his wife's distraction. He doesn't speak much Chinese, and although he loves his wife and wants to help her after her miscarriage, he's just not in much of a position to do anything. Mr. St. Clair comes off as a rather helpless, careless sort of guy who is a bit of an oaf when it comes to the Chinese culture--which is another trait that the men in TJLC have. Another example would be Rich, Waverly's fiance, disgraces himself at a family dinner by showing his ignorance of etiquette, not being able to use chopsticks, etc. Although these characterizations are, I think, meant to illustrate the wide chasm between eastern and western thinking, I wouldn't blame anyone for finding them rather insulting and stereotypical. The impression I get is that the male characters are either coarse and abusive, or good, but somewhat one-dimensional.

These are only a couple examples, but they're fairly representative of the state of male characters as a whole in Tan's books. I'm guessing Tan is writing what she knows, and her books are primarily on mother/daughter relationships, along with the issue of Asian-American identity. She's good at this aspect, but there are some places where she could be stronger.


Recommendations

Amy Tan's writing really speaks to me since I'm in a similar position to her characters. They remind me so much of things I've done and how my mother and I interact--or fail to interact as the case may be! Even though not everyonemay be able to identify personally with the specific situation of Chinese-American daughters and mothers, I think there is more than enough common ground here about family relationships to appeal to a wide audience. I love how Tan gives us the perspectives of both mothers and daughters, and how we get to view everyone through everyone else's eyes. It may be confusing at times, but I think we get the best of both worlds when we're allowed an intimate look at first mother, then daughter. I certainly felt like I could empathize with either view, and it's no easy task making all the characters that sympathetic.

I would recommend this novel to anyone who simply enjoys getting lost in a good story or in writing about other countries and cultures. My husband read it when we first began dating. I suggested it to him so he could get a little insight into how my parents thought, and I think he found it helpful as well as a good read. This is probably Tan's best known work, and very similar to her book The Kitchen God's Wife, the main difference being that TKGW focuses on ONE mother/daughter pairing rather than four.

Also, if you liked the movie, I highly recommend the book. It is better, richer, the characters and stories more developed... All in all, far superior. Don't get me wrong--I thought the movie was lovely, well-acted and I liked it, but it was to the book version what a low-fat dessert is to the fat-laden, made-with-real-butter one. It might be good and satisfying in its own way, but it sort of pales in comparison to the real thing. The movie was mainly helpful to me because it provided faces to go with the names in the book. I was a little annoyed by some of the liberties it took, however. For example, the scene where a mother drowns her baby never happens in TJLC, but it does happen in TKGW. The movie also tends to downplay or cut short many scenes in the book, which I feel is a great loss to the viewer. If you only have time to take in one of these versions, choose the book!

The Joy Luck Club never fails to catch me up in Tan's writing, just as it rarely fails to give me a lump in my throat at the ending. It is beautiful, evocative, darkly sinister when it needs to be, and completely enthralling.