61 pages • 2 hours read
The Joy Luck Club
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Summary and Study Guide
Overview
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (1989) follows the stories of four Chinese women who immigrate to America and their American-born daughters. This was Tan’s first novel, a highly-acclaimed New York Times best-seller and winner of the 1989 California Book Award for Fiction. It was adapted into a film in 1993 and was the first wide American film release with a predominantly Asian American cast.
Plot Summary
The Joy Luck Club is divided into four parts, each containing four stories told in first-person point of view exploring the conflicts of four mother-daughter pairs. Each part begins with an allegorical story that distills the themes of the stories that follow. The mothers met in San Francisco’s Chinatown after World War II and formed a social club called the Joy Luck Club. Most of the novel takes place in the late 1980s with lengthy flashbacks to the mothers’ youths in war-torn China.
At the beginning of the novel, Suyuan Woo, the founder of the Joy Luck Club, has recently died. Her daughter Jing-Mei is asked to take her mother’s place at the mahjong table with the Unlock all 61 pages of this Study Guide Plus, gain access to 8,900+ more expert-written Study Guides. Including features:
Related Titles
By Amy Tan
