The book that I have read is “The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan.

This unique piece of

art was published in 1989 by G. P. Putnam’s Son in United States.
The genre of “The Joy Luck Club” is fiction. The writer targets the general audience
and the novel has 288 pages. I have read the novel in a pdf form though I have done some
research that the price of this novel is RM70.
The novel is divided four sections, each beginning with a monograph portraying a
stage in the life cycle. The four stories in each section explore the connection between the
mothers and the daughters at the same stage. The first series of stories focuses on Suyuan
Woo, who comes to America in 1947 who have lost her family, including twin daughters,
during war. She does not know her daughters were rescued. After remarried, she settles in
San Francisco, has a daughter, Jing-mei (June), and starts a Joy Luck Club similar to one in
China with three other women. The four got along well and later became close friends. As
she grows up, Jing-mei and her mother struggle to appreciate one another. They never get to
resolve their differences completely, and unfortunately Suyuan dies suddenly. At the next
meeting of the Joy Luck Club, her mother’s friends tell Jing-mei that Suyuan’s twin
daughters have been found. They give her a check so she can plan on visiting them. As the
novel finishes, she meets her sisters in Shanghai. Next set of stories focuses on An-mei, who
lives with her grandmother given her mother has been repudiated. When An-mei is nine, her
grandmother dies; and An-mei leaves with her mother to live in the home of an affluent man
and his other wives. An-mei learns how her mother was forced into a disgraceful second
marriage and why she has zero control over her own life. Her mother’s following suicide
provides An-mei a better life. As an adult An-mei comes to San Francisco. She and her
husband have seven children, including Rose. Rose marries Ted, a dermatologist, who has an
affair and divorces her. Rose is overawed but recovers. The third series of stories focuses on
Lindo. She marries Tyan-yu, but he never sleeps with her. Unable to tell her bossy mother-in-
law the truth, she plans a clever plan and is released from her marriage honourably. She
comes to San Francisco and marries Tin Jong. They have three children—Winston, Vincent,
and Waverly. Waverly is a child chess prodigy. She and her mother go through their
differences throughout her childhood and into adulthood. Their differences peak over
Waverly’s fiancé, Rich Schields, and the two women settle. The fourth series of stories
focuses on Ying-ying. Born into a wealthy family, she is a strong-willed child who nearly
drowns when she is four. She grows into a arrogant young woman and marries a unpolished
man who abandons her after she becomes pregnant. Ten years later she marries Clifford St.
Clair, an American exporter, even though she doesn’t darling him. They come to San
Francisco and have one daughter, Lena. Their second child is stillborn, and Ying-ying is
depressed for months afterward. Her depression affects Lena. As an adult Lena marries
Harold Livotny, who takes advantage of her. Ying-ying feels responsible for raising so
powerless a daughter. She wants to encourage Lena to speak up for herself.
 The theme for “The Joy Luck Club” is that as they matured, the daughters begin to
realise that their individualities are imperfect and become absorbed in their Chinese tradition.
Waverly speaks wishfully about blending in too well in China and becomes livid when Lindo
notes that she will be known rapidly as a tourist. One of Jing-mei’s greatest worries about her
trip to China is not that others will identify her as American, but that she herself will fail to
recognize any Chinese elements within herself. Among the four mothers, Lindo expresses the
most anxiety over her cultural identity. Having been spotted as a tourist during her recent trip
to China, she wonders how America has changed her. She has always believed in her ability
to shift between her true self and her public self, but she begins to wonder whether her “true”
self is not, in fact, her American one. Even while being a young girl in China, Lindo showed
that she did not totally agree with Chinese custom. She tormented over how to save herself
from a dejected marriage without discrediting her parents’ promise to her husband’s family.
While her worry for her parents shows that Lindo did not wish to openly rebel against her
tradition, Lindo made a secret promise to herself to remain true to her own desires. This
promise shows the value she places on autonomy and personal happiness—two qualities that
Lindo associates with American culture. Jing-mei’s experience in China at the end of the
book certainly seems to support the possibility of a richly mixed identity rather than an
identity of warring opposites. She comes to see that China itself contains American aspects,
just as the part of America she grew up in—San Francisco’s Chinatown—contained Chinese
elements
The language level is intermediate in some paragraphs and advanced in few
paragraphs. The wording that are used is Chinese language. The figurative language used in
the novel are personification; “Light wind began blowing past my ears. It whispered secrets
only I could hear.”, “I could hear cicadas crying in the yard.”, and “The wind roared with
laughter.”. the next one is imagery; “Then I heard screaming sounds, slamming, pushing, and
shouts and then whack! Whack! Whack!”. Next figurative language is simile, “Yet my
colouring looked too pale, like something that was ponce darker and faded in the sun.”, “See
how this doorway is, like a neck has been strangled.”, and “…my mother was lying like a
statue on the bed”. The last figurative language is metaphor; “Impatient gathering of gurgling
pigeons”, “My mother lost her name and became a dragon instead of tiger.”.
The three main issues that were present in the book were relationship between mother
and daughter for example in chapter four, the mother is always angry at her daughter though
it is for her own daughter’s sake. On top of that, An-Mei’s mother was forced to get married
which means she was force to do something that she does not want to do and struggling with
her life. thus, cultural conflicts are being presented in the novel as well.
I would highly recommend this novel toward others because we can get to know the
cultural differences that occur in different country. Moreover, we get to witness the
significance of a mother’s love towards her daughter. Last but not least, we can learn about
the struggle migrant from another country to another country.
Book Cover: Front page

Book Cover: Back page