The Joy Luck Club By: Amy Tan

Title: The Joy Luck Club
Author: Amy Tan
PAPERBACK
Amount of pages: 352
Publisher: (1st edition) Ballantine Books
Publishing Year (1st edition): 1990
Geared Towards: Adults, but teens should read it, it's really good not YA material but just really good.





Summary: The Joy Luck Club follows the stories of four Chinese immigrant women and their ABC (American Born Chinese) daughters.

The Mothers:

Suyuan Woo [Dead-her story is told from the point of her daughter, Jing Mei-Woo. Suyuan survived the horrible Japanese attacks on ]


Lindo Jong [Lindo is forced into marrage (which was arranged for her when she was a baby), she learns to "love" this man as her brother and later hatches a plan to get out of this marriage. When she gets to America she marries Tin Jong and has three children with him.]


An-Mei Hsu [Her mother left her when she was really small, you later find out it was because she was tricked into sleeping with another man right after her husband died. *ooh scandolous* Her grandmother treats her mother like a ghost, someone they aren't allowed to talk about.]


Ying-Ying St. Clair [Her head strong ways were subdued once she moved to America. Her American husband Clifford St. Clair translates for her and usually translates incorrectly because he doesn't understand the real her.]

The Daughters:

Jing-Mei (June) Woo [June takes the place of her mother, Suyuan, in the Joy Luck Club. She has never been able to reach her mother's expectations, but she has been working very hard to try and reach them.]

Waverly Jong [A chess champion when she was young, she later quit because her mom kept showing her off like a trophy. She fears that her mother will have things to say about her and her white fiance, Rich.]

Rose Hsu [Rose and her husband Ted share all the responsibilities and she finds it plain and boring after a while.]

Lena St. Clair [Married and the only daughter of Ying-Ying and Clifford]

Wdebo's Review: I'm sorry my sumary doesn't really say anything about the story. So, the story has eight diffrent stories going on and seven diffrent narrators. It sounds complicated, but it really isn't (unless of course you're this girl from my class who couldn't follow along to the story because it "switches around" and she gave it an F because it was too "confusing.") Truely, it's not that hard to follow they have the names in the beginning of each chapter and after a few words you remember what this person's story is (seeing as how each story is totally diffrent).

Pro: Amy's writting is amazing in this story. You can totally understand what the characters are thinking (That you first person narration!) I love the characters especially Jing-Mei because she shows that not all Chinese people are perfect, that they have flaws, not all of them are the smartest, prettiest, most talented there are still plain Chinese people!

Con: As much as I loved the beginning and ending I found the middle boring, don't get me wrong it was good, but it felt like it was dragging.

Favorite Character: Jing-Mei (As stated on "pro")

All in all, I would totally reccomend this book to anybody it was really well written (and you can learn some Chinese.) and I'm sure a lot of people would enjoy it!

Grade: A-

Wdebo :)