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Amy Tan

The Joy Luck Club

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SUMMARY:
Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's “saying” the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. “To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable.” Forty years later the stories and history continue.
With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.
This book is currently unavailable
324 printed pages

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Impressions

  • viridianpetalshared an impression24 days ago
    👍Worth reading
    🔮Hidden Depths
    💡Learnt A Lot
    🎯Worthwhile
    💧Soppy

    3.5/4. Rounded down to 3.

    The book was quite a hard, emotional and complex read for me, but totally worth it. The overarching theme of immigrant children having a hard time communicating and understanding their Asian mothers is powerful and heartbreaking. As a reader, you just can't help but feel sadness, anger and sympathy for every character.

    Personally, since I'm not a child of immigrant parents, I feel like it's not my place to speak about how well the book portrays that part. But I can relate to just how difficult it is trying to find a common ground with my own mother, despite us speaking the same language.

    The reason why I gave the book 3.5 stars, instead of 4 or more, is that I think the book lacks something. The fact that the book is about four women and their four mothers, and their connections was initially unclear to me. I got quite far into the book before I realized that I wasn't reading about just one person. And I take full blame for that. It's truly my fault. I went into the book completely blind. I think this book will definitely work even better for me on my second read, but I just need to give the story some time to settle, before I read it again.

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    Quotes

    • Daniela Orozcohas quoted4 years ago
      Or maybe she said butong, not the same thing at all. It was one of those Chinese expressions that means the better half of mixed intentions. I can never remember things I didn’t understand in the first place
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      • хвоюшкаhas quoted6 years ago
        I worshipped this mother from my dream. But the woman standing by Popo's bed was not the mother of my memory. Yet I came to love this mother as well.
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        • хвоюшкаhas quoted6 years ago
          That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain
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