The Joy Luck Club

The Joy Luck Club / Amy Tan
NY: Penguin, 2006, c1989.
288 p.

I first read this years ago, when it was new, and saw the film as well. I recently picked it up again and reread it, and found that it was still a compelling read. I'd forgotten a lot about it, but this time around I got more nuance in the mother-daughter relationships, and could understand both sides of all the stories. It's beautifully written, with some memorable characters, and I just love the polyphonic storytelling, where the core of the story is circled by so many voices. 

The story looks at four women who have immigrated from China, who meet regularly at a Mah Jong game. They each have daughters. Each of these characters tell their stories in sixteen short chapters; it's bookended with the voice of the character June Mei. The themes range from the mothers' experiences in China as children themselves, the experiences of first and second generation immigrants and the drive to keep one's culture, and the mother-daughter relationship overall. These three things all meld in this book, each affecting the other; you can't separate them. 

The stories aren't balanced, in the sense that we get a lot more information about some characters than others, and the character voices can be hard to keep apart. But this was Tan's first book, and she was ambitious with this structure - while it isn't perfect, I did find that the overlapping stories and relationships resonated and created a fuller picture than if just one character was narrating. This was groundbreaking when it was published, with a story of Asian immigrants becoming a best-seller and hitting the mainstream. There are many more stories to choose from now, but I still feel a fondness for this one. It digs into the female experience in a way that was fresh at the time of publication, and still valuable to read now. 

If you haven't read it, I think it is worth exploring - it's a classic that is still studied widely and I think there are good reasons for that. It still engaged me on this reread.