The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan
 The Joy Luck Club consists of sixteen interlocking stories about the lives of four Chinese immigrant women and their four American-born daughters. In 1949, the four immigrants meet at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco and agree to continue to meet to play mah jong. They call their mah jong group the Joy Luck Club. The stories told in this novel revolve around the Joy Luck Club women and their daughters. Structurally, the novel is divided into four major sections, with two sections focusing on the stories of the mothers and two sections on the stories of the daughters. The first section, Feathers from a Thousand Li Away, introduces the Joy Luck Club through Jing-Mei Woo, whose late mother Suyuan Woo founded the Joy Luck Club, and focuses on the four mothers. Jing-Mei relates the story of how her mother Suyuan was the wife of an officer in the Kuomingtong during World War II and how she was forced to flee from her home in Kweilin and abandon her twin daughters. Suyuan later found out her first husband died, remarried to Jing-Mei's father and immigrated to the United States. Her mother and Jing-Mei's father attempted to find Suyuan's daughters, and Jing-Mei's father assumed that Suyuan had given up hope. Jing-Mei, who has been asked to take her mother's place in the Joy Luck Club, learns from the other mothers that her half-sisters are alive and ask that Jing-Mei tell them about Suyuan's death. The other three mothers relate the stories of their childhood. An-Mei Hsu's story relates how her mother left her family to become the fourth concubine of Wu Tsing, a rich merchant, while An-Mei was raised by her maternal grandmother. Her mother returns only to cut off a piece of her flesh to cook a soup in hopes of healing An-Mei's grandmother, though An-Mei's grandmother still dies. Lindo Jong explains how in childhood she was forced into a loveless marriage and was pressured by her mother-in-law's desire for Lindo to produce grandchildren. Through her own ingenuity, Lindo fabricates a convincing story to annul her marriage and emigrate to the United States. The final story of the first section follows Ying-Ying St. Clair, who tells the story of how she fell into a lake during the Moon Festival when she was a four-years-old. After being rescued by strangers, she wanders into an outdoor opera featuring the Moon Lady, said to grant wishes; when Ying-Ying approaches the Moon Lady after the play to wish to be returned to her family, she discovers the Moon Lady is played by a man. The second section relates important childhood stories of the Joy Luck Club's American-born daughters. Lindo's daughter Waverly recalls being a national chess champion but her relationship with her mother is strained by how Lindo pressures her and brags about Waverly's accomplishments. Lena St. Clair, Ying-Ying's daughter, relates her mother's nervous breakdown and her mother is extremely withdrawn to the point where first her father and then Lena winds up being Ying-Ying's voice. In contrast, Lena notices and initially pities her neighbour's family, believing their noisiness is an expression of unhappiness but realizes later it is how they express their love. An-Mei's daughter, Rose Hsu Jordan, reveals how her mother lost faith in God when Rose's youngest brother, Bing, drowned in a beach outing. However, An-Mei still insists that Rose puts faith in her failing marriage. The section concludes with Jing-Mei's story, where she reveals how Suyuan had high expectations that Jing-Mei would be talented like Waverly and tried to shape a disinterested Jing-Mei into a concert pianist, which ended after an embarrassing piano recital. The third section follows the Joy Luck children as adult women, all facing various conflicts. In Lena's story, she narrates her troubling marital problems and how she fears being inferior to her husband, but does not realize he has taken advantage of her both at home and at work, where he is also her boss and earns much more than her. Waverly Jong worries about her mother's opinion of her white fiance, Rich, and recalls quitting chess after becoming angry at her mother in the marketplace. Believing that her mother still has absolute power over her and will object to her forthcoming marriage to Rich, Waverly confronts her mother after a dinner party and realizes that her mother has known all along about her relationship with Rich and has accepted him. Rose Hsu Jordan learns that her husband intends to marry someone else after divorcing her, she realizes that she needs to fight for her rights and refuses to sign the conditions set forth by her husband's divorce papers. In Jing-Mei's story, Jing-Mei has argument with Waverly at a Chinese New Year's dinner the year before the story begins. Realizing that Jing-Mei has been humiliated, Suyuan gives Jing-Mei a special jade pendant called "life's importance," which Jing-Mei rues that she never learned the meaning of the pendant's name. The final section of the novel returns to the viewpoints of the mothers as adults dealing with difficult choices. An-Mei reveals what happened after her grandmother died; she accompanied her mother back to where she lived as the abused fourth concubine of Wu Tsing, whose second concubine manipulates and controls the household and has taken An-Mei's half-brother as her son. After learning how her mother was forced into accepting her position after Wu Tsing's second wife arranged for An-Mei's mother to be raped and shamed, An-Mei finds her mother has poisoned herself two days before Chinese New Year, knowing that Wu Tsing's superstitious beliefs will ensure An-Mei will grow in favourable conditions. Ying-Ying St. Clair reveals how her first husband, a womanizer, abandoned her and how she married an American man she did not love after relinquishing her sense of control in her life. Lindo Jong relates how she arrived in San Francisco and met An-Mei Hsu when they both worked at a fortune-cookie factory, which eventually gave her the means to plant the idea of marriage in her boyfriend's head. The novel's final episode returns to Jing-Mei and her mother's desire to find her lost twin daughters. Jing-Mei and her father fly to China, where Jing-Mei meets her half-sisters and embraces her Chinese heritage.