The Joy Luck Club

| 4.21 | 594,179 ratings and reviews

Recommended by Armistead Maupin, and 1 others. See all reviews

Ranked #5 in Chinese, Ranked #5 in China — see more rankings.

Four mothers, four daughters, four families, whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's telling the stories. In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters' futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have never heard these stories, think their mothers' advice is irrelevant to their modern American lives – until their own inner crises reveal how much they've unknowingly inherited of their mothers' pasts.... more
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Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of The Joy Luck Club from the world's leading experts.

Armistead Maupin The novel is structured around the four corners of the mahjong table. The device makes clear the distance between the old world of China and the new world that these women inhabit in San Francisco. The novel focuses on the memories and secrets that these women carry about their mothers and their daughters. It shows modern Chinese-Americans dealing with cultural differences across generations. Although it might sound like that terrible term chick lit, it’s completely compelling because Amy writes with remarkable wit. (Source)

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