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The Joy Luck Club
by Amy Tan · 1989
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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. With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters.…
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"This exploration of mother-daughter relationships and the immigrant experience fits Hillary Clinton's interest in women's stories and diverse cultural perspectives. It aligns with her long-standing advocacy for women and families."
Hillary Clinton's O Magazine Favorites ·
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"The Joy Luck Club is a mahjong club composed of four Chinese-American women. 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. The city is nothing but immigrant communities, and the Chinese have been here as long as anybody. The Chinese built the railroads. We wouldn’t have been able to cross the continent if it weren’t for the Chinese community. They came here in search of gold as well as new lives. The Chinese name for San Francisco translates as “old gold mountain”. As Amy Tan enduringly shows, these people are San Franciscans through and through. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter All the books I’ve named share the sense that one can be rescued by geography. McTeague thought that he could find a new fortune in the city. The yuppies of Vikram Seth’s novel thought that as San Franciscans they could find salvation. It was true of the Chinese immigrants. Even people who move here today have the sense that it’s the land of new and different opportunities. Jack Kerouac wrote that people who come here are “mad to be saved”. That might be what all of these stories have in common, including my own. We’re all mad to be saved. McSweeney’s and Litquake are wonderful instruments for popularising San Francisco writers and literature. San Francisco draws so much creative talent because people who come here are free to explore new ideas without fear of ridicule. Everyone exults in the oddities of the place. We are free to be flaky here. Even our billionaires are flaky. I think that stimulates creativity. Then there’s the physical nature of the place. The sheer beauty of San Francisco is inspirational. Its geography ignites my own storytelling – the way new vistas appear every time you turn a corner or ascend a hill. The way the fog comes in, erases everything and makes you feel like you’re starting over. It excites the imagination, and apparently it works on nerds and artists equally well."