Key Facts
full title · The Joy Luck Club
author · Amy Tan
type of work · Novel
genre · Postmodern novel; short story collection
language · English with occasional Mandarin and Cantonese words
and accents
time and place written · 1985–1989, San Francisco
date of first publication · 1989
publisher · G. P. Putnam's Sons
narrator · The Joy Luck Club features seven narrators:
Jing-mei Woo (who also tells her mother Suyuan Woo's story); Lena
and Ying-ying St. Clair; An-mei Hsu and Rose Hsu Jordan; and Lindo
and Waverly Jong.
point of view · Point of view in The Joy Luck Club shifts
from narrator to narrator. Each narrates in the first person, and
sometimes an event is narrated twice so that we get more than one perspective—frequently
a mother's and a daughter's. The narrators are highly subjective
and tend to focus mostly on their own feelings.
tone · Bemused; sorrowful; speculative; respectful
tense · Tense in the novel shifts from past to present as each
character reflects on her past and relates it to her present life.
setting (time) · The novel's events take place within four general time
frames: the childhood years of the mother narrators in China; the
youthful adult years of the mothers around the time of their immigration to
America; the childhood years of the daughter narrators in the United
States; and the youthful adult years of the daughters as they interact
with their aging mothers. The four time frames span the 1920s–1930s,
the 1940s–1950s, the 1960s,
and the 1980s, respectively.
setting (place) · All of the mother characters' childhood memories take
place in China; their youthful memories take place either in China
prior to emigration or in San Francisco or Oakland after coming
to America. Their American-born daughters remember events that have
taken place only in San Francisco or Oakland, although Jing-mei
travels to China at the end of the novel.
protagonist · Each of the narrators serves as protagonist in her
own stories, but Jing-mei, because she tells two more stories than
each of the other characters, could be said to be the main character.
major conflict · The Chinese mothers strive to instill their American-born daughters
with an understanding of their heritage, yet also attempt to save
them the pain they felt as girls growing up in China. The daughters,
on the other hand, often see their mothers' attempts at guidance
as a form of hypercritical meddling, or as a failure to understand
American culture. The daughters thus respond by attempting to further
their mothers' assimilation. Both the mothers and the daughters
struggle with issues of identity: the mothers try to reconcile their
Chinese pasts with their American presents; the daughters attempt
to find a balance between independence and loyalty to their heritage.
rising action · Having located the long-lost twin daughters of their
friend Suyuan, the members of the Joy Luck Club want for these grown Chinese
daughters to know their emigrant mother's story. They give money
to Suyuan's younger, American-born daughter, Jing-mei, so that she
may buy a plane ticket to China and narrate to her half-sisters
her mother's tale. Jing-mei fears that she doesn't know enough about
her mother to tell her story, but this fear, once expressed, prompts
her quest for understanding, also sparking similar quests among
the three other women and their three daughters.
climax · It is difficult to pin down a single climax in the
book, as it is composed of interwoven narratives. However, insofar
as Jing-mei's narrative is representative of the other characters' situations,
the climax of her story may be said to be her trip to China, which
serves in many ways as a test of how
“Chinese” Jing-mei feels, of whether she in fact knows her mother
well enough to tell her story and carry out her dreams. These issues
are also at stake in all of the other characters' stories; thus,
by embarking on her trip to China and receiving her first impressions,
Jing-mei is drawing all of the stories' tensions to a head.
falling action · Insofar as Jing-mei's trip to China can be said to
be the book's climax, the novel's falling action consists in her
realization that she has passed the “test” that the trip constituted.
Having journeyed through China for a few days and having met her sisters
for only a few minutes, Jing-mei realizes that, deep down, some
part of her is in fact Chinese, and that even though she may not
think she looks like her sisters or that her sisters look like her mother,
the three of the sisters together resemble Suyuan: the sisters will
help Jing-mei to come to know parts of her mother that she never
before understood, and thus help her to tell Suyuan's story. In
this last scene of the book, Jing-mei successfully creates a bridge
between two countries, two generations, and two cultures.
themes · The challenges of cultural translation; the power of
storytelling; the problem of immigrant identity
motifs · Control over one's own destiny; sexism; sacrifices
for love
symbols · Suyuan's pendant; Lena's vase; Lindo's red candle
foreshadowing · The Joy Luck Club's realism precludes
the use of much foreshadowing. However, because the characters are
mother-daughter pairs, a number of the challenges faced by the mothers come
to be repeated in some form in their daughters' lives. Many of the
mothers' personal strengths and weaknesses are reflected in their
daughters, and they struggle with the same issues of obedience versus
autonomy, passivity versus assertiveness, whether in relationships
with men or other women.
