Summary—Introduction
Each of the four sections of The Joy Luck Club is
preceded by a short parable that introduces the major themes of
that section’s four stories. The parable that begins “Feathers from
a Thousand Li Away” tells the tale of a Chinese
woman who decides to emigrate to America. Before she leaves Shanghai,
the woman buys a swan from a vendor, who tells her that the bird
was once a duck. In an attempt to become a goose, the duck stretched
its neck so far that it became a swan, exceeding its own hopes for
itself. As the woman sails to America, she dreams of raising a daughter
amid the plentiful opportunities of the new country. She imagines
that her American-born daughter will resemble her in every way,
except that, unlike her mother, she will be judged according to
her own worth, not by that of a husband. Like the swan, the daughter
will exceed all hopes, so the woman plans to give her daughter the
swan as a gift. Yet, when the woman arrives in America, the immigration
officials seize the swan and leave the woman with nothing but a
feather. The daughter is born and grows up to be the strong, happy
woman her mother had imagined. The woman still wishes to present
the feather to her daughter and to explain its symbolic meaning,
but for many years she holds back. She is still waiting “for the
day she could [explain it] in perfect American English.”
Summary—Jing-mei Woo: “The Joy Luck Club”
“What will I say? What can I tell them
about my mother? I don’t know anything. . . .”
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Jing-mei opens her narrative by explaining that after
her mother, Suyuan, died two months ago, her father, Canning, asked
her to take her mother’s place at the Joy Luck Club, a weekly mahjong
party. (Mahjong is a game for four players involving dice and domino-like tiles.)
Suyuan and Canning Woo have been attending the meetings of the Joy
Luck Club since 1949, shortly after they
emigrated from China to San Francisco. In fact, the San Francisco
version of the club is a revival of the club Suyuan founded earlier,
while she was still in China. Jing-mei tells her mother’s story
about the club’s beginning.
Suyuan’s first husband, Fuchi Wang, had been an officer
in the Kuomintang, a militaristic, nationalist political party that
ran China from 1928 through the 1940s.
During the 1940s, the party’s power was threatened
by Japanese invasions and by the rising force of the Communists.
Fuchi took Suyuan and their twin daughters, Chwun Yu and Chwun Hwa,
to the town of Kweilin, leaving them there while he traveled to
a city called Chungking. Kweilin was full of refugees at the time,
and cultural, ethnic, and class tensions added to the hardships
resulting from lack of food and money. During her stay in Kweilin,
Suyuan created the Joy Luck Club with three other women in order
to escape the fear and uncertainty of the war. They cooked “feasts,”
played mahjong, and traded stories into the night. “And [at each
meeting], we could hope to be lucky,” Suyuan told Jing- mei. “That
hope was our only joy. And that’s [why we called] . . . our little
parties Joy Luck.”
Jing-mei explains that usually her mother’s story would
stop at this point, and that her mother would tag on some fantastic
ending that made the story seem like a “Chinese fairy tale.” But
one evening, her mother told her the story’s real ending—the story
about how she came to leave the original Joy Luck Club in Kweilin.
One day, an army officer suggested to Suyuan that she
travel to Chungking to be with her husband. Suyuan knew the officer’s
message meant that the Japanese would soon arrive in Kweilin, and
she knew that the families of officers would be the first to die.
She packed her children and some belongings into a wheelbarrow and began
to walk to Chungking. The journey was long, and Suyuan’s hands began
to bleed from carrying her bags. Finally she, like others before
her, was forced to begin lightening her load by leaving items behind.
By the time Suyuan arrived in Chungking, she had only three silk
dresses. She made no mention of the babies. For years, she never
told Jing-mei what happened to Jing-mei’s older half-sisters.
At the Joy Luck Club meeting, Jing-mei cannot believe
that she could ever really replace her mother. She remembers her
mother’s critical attitude toward everyone. Suyuan had always compared Jing-mei
with her friend Lindo’s daughter, Waverly. Jing-mei feels inadequate
because she never succeeded in becoming the prize daughter that
Waverly is, and she never finished college.
