Reviews

Amazon.com
Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.

With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery. 

Book Description
"Brilliant....Each story is a fascinating vignette, and together they they weave the reader through a world where the Moon Lady can grant any wish, where a child, promised in marriage at two and delivered at 12, can, with cunning, free herself; where a rich man's concubine secures her daughter's future by killing herself, and where a woman can live on, knowing she has lost her entire life."

WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD

A stunning literary achievement, THE JOY LUCK CLUB explores the tender and tenacious bond between four daughters and their mothers. The daughters know one side of their mothers, but they don't know about their earlier never-spoken of lives in China. The mothers want love and obedience from their daughters, but they don't know the gifts that the daughters keep to themselves. Heartwarming and bittersweet, this is a novel for mother, daughters, and those that love them.

Synopsis
In 1949, four Chinese women--drawn together by the shadow of their past--begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club--and forge a relationship that binds them for more than three decades. A celebrated novel in the tradition of Alice Adams and Margaret Atwood from the bestselling author of The Kitchen God's Wife. Reissue.

Synopsis
First time in trade paperback. The New York Times Book Review says of this mesmerizing novel by Amy Tan: "So beutifully written that one should . . . allow oneself to be bourne along as if in a dream . . . a jewel of a book." "The Joy Luck Club is a pure joy to read."--Chicago Tribune. 

Synopsis
Drawn together by the shadow of their past, four women meet once a week to share stories and create joy and luck out of unimaginable catastrophe. 2 cassettes. 

From the Publisher
The Joy Luck Club is the story of four Chinese women born and raised in China before 1949 and their four American-born daughters. This mother-daughter story achieves more than just a glimpse into Chinese culture and heritage. It is an outline of a number of challenges for women, including social rules, expectations, marriage, food dishes, clothing choices, and raising children. It continues to sell in the education market for courses in literature, writing, women's and cultural studies. I'd recommend it as a way to celebrate women as mothers and daughters as well as survivors.

Buy this book.