"So we decided to hold parties and pretend each week had become the new year. Each week we could forget past wrongs done to us. We weren't allowed to think a bad thought. We feasted, we laughed, we played games, lost and won, we told the best stories. And each week, we could hope to be lucky. That hope was our only joy. And that's how we came to call our little parties Joy Luck."
-Suyuan Woo to her daughter, Jing-Mei Woo
I quickly became interested in reading The Joy Luck Club when I saw that the public library was providing many activities centered around it in May. This was a part of The Big Read, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts "to revitalize the role of literary reading in American popular culture."
When I found I could check out a Book Bundle, multiple copies of the novel, I decided it would be our book club selection for June.
On the last Saturday in May, I attended a lecture at the library delivered by Dr. Guiyou Huang titled "Joy Luck Club, The Book, the Movie, the Author." I had just begun reading the novel and Dr. Huang's talk was very helpful. The following are some of his interesting points about the novel:
Joy Luck Club, published about 24 years ago, was Amy Tan's first novel. Though the book is fiction some characters were based on Amy's family, particularly Suyuan Woo representing Amy's mother and An-Mei Hsu, her grandmother.
Dr. Huang also gave insight into the setting of the novel: China and the United States, particularly San Francisco. He provided some significant political background of both places such as the war with Japan and the communist revolution in China, and, in the U.S., the Gold Rush and the building of the railroads which had attracted numerous Chinese immigrants.
He talked about the gender relations and social marginality brought out in the novel. I was surprised to learn that some of the male chauvinism in China came from Confucious. Of course there is much contrast in the novel as American-raised daughters clash with Chinese-born mothers. This provides much of the conflict and leads to themes of parental expectations as opposed to self-determination, interracial marriage and ethnic identity, sexism, racism, and feminism.
Last he spoke of the movie, "Joy Luck Club" and related that it was a first in several ways: a departure from the Suzie Wong and Charlie Chan stereotypes and the first to use a Chinese-American director and actors. Many Chinese traditions were reintroduced, such as mah jong, Chinese New Year, Moon Fest and Chinese cuisine.
I feel lucky to have read this novel and it brought me joy. I would give it a 4 and will look for another novel by Amy Tan. Our book club did read her Saving Fish from Drowning a few years ago and didn't really love it. Dr. Huang suggests The Kitchen God's Wife, so that's next on my list. I look forward to our group's discussion of Joy Luck. We plan to go out to lunch after our meeting---a Chinese restaurant, of course! We hope to be able to view the movie together, as well.
***
Our Page Turners group met to discuss The Joy Luck Club on Thursday. Helpful volunteers provided boiled peanuts, fortune cookies, orange sections and green tea as refreshments. We had a smaller group than usual---only 10 but it IS summer and folks are traveling. We started our meeting listening to one of two tracks on a CD I had picked up at the library the day I attended the lecture on the book. I didn't mention that before, nor did I say I had helped myself to enough of the Reading Guide booklets for our members. Both the CD and the booklets were provided by the National Endowment for the Arts to enhance The Big Read. The CD had the author and other knowledgeable people talking about the novel. We found it enlightened us on some aspects of Chinese culture and the characters and events in the book. The Reading Guide included questions for our discussion as well as background on the author and a page some called a "cheat sheet" to remind the reader of who's who among the 8 main characters.
The rating for the book was 3.8 with most members voting a 4. One of the criticisms was the difficulty of jumping back and forth between two countries and keeping track of all 8 women! We all felt it introduced us to Chinese culture and perhaps some insight into problems of immigrants to which we hadn't given much thought. Most of us thought The Joy Luck Club was a worthwhile read AND it was a lovely excuse for 10 of us to meet for lunch afterward at a Chinese restaurant!
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