Amy Tan's debut novel, The Joy Luck Club, is the first book by her that I have read. It is also the first book I've read with strong Chinese references, so I wasn't quite sure as to what I should expect from this book.
The Joy Luck Club is the story of four Chinese women who have immigrated to the United States of America, under different circumstances, and all four are attempting to bring up their daughters in America - daughters who think like Americans, despite their mothers best efforts to instil in them their Chinese culture and heritage.
The San Francisco version of the "Joy Luck Club" was set up by the late Suyuan Woo (June Woo's mother, whose death the reader learns of in the opening lines of the book), and it was a gathering of four women, with their husbands, as they played mah jong, and invested the "winnings" in the stock markets . Suayan Woo had started the same back in China, pre-immigration, during the time of the Japanese invasion, when hope was scarce, and joy minimal.
Each week, we would 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.
While the stories of the daughters were typically American, with marital problems, single motherhoods, identity crises, and struggling between being American, with a Chinese exterior, the stories of the mothers were far more interesting (to me). Be it the escape from China during the war, to leaving babies on the road, with gold on the side, so that someone with a good heart could give the babies a good home. One of the mothers was forced to marry someone who was very rich, and everyone considered her to be lucky. Desperate not to let her family down, she lived up to the expectations, until, she managed to orchestrate an escape, with her new family's blessings. There are stories on losing children, of losing faith, and, being the fourth wife to a rich man, after the first husband had passed away... and how, being the fifth is better than being the fourth!
It was an interesting witty insight into a historical war-ridden China, but, I found that the daughters had very stereotypical characters, and nothing made them stand out. They were selfish, self-obsessed, and at times, it came across as though they were almost ashamed of their Chinese heritage - something one of the mothers pondered on as well. There was jealousy, rebellion and pettiness, that I found both, crass and cringeworthy. But, it was all very superficial as well, and I found that I couldn't care less about them - even if I tried. The writing, all in all, was good, and flowed naturally. It was funny, in pieces, and poignant in places. It was bleak, at times, but not bordering on complete despondence, thereby keeping the hyperbolism to the minimal - something I appreciated, for in books like these, occasionally, I find that the author gets carried away.
Have you read this book? Or, anything else by Amy Tan? What do you think of it, and would you recommend any of her other books?
Rating: 3.5