The Joy Luck Club
Four mothers, four daughters, four families, whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's telling the stories. In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters' futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have never heard these stories, think their mothers' advice is irrelevant to their modern American lives – until their own inner crises reveal how much they've unknowingly inherited of their mothers' pasts. 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.
Where The Joy Luck Club keeps showing up
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Books in conversation with The Joy Luck Club
A few of the closest reads from our full list.
What you might want to know about The Joy Luck Club
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
In 1949 San Francisco, four immigrant women from different parts of China form a mahjong group called the Joy Luck Club. Forty years later, after the death of one mother, her daughter takes the empty seat. The novel braids the four women's hard girlhoods with their American daughters' lives.
Yes. Wayne Wang directed a 1993 film adaptation based on the novel. Amy Tan co-wrote the screenplay. The film follows the structure of four mother-daughter Chinese American pairs and is widely considered a faithful adaptation.
The Joy Luck Club is structured as 16 interconnected stories told by four mothers and four daughters. Amy Tan calls it a novel; some readers approach it as a story collection. Either reading works.
The Joy Luck Club was written by Amy Tan, published in 1989 by G.P. Putnam's Sons.
The Joy Luck Club is 318 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Joy Luck Club takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
The Joy Luck Club is a standalone novel by Amy Tan, not part of a series.
The Joy Luck Club is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
