Joy Luck Club Culture

Joy Luck Club

The book The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan is about the unique Asian-American culture. This book shows many examples of family relationships between each other, communication, culture, and tradition. There are many examples in this book that can relate to many people around the world. It explains the Asian culture very well while breaking it down to make it easier to understand. Personally, I can relate to this book, because I come from an Asian culture, but the book goes in depth of what I do not know about my culture.

This book tells a total of 16 stories divided into 4 sections. Each story is told by one of the 7 main characters and the stories are woven together that all connect with Chinese-immigrant mothers and their American born daughters. It all started in 1949, Suyuan Woo started the San Francisco version of the Joy Luck Club. After Suyuan Woo’s unexpected death her daughter Jing-Mei Woo also known as “June”, is asked to take her place in the club. The four mothers met at the refugee center in the city of San Francisco after emigrating from China.

In this book, there are many things that would draw a reader’s attention.

From traumatic childhoods in China affecting their parental styles now to losing a loved one. This book shows a great example of culture. I liked learning more about the Asian culture while being entertained by the stories that kept the book going. For example, An-Mei, Lindo, Ying-ying tell traumatic stories of their childhood while being raised and living in China.Witnessing someone cut flesh as a home remedy to cure a sickness is not the average thing to do. The book almost made it feel like you were in the there inside the story by the structure of how it was

written.
If you were to think about the title of the book and assume what the Joy Luck Club meant you would think it was an actual club people join. The Joy Luck Club is more than a club in this book it was almost like one whole joined family from different points of view. The club is almost like a legacy or a family tradition that will be passed down in these families. I liked how they were all so close and strong for a group of people who were once strangers to each other, but then grew close, because of how they could relate to each other so well.
I would recommend this book to readers who are eager to learn about a new interesting culture. I can relate to some things in this book, because I am half Asian and it’s intriguing to learn more about my culture. In the book, one of the main characters Lindo Jong struggles with a painful childhood as she is married off at the age of 2 and treated and abused like an indentured servant at the age of 12. Her culture required her to do things modern day Americans would not do. This book isn’t just a book to read for entertainment you can also gain knowledge from reading this book.