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1、The Joy Luck Club (1989) is a best-selling novel written by Amy Tan. It focuses on four Chinese American immigrant families in San Francisco, California who start a club known as the Joy Luck Club, playing the Chinese game of mahjong for money while feasting on a variety of foods. The book is struct
2、ured somewhat like a mahjong game, with four parts divided into four sections to create sixteen chapters. The three mothers and four daughters (one mother, Suyuan Woo, dies before the novel opens) share stories about their lives in the form of vignettes. Each part is preceded by a parable relating t
3、o the game.In 1993, the novel was adapted into a feature film directed by Wayne Wang and starring Ming-Na, Lauren Tom, Tamlyn Tomita, France Nguyen, Rosalind Chao, Kieu Chinh, Tsai Chin, Lisa Lu, and Vivian Wu. The screenplay was written by the author Amy Tan along with Ronald Bass. The novel was al
4、so adapted into a play, by Susan Kim, which premiered at Pan Asian Repertory Theatre in New York.IntroductionThe Joy Luck Club, published by G. P. Putnams Sons in 1989, presents the stories of four Chinese immigrant women and their American-born daughters. Each of the four Chinese women has her own
5、view of the world based on her experiences in China and wants to share that vision with her daughter. The daughters try to understand and appreciate their mothers pasts, adapt to the American way of life, and win their mothers acceptance. The books name comes from the club formed in China by one of
6、the mothers, Suyuan Woo, in order to lift her friends spirits and distract them from their problems during the Japanese invasion. Suyuan continued the club when she came to the United Stateshoping to bring luck to her family and friends and finding joy in that hope.Amy Tan wrote The Joy Luck Club to
7、 try to understand her own relationship with her mother. Tans Chinese parents wanted Americanized children but expected them to think like Chinese. Tan found this particularly difficult as an adolescent. While the generational differences were like those experienced by other mothers and daughters, t
8、he cultural distinctions added another dimension. Thus, Tan wrote not only to sort out her cultural heritage but to learn how she and her mother could get along better.Critics appreciate Tans straightforward manner as well as the skill with which she talks about Chinese culture and mother/daughter r
9、elationships. Readers also love The Joy Luck Club: women of all ages identify with Tans characters and their conflicts with their families, while men have an opportunity through this novel to better understand their own behaviors towards women. Any reader can appreciate Tans humor, fairness, and obj
10、ectivity.edit Amy TanAmy Tan began writing fiction as a distraction from her work as a technical writer. A self-proclaimed workaholic, Tan wanted to find a way to relax. She soon discovered that not only did she enjoy writing fiction as a hobby, she liked that it provided a way for her to think abou
11、t and understand her life.Tan was born in Oakland, California, in 1952. Her first-generation, Chinese-American parents, John and Daisy Tan, settled in Santa Clara, California. As an adolescent, Tan had difficulty accepting her Chinese heritage. She wanted to look like an Americanto be an American. A
12、t one point, she even slept with a clothespin on her nose, hoping to change its shape. She deliberately chose American over Chinese whenever she had the opportunity and asserted her independence in any way that she could. She dreamed of being a writer, while her parents saw her as a neurosurgeon and
13、 concert pianist.The Tans lived in Santa Clara until first her father, then her brother, died of brain tumors. Mrs. Tan took Amy and her other brother to live in Switzerland. Amy became even more rebellious, dating a German who was associated with drug dealers and had serious mental problems. Her mo
14、ther then took the children back to the United States, where Amy enrolled in a Baptist college in Oregon, majoring in pre-med. After just two semesters there, Amy went with her boyfriend back to California where she attended San Jose City College as an English and linguistics major. Amys mother did
15、not speak to her for six months after this final act of rebellion.The Joy Luck Club contains many autobiographical elements from Tans life. Tan did not learn until she was fourteen that she had half-sisters from her mothers previous marriage. This sense of loss and her fathers and brothers deaths ar
16、e reflected in The Joy Luck Club in Suyuan Woos loss of her twin daughters and her death. In addition, Tan has always felt that she disappointed her mother by not becoming a doctor. Like Tan, the novels Jing-Mei cannot compare to Waverly Jong, the highly successful daughter of a friend of Jing-Meis
17、mother. These and other examples from Tans personal life lend a sensibility and sensitivity to her novel that allow the reader to experience vicariously death and solace, loss and reconciliation, disillusionment and hope. Characters MothersSuyuan WooDuring the Second World War, Suyuan lives in China
18、 while her husband at the time served as an officer in Chungking (Chongqing). She starts the original Joy Luck Club with her three friends to cope with the war. There is little to eat, but they pretend it is a feast, and talk about their hopes for the future. On the day of the Japanese invasion, Suy
19、uan leaves her house with nothing but a bag of clothes, a bag of food, and her twin baby daughters.During the long journey, Suyuan contracts such severe dysentery that she feels certain she will die. Fearing that a dead mother would doom her babies chances of rescue, she reluctantly and emotionally
20、leaves her daughters under a barren tree, together with all her belongings, along with a note asking anyone who might find the babies to care for them and contact the father. Suyuan then departs, expecting to die. However, she is rescued by a truck and finds out her husband has died. She later remar
21、ries, comes to America, forms a new Joy Luck Club with three other Chinese female immigrants she met at church, and gives birth to another daughter. But her abandonment of the twin girls haunts her for the rest of her life. After many years, Suyuan learns that the twins were adopted, but dies of a b
22、rain aneurysm before she can meet them. It is her American-born daughter Jing-mei who fulfills her long-cherished wish of reuniting with her elder twin half-sisters.As Suyuan dies before the novel begins, her history is told by Jing-mei, based on her knowledge of her mothers stories, anecdotes from
23、her father, and what the other members of the Joy Luck Club tell her.An-Mei HsuAn-Mei is raised by her grandparents and other relatives during her early years in Ningbo after her widowed mother shocks the family by becoming a concubine to a middle-aged wealthy man after her first husbands death. Thi
24、s becomes a source of conflict for the young An-Mei, as her aunts and uncles deeply resent her mother for such a dishonorable act. They try to convince An-Mei that it is not fitting for her to live with her disgraced mother, who is now forbidden to enter the family home. An-Meis mother, however, sti
25、ll wishes to be part of her daughters life. After An-Meis grandmother dies, An-mei moves out to live with her mother in the home of her mothers new husband, Wu-Tsing.An-Mei learns that her mother was coerced into being Wu-Tsings concubine through the manipulations of his Second Wife, the favorite. T
26、his woman arranged for An-Meis mother, still in mourning for her original husband, to be raped by Wu-Tsing. The stigma left An-Meis mother with no choice but to marry Wu-Tsing and become his new but lowly Fourth Wife. She later lost her baby son to Second Wife, who claimed the boy as her own child t
27、o ensure her place in the household. Second Wife also tried to win over An-mei upon her arrival in Wu-Tsings mansion, giving her a necklace made of pearls that her mother later revealed were actually glass beads by crushing one with her teacup. An-Meis mother re-knots the necklace to hide the missin
28、g bead, but now An-Mei knows the truth about Second Wifes seeming generosity.Wu-Tsing is a highly superstitious man, and Second Wife takes advantage of this weakness by making false suicide attempts and threatening to haunt him as a ghost if he does not let her have her way. According to Chinese tra
29、dition, a persons soul comes back after three days to settle scores with the living. Wu-Tsing, therefore, is known to be afraid to face the ghost of an angry or scorned wife. After Second Wife fakes a suicide attempt to prevent An-Mei and her mother from getting their own small house, An-Meis mother
30、 successfully commits suicide herself, eating tangyuan laced with lethal amounts of opium. She times her death so that her soul is due to return on the first day of the new year, a day when all debts must be settled lest the debtor suffer great misfortune. With this in mind, Wu-Tsing promises to tre
31、at his Fourth Wifes children, including An-Mei, as if they were his very own flesh and blood by an honored First Wife. When Second Wife attempts to disrupt this, An-Mei crushes the fake pearl necklace Second Wife gave her beneath her feet to show her awareness of all Second Wifes deception and to sy
32、mbolize her new power over Second Wife, who now fears her and realizes the bad karma she has brought upon herself.An-Mei later immigrates to America, marries, and gives birth to seven children (four sons, three daughters). The youngest, a son named Bing, drowns at age four.Lindo JongLindo is a stron
33、g-willed woman, a trait that her daughter Waverly attributes to her having been born in the year of the Horse. When Lindo was only twelve, she was forced to move in with a neighbors young son, Huang Tyan-yu, through the machinations of the village matchmaker. After some training for household duties
34、 through her in-laws, she and Tyan-yu married when she turned sixteen. She soon realized that her husband was just a little boy at heart and had no sexual interest in her. Lindo began to care for her husband as a brother, but her cruel mother-in-law expected Lindo to produce a grandson. She restrict
35、ed most of Lindos daily activities, eventually ordering her to remain on bed rest until she could conceive and deliver a child.Determined to escape this unfortunate situation, Lindo carefully observed the other people in the household and eventually formed a clever plan to escape her marriage withou
36、t dishonoring herself or her family. She managed to trick her young husbands family into believing that he was actually fated to marry another girl who was already pregnant with his spiritual child, and that her marriage to Huang Tyan Yu would only bring bad luck to the family. In reality, the girl
37、in question was a mere servant in the household and indeed pregnant, but abandoned by her lover.Freed from her first marriage, Lindo decided to emigrate to America. She married a Chinese-American man named Tin Jong and has three children: sons Winston and Vincent, and daughter Waverly.Lindo experien
38、ces regret over losing some of her Chinese identity by living so long in America (she is treated like a tourist on a visit to China); however, she expresses concern that Waverlys American upbringing has formed a barrier between them.Ying-Ying Betty St. ClairFrom a young age, Ying-Ying is told by her
39、 wealthy and conservative family that Chinese girls should be meek and gentle. This is especially difficult for her, she feels, because she is a Tiger character. She begins to develop a passive personality and repress her feelings as she grows up in Wuxi. Ying-Ying marries a charismatic man named Li
40、n Xiao, not out of love, but because she believed it was her fate. Her husband is revealed to be abusive and openly has extramarital relationships with other women. When Ying-Ying discovers she is pregnant, she gets an abortion and makes the decision to live with her relatives in a smaller city in C
41、hina.After ten years, she moves to Shanghai and works in a clothing store, where she meets an American man named Clifford St. Clair. He falls in love with her, but Ying-Ying cannot express any strong emotion after her first marriage. He courts her for four years before she agrees to marry him after
42、learning that Lin Xiao had died, which she takes as the proper sign to move on. She allows Clifford to control most aspects of her life; he mistranslates her words and actioevins, and even changes her name to Betty. Ying-Ying gives birth to her daughter, Lena, after moving to San Francisco with St.
43、Clair. When Lena is around ten years old, Ying-Ying becomes pregnant a third time, but the baby boy is anencephalic and soon dies.Ying-Ying is horrified when she realizes that Lena, a Tiger like herself, has inherited or emulated her passive behaviors and trapped herself in a loveless marriage with
44、a controlling husband. She finally resolves to call upon the more assertive qualities of her Tiger nature, to appeal to those qualities in Lena. She will tell Lena her story in the hope that she will be able to break free from the same passivity that ruined most of her young life back in China.edit
45、DaughtersJing-Mei June WooJing-Mei has never fully understood her mother and seems directionless in life. During Junes childhood, her mother used to tell her that she could be anything she wants; however, she particularly wanted her daughter to be gifted, a child star who amazes the world, like Ginn
46、y Tiu (seen briefly on television) or Junes rival Waverly. At the beginning of the novel, June is chosen to replace her mothers seat in the Joy Luck Club after her mothers death. At the end of the novel, June is still trying to deal with her mothers death, and she visits China to see the twin half-s
47、isters (Wang Chwun Yu and Wang Chwung Hwa) whom her mother had been forced to abandon when the Japanese attacked China.One criticwho? has suggested1 that the reason for the communication gap between Jing-Mei and her mother, and between the other daughters and their mothersa major theme of the novelo
48、ccurs because the mothers come from a high context culture and the Americanized daughters from a low context culture. The mothers believe that the daughters will intuitively understand their cryptic utterances, but the daughters dont understand them at all.Rose Hsu JordanRose is somewhat passive and
49、 is a bit of a perfectionist. She had an unsettling childhood experience when her youngest brother, Bing, drowned while she was supposed to be watching him, and his body was never recovered. Rose marries a doctor, Ted Jordan, who loves her but also wants to spite his snooty, racist mother. After a malpractice suit, Ted has a mid-life crisis and decides to leave Rose. Rose confides in her mother and An-mei tells her the story of her own childhood.
