My Rating: 5 stars
Catch up review #3
I read The Joy Luck Club for the first time many many years ago, when I was a teenager in high school. At the time, despite my shared background with the characters in the interconnected stories (the "Americanized" daughter of Chinese immigrant parents), I was too young to fully understand the significance of the book from a cultural perspective. Re-reading this book now, as an adult, is a completely different experience for me, in large part due to the insights that I've gained from the 4 decades I've spent (and continue to spend) navigating my cultural identity.
Consisting of 16 interconnected stories narrated alternately by 4 pairs of Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters, Amy Tan's debut novel is a powerful exploration of the struggle between the mothers and daughters to relate to and understand each other amongst the cultural and generational disparities that define their relationships. As I mentioned earlier, reading The Joy Luck Club this time around felt very different from when I did so in my youth — in addition to picking up on nuances with language that I didn't notice previously, most significant was the resonance I felt in the experiences of the various characters. Not only did I recognize aspects of myself in each of the daughters, I also recognized the struggles in each of their relationships with their mothers — relationships fraught with misunderstandings, communication issues, unspoken hurt and pain, defiant silences, etc., yet ultimately rooted in love and the unbreakable bonds of family. Each story had a familiar experience or feeling that I recognized and related to. In the story "Without Wood," for example, I understood exactly where Rose was coming from when she kept hesitating time and time again to tell her mother An-Mei about her impending divorce because she was trying to avoid the criticism, judgment, and unwanted advice that was sure to follow her revelation (avoiding criticism from our mothers is pretty much a way of life for many Chinese daughters). The story "Two Kinds" brought tears to my eyes because I understood acutely the sense of failure that comes with not living up to my mother's hope and expectations (not to mention the argument about obedience and the expectations of a Chinese daughter that Jing-Mei has with her mother Suyuan echoes ones I've had in the past with my mom). In the story "Rules of the Game," I commiserated with Waverly when her attempt to rebuke and defy her mother leads to her getting the silent treatment (which is something I've experienced countless times growing up). These were just a few examples among many.
But it wasn't just the daughters' experiences that I related to — the stories told from the mothers' perspectives were also profound in the way they provided clarity to some of the cultural circumstances that informed the mothers' lives, which in turn, affected their behaviors toward their daughters. In these stories, I was able to recognize some of my own mother's experiences as well as things she's told me in the past that, at the time, I may not have understood the significance — these stories then, had the effect of helping me reflect and make better sense of things.
Aside from being able to resonate with the characters' experiences and feelings on a personal level, I also appreciated coming across so many cultural references in the book that I grew up hearing about — a few examples: the Moon Lady story, the tale of Old Mr. Chou (I was also told the tale when I was a kid), the superstition about rice husbands (this was a huge one in my family), the historical details about China from some of the mothers' stories, etc.
With all that said though, the biggest thing that sets this book apart from so many others about the Chinese-American experience is the writing. Tan writes in a way that, on the surface, appears simple and straightforward, but when you look deeper, there is a masterful complexity to it that, quite frankly, blows my mind. In my previous review of Tan's novel The Kitchen God's Wife, I touched on how brilliantly she uses the mechanics of language to create nuance and meaning — this is certainly the case here as well. At the same time, Tan's writing is also thoughtful, meticulous, and sincere — all qualities that, to me, are absolutely necessary when it comes to books (and stories) about cultural experiences.
I'm usually not a huge re-reader, especially nowadays when I have so many books I haven't yet read that I actually want to read. But some books are worth taking the time to re-read —The Joy Luck Club is definitely one of them.
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