The Joy Luck Club

Written by Amy Tan

A book for adult readers reviewed by Rida

    

The Joy Luck Club focuses on eight characters: four daughters and four mothers. All four mothers immigrated from China to the United States, and the story soon follows their four daughters. However, the mothers and daughters all tell their own life stories, such as how the mothers immigrated to America and the daughters’ experiences growing up in America as the children of Chinese immigrants.

I liked reading this book because I could relate to the experiences of the American-raised daughters. It was easy to understand why they felt certain emotions, such as anger and sadness. I also liked the fact that the author wrote the book in a way that some moments in the story were flashbacks, which gave the reader some context to the characters’ lives. However, at the beginning of the book, I did not realize that the author had incorporated some flashbacks of different characters throughout the chapters, so it was pretty confusing until I re-read certain chapters and came to fully understand what was happening.