The Joy Luck Club

by Amy Tan Narrated by Gwendoline Yeo

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

A classic mother(s)-daughter(s) story that is told with as much humor as heart, The Joy Luck Club is so welcoming you'll want to sit in on the club yourself, whether you've got a daughter or not.

In 1949 four Chinese women-drawn together by the shadow of their past-begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks, eat dim sum, and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club. Nearly forty years later, one of the members has died, and her daughter has come to take her place, only to learn of her mother's lifelong wish-and the tragic way in which it has come true. The revelation of this secret unleashes an urgent need among the women to reach back and remember... In this extraordinary first work of fiction, Amy Tan writes about what is lost-over the years, between generations, among friends-and what is saved.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

``Intensely poetic, startlingly imaginative and moving, this remarkable book will speak to many women, mothers and grown daughters, about the persistent tensions and powerful bonds between generations and cultures,'' praised PW . Author tour. (June)

Library Journal

What a wonderful book! The ``joy luck club'' is a mah jong/storytelling support group formed by four Chinese women in San Francisco in 1949. Years later, when member Suyuan Woo dies, her daughter June (Jing-mei) is asked to take her place at the mah jong table. With chapters alternating between the mothers and the daughters of the group, we hear stories of the old times and the new; as parents struggle to adjust to America, their American children must struggle with the confusion of having immigrant parents. Reminiscent of Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior in its vivid depiction of Chinese-American women, this novel is full of complicated, endearingly human characters and first-rate story telling in the oral tradition. It should be a hit in any fiction collection.-- Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.

From the Publisher

"Powerful as myth." —The Washington Post Book World

"Beautifully written...a jewel of a book." —The New York Times Book Review

"Powerful...full of magic...you won't be doing anything of importance until you have finished this book." —Los Angeles Times

"Wonderful...a significant lesson in what storytelling has to do with memory and inheritance." —San Francisco Chronicle

“This Beloved Novel Is the Kind of Book We Need Right Now. Mothers and daughters lay at the heart of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club but in bridging the generational gap—and crisscrossing the globe—this 1989 novel imparts key lessons for forging ahead in trying times” —Martha Cheng, Wall Street Journal

“The Joy Luck Club is one of my favorite books. From the moment I first started reading it, I knew it was going to be incredible. For me, it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime reading experiences that you cherish forever. It inspired me as a writer and still remains hugely inspirational.” —Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians

“Reading it really changed the way I thought about Asian-American history. Our heritage has a lot of difficult stuff in it — a lot of misogyny, a lot of fear and rage and death. It showed me a past that reached beyond borders and languages and cultures to bring together these disparate elements of who we are. I hadn’t seen our history like that before. At that time, we hadn’t seen a lot of Asian-American representations anywhere, so it was a big deal that it even existed. It made me feel validated and seen. That’s what’s so important about books like that. You feel like, Oh my god, I exist here. I exist in this landscape of literature and memoir. I’m here, and I have a story to tell, and it’s among the canon of Asian-American stories that are feminist and that are true to our being. It’s a book that has stayed with me and lived in me.” —Margaret Cho

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175759038
Publisher:	Phoenix Books, Inc.
Publication date:	04/01/2008
Edition description:	Unabridged

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