In the first section, "Feathers from a Thousand Li Away,'' we hear the voices of the four mothers (with the exception of the late Suyuan Woo, whose story is told by Jing-mei), each with a memorable, even shocking, tale of life in China. The 16 linked stories that make up this novel fill in both sides of the gap: four sections of four stories each, told by seven voices. The daughters' difficulty in comprehending their mothers is echoed by the mothers' frustration at not being able to pass on the benefits of their accumulated wisdom and experience. The trouble is, Jing-mei feels she never really knew her mother, either - a feeling shared by the other Joy Luck daughters: Waverly Jong, Rose Hsu Jordan, and Lena St. Clair) offer Jing-mei a trip to China to meet her long-lost half sisters, whom Suyuan was forced to abandon as infants while fleeing war-torn Guilin, the "aunties'' (now edging into their 70s) urge Jing-mei to tell her half sisters the story of the mother they never knew. When her Joy Luck "aunties'' ( Lindo Jong, An-mei Hsu, and Ying-ying St. Like many another American-born child of immigrants, Jing-mei has little understanding of her mother's values or the world that shaped them, although recently, the general interest in ethnicity has prompted her to revive her Chinese name, "Jing-mei,'' in preference to the American "June May,'' and has made her more curious about her roots. Nearly 40 years after the first meeting, as the novel opens, Suyuan Woo has died and her place at the mah jongg table is assumed by her 36-year-old daughter, Jing-mei.
In the years that follow, the club links the four families, enabling them to pool resources and keeping them in touch with their past as they take on the challenges of adjusting to a new country. Suyuan finds three other Chinese immigrant women to play mah jongg, cook and consume special foods, tell stories, gossip, invest in stocks, and plan for joy and luck.
The Joy Luck Club is an informal "institution'' started by Suyuan Woo upon her arrival in San Francisco in 1949.
Amy Tan's first novel, The Joy Luck Club, is a touching, funny, sad, insightful, and artfully constructed group portrait of four mother-daughter relationships that endure not only a generation gap, but the more unbridgeable gap between two cultures.
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