“The Joy Luck Club” - Amy Tan

 🀄️I read Tan’s “The Bonesetter’s Daughter” in college, loved it, and scooped up TJLC immediately. Why it sat on my bookshelf all these years, I cannot say. I am glad I finally read this intergenerational novel that is equal parts faith and superstition.

🀄️TJLC toggles back and forth between the stories of 4 Chinese women in 1949 China, and their 4 American daughters. There is so much love between the mothers and daughters and yet an almost equal level of misunderstanding. The mothers harbor pasts shattered beyond recognition during the Japanese invasion of China. Their daughters have more mundane secrets of their own.

🀄️ Thematically, TJLC centers on identity, and the constant push and pull between holding on to traditions and assimilating. In the often fraught mother-daughter relationships, we can feel the tension behind the actions of the mothers - simultaneously pushing their daughters away, but also ever hovering in case they should ever need anything.

🀄️This notion of kinship - even with total strangers - is something I suspect immigrants and first generation Americans understand instinctively.

🀄️ This Chinese fable is used by one of the mothers as guidance for her daughter. It speaks volumes about the gritty mindset of the group of friends who survived much in China, and continued to endure in America. It’s the hyper-practical, no-nonsense approach to thriving in the US, and it brooks no room for sympathy nor understanding. The daughters are left perplexed as to why, after all this time, their mothers are still mired in survival mode. Not knowing their mothers’ stories makes this an impossible question to answer for the young women.

🀄️Lovers of family sagas and historical fiction, this one belongs on your TBR!