The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan (1989)
“Four Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters, each trying to speak across a divide of language, pain, and love that neither side fully understands.”
EraContemporary / Immigrant American
Pages288
Difficulty★★☆☆☆ Moderate
AP Appearances8
mother-daughteridentityimmigrationsacrificestorytellingculturegenerational-traumaassimilationHigh SchoolAP EnglishCollege
Character Analysis
June is the novel's organizing consciousness — the daughter who has to go to China in her dead mother's place and discover who Suyuan was. She's spent her life believing she has failed to become what Suyuan wanted. The novel is her discovery that she didn't understand what Suyuan wanted — and that Suyuan didn't know how to ask for it, either. June's journey to China is a journey into the mother she never knew, and the self she never claimed.