Joy Luck Club
The Joy Luck Club
?Hey, Sabrina, are you Japanese or Chinese” I asked. Her reply, as it seems to be for many minority groups, is, “Neither, Im Chinese-American.” So, besides her American accent and a hyphenated ending on her answer to the SAT questionnaire about her ethnic background, what is the difference In Amy Tans enjoyable novel, The Joy Luck Club, about the relationships and experiences of four Chinese mothers and four Chinese-American daughters, I found out the answer to this question. The difference in upbringing of those women born during the first quarter of this century in China, and their daughters born in the American atmosphere of California, is a difference that does not exactly take a scientist to see.
From the beginning of the novel, you hear Suyuan Woo tell the story of “The Joy Luck Club,” a group started by some Chinese women during World War II, where “we feasted, we laughed, we played games, lost and won, we told the best stories. In addition, each week, we could hope to be lucky. That hope was our only joy.” (p. 12) Really, this was their
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