The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Joy Luck Club
Book Review: Confusing But A Great Story
Summary: 3 Stars
Okay, first off, I love Amy Tan. Anyone who can create Sagwa is okay with me. ^-^
But, I had to read this book for a project in school. It was one of the hardest reads for me. It was so hard to follow initially because it's told in first person...by like...what, 6 different characters? I got the gyst of it, and it WAS an interesting story, but you really have to buckle down to follow it, in my opinion.
Personally, I had to watch the movie to pick up things I missed in the book. It was easier to keep track of the characters that way. But, like I said, that's just me. The book WAS an interesting one and a very good story...just a little hard to follow.
Book Review: Disingenous language ruins a genuine book
Summary: 2 Stars
About a third of the way into the book I had to wiki up Amy Tan because the language content of the book made me strongly wonder about her upbringing. The language seems to be purposefully exotic-sounding, such as "The fifteenth day of the eighth moon". I'm sorry, but Chinese people do not speak like that. It's "Eighth month, fifteenth day". Mandarin is sprinkled in non-dialoge text to make it sound foreign, calling mahjong tiles "pai"s when tiles (or even cards) are perfectly suited and typically used by English-speaking Chinese. Or another example, "... Waverly Place Jong, my official name for important American documents. But my family called me Meimei", as though she felt like her name belonged to America instead of herself. Truthfully, this is a common happenstance in nearly every Chinese household, and is not limited to Anglicized names. Nicknames are extremely commonplace today in Chinese speaking countries and households, and one would hardly say their given Chinese names are for official Chinese documents, as though their named belonged to China and not themselves. These "family" nicknames are not used by persons outside of the family, and so one's proper name would be used, for example, in school and by friends. Thus, one would not really feel separated feeling form one's own name.
Things like that makes the book feel extremely disingenuous to someone who is a first-generation western-born Chinese and already has first hand an understanding of Chinese culture via western perspective. It reminds me of reviews I read for a Jewish New Testament (English Translation), where the reviewers accused the editors/translators of unnecessarily dropping in Yiddish in order to make the text sound more Jewish to appeal to non-Jews. From what seems like extra exerted effort to "Chineseify" the text, I (incorrectly) suspected Amy Tan was someone who was raised very western/white washed (perhaps 2nd or more generation) and was over-compensating using language.
It's not that the stories themselves are bad or disingenuous, in fact they reflect the culture so much it angers me (because it reminds me of my own upbringing) when I read it, but the language delivering the stories is trying too hard and distracting. I gave 2 stars because the distracting language makes it difficult for me (first gen Canadian Chinese) to enjoy. I think if you are personally further removed from the Chinese language and culture, you will actually enjoy it more, So consider it 3 or 4 stars if you are. Just don't think we necessarily actually speak that way.
Book Review: Finding one's wood
Summary: 5 Stars
When I turned thirty, I was angry and unhappy, but didn't really know it. I figured that niggling feeling, the one I couldn't really identify, the one that wouldn't go away, was the natural result of having two little kids, too much time with nothing to think about on my hands, and, thanks to living in Iran, a really foreign country, a serious case of culture shock.
I believed that the unexamined life was absolutely worth living. Probing too deeply into my psyche, to my way of thinking, wasn't going to lead me anywhere good. I prided myself on being a survivor. Someone who didn't waste her time dwelling on things that couldn't be changed. Someone that, when in the heart of something awfull, eventually adjusted, and then forgot what normal ever looked like to begin with.
Plus, it was a whole bunch easier on my marriage if I didn't dig around in all that inner mud.If I didn't put a voice to what it was that I really wanted. Or felt.
Somewhere early on, all by myself, I had decided that my feelings were never as credible or important as those of my husband. So atuned to small shifts in his mood, in his body language, in his tone, I could sense what he wanted, what he felt, long before he came out with it himself. Long before I could figure out what was going on inside my heart.
And when things did boil over--as they will, even when you decide to ignore your secret rage--I was quick to blame myself.
Being angry at my husband quickly evolved into being angry with myself.
I assumed that discord sprang from my lack. A predictable byproduct of my thousand and one rather unforgivable flaws.
Instead of hashing issues out with my husband, defining what was bugging me, demanding or negotiating a solution like a healthy adult, I said and thought the most horrible things about myself.I abandoned my self in order to remain in a relationship free of conflict. I feared losing the relationship far more than losing my self.
Perhaps it was my Mom who'd sent me the book. Or maybe I'd borrowed it from one of my ex-patriot friends. But, the timing couldn't have been more serendipitous. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan centered on the lives of four Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters. And while the complicated relationships between two generations and two different cultural mindsets resonated with me, it was the floundering marriage of one of the daughters that held me in its grip.
How is it that when you can't see the mistakes of your own life because they're too up close and personal, when you're used to distracting yourself from yourself with an ever- present, vague sense of panic, it's easier to see the truth--the truth about yourself-- when observing a fictional character? How is it that other people's problems, even made up ones, are easier to face than one's own?
Married to a man who possesses all the power in the relationship, Lena St. Clair, prompted by a visit from her mother, begins to evaluate her marriage with the eyes of an outsider:
"She can see all this. And it annoys me that all she sees are the bad parts. But then I look around and everthing she's said is true..she knows what's going to happen to us...And she looks at me and frowns but doesn't say anything. And I feel embarrassed, knowing what she sees....I think how to explain this recalling the words Harold and I have used with each other in the past...But these words she could never understand."
l started to imagine what Mom would see if she stood in the middle of the 10X10 dorm room we were living in. Mom: A woman who had once asked me in a fit of frustration, "Do you have any idea how Muslim men treat their women?" The very same woman I had accused, in turn, of being a cheerleader. Waving her pom-poms around in an attempt to rally enthusiasm for her marriage.
To a volatile alcoholic--the one person in our family whose troubles were considered legitamate emergencies.
I could picture her pursing her thin lips at the talk-to-the-hand attitude my husband would adopt whenever I worked up the nerve to complain. About the lack of privacy, what with his mother moving in with us and sleeping at the foot of our bed. Or the lack of money, sharing our resources as he did with 2,521 aunts, uncles, and cousins.
I could hear Mom clear her throat when she got a load of just how quickly I backed down from an argument, deathly afraid of losing the life I'd once believed I'd wanted. Had fought tooth and nail for. But now suspected I really didn't want anymore.
But it was Lena St. Clair's dawning recognition of her own unhappiness, that gnawed on me as I read. The depth of the trouble she and her marriage were in.
Her utter lack of self-awareness:
"I love my work when I don't think about it too much. And when I do think about it, how much I get paid,how hard I work, how fair Harold is to everybody except me, I get upset..It's been on my mind, only I didn't really know it. I just felt a little uneasy about something..."
Lena was me. Like her, I ran from the truth. Had done so all my life.
Long before I wore a bra, I had become detached from my feelings. I had been taught in an alcoholic household to dismiss my intuitions. To accept, without argument, that black was white, and night was day. Here I was, an adult, perpetually dazed and confused.
I had no wood.
"Too little wood and you bend too quickly to listen to other people's ideas, unable to stand on your own."
I wasn't easy going, like I claimed to be, I was dangerously maleable.
And I wasn't just lost in a foreign country, barely able to read the street signs.I was lost as a person. I no longer knew, or remembered, who I was.
"I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years. Washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water."The Joy Luck Club
A year after I read The Joy Luck Club. Arrived at the truth. I came back to the U.S. with the kids on vacation. And I never went back.
After all this time, I still struggle with my fear of confrontation. My intense desire to ignore uncomfortable feelings. To put a happy face on and pretend there's nothing wrong. So as not to rock the boat.
I get that this is the worst thing I can do.
Because when the explosion comes, and it always does when you've stuffed so much down inside there's simply no more room, it will take everybody down with it. Nothing is left standing in its aftermath.
Book Review: Good read
Summary: 3 Stars
The stories of four Chinese women and their American-born daughters, The Joy Luck Club was a very intriguing and interesting examination into the Chinese culture as well as a reminder that love, loyalty, friendship and compassion know no cultural boundaries or constraints. Author Amy Tan did a remarkable job of telling the stories of these fascinating women - shadows in their own culture, but yet dynamic and captivating on paper. Tan told the stories of struggle and hardship, but each journey also had its victories and success along the way. While four daughters grew in their understanding and appreciation for their mothers, I also grew in my own understanding and appreciation for the Chinese culture and for those immigrants who have made the difficult transition from one culture to my own here in America.
As a Christian, I was intrigued how the book dealt with the universal issues of family, love, purpose and meaning. I found the book honest about the hardships created by a culture shaped without an appreciation for the equality of women - the pain is real even if it is not allowed to be expressed or shown publicly. I loved how the book valued the role and influence of the family and also showed the difference between the Chinese and American concepts of this institution. I also appreciated how this book dealt honestly with disappointment and disillusionment - especially from a lack of understanding between generations and cultures. It's hard to imagine the hardships faced by Chinese women seeking to pass on their rich cultural traditions to their daughters here in the US - Tan did a great job showing the tug of war waged between old and new, Chinese and American in the lives of her characters.
Book Review: Good, but not GREAT
Summary: 3 Stars
Generally, I am drawn to stories that expose me to cultures unlike my own. From that perspective alone, I found Tan's novel to be intriguing and genuine; the individual stories are rich in culture and language. I believe I would have enjoyed it more had the book been presented as a collection of short stories instead. The lack of continuity from chapter to chapter is what kept me from really connecting with this book.
I spent much of my reading time flipping back to earlier chapters to remind myself which daughter was born of which mother so that I could see how the mother's experiences and upbringing had an effect on her daughter's life. There were also a few mother/daughter story lines that I felt could have been explored more in depth and that's why I think presenting them as short stories would have been more effective.
This is the first of Tan's books that I have read, but I do intend to try another one!