The Joy Luck Club

1962 Words8 Pages
The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan 288 pages Realistic Fiction Summary: The Joy Luck Club starts when Jing-mei’s mom, Suyuan Woo. The book consists of sixteen stories that all connect together to tell about the lives of four Chinese women who immigrated to America from China and their four American-born daughters. In 1949, the four immigrants meet at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco and agree to continue to meet to play mah jong. They call their mah jong group the Joy Luck Club. The stories told in this novel revolve around the Joy Luck Club women and their daughters. Eventually, Jing-mei gets to meet her long lost half-sisters and though out the book, each of the eight women gets to tell the story of their life. Scene #1: One of the scenes from this novel that I found really interesting was when Jing-mei Woo looks back at her life. I like it so much because I can relate to it so much. As a little girl, Jing-mei’s mom was beyond convinced that Jing-mei was a child prodigy just waiting to be discovered. Suyuan, Jing-mei’s mom, believed that in America, her daughter could become anything she wanted to. They started with singing and dancing, then random trivia that Suyuan quizzed her daughter with every night. From that, came learning the piano. Each task doesn’t turn out the way Jing-mei’s mom wants it to so finally, she just gives up trying and deems her daughter a failure. I’ve been in Jing-mei’s shoes because my parents, especially my dad, love to enforce the importance of being the best of the best. By the end of first grade to the beginning of second grade, I was learning my times tables so I could be ahead of all my other classmates. I started piano lessons when I was six, singing lessons when I was seven and violin lessons when I turned nine. I didn’t realize at the time, but my parents were just trying to show me a variety of options I had.

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