The Joy Luck Club Analysis

So the woman bought a swan who used to be a duck – also known as "a creature that became more than what was hoped for." The swan gets pulled away by immigration officials, and the old lady is...

The present day of the book takes place in the 1980's-era San Francisco Bay Area, with a trip at the end to Guangzhou and Shanghai, China. The daughters’ youth therefore takes place somewhere in...

First Person; Third Person (Limited) In The ProloguesIn mah-jong, the magic number is "four" (there are four sides, and you need four players). And since the O.G. Joy Luck Club was created with the...

This book contains eight women’s stories. What holds all the stories together is that they're all about mothers and daughters—four mothers who immigrate from China and their four daughters who...

Tan uses a lot of implausible stories to make her point—remember that duck that stretched its neck and became a swan? (If you don't, head on over to our "Symbols" discussion.)These stories are to...

If you're really into books that start "Once upon a time," and the go step by step through the plot, The Joy Luck Club is probably not your cup of tea. Amy Tan's writing style can feel disjointed,...

The Joy Luck Club is the name of a weekly gathering of four women—one to fill each corner of a mah jong table—who gather to play mah jong, eat good food, and gossip. It was started by Suyuan Wo...

The book a whole doesn’t follow the classic plot structure, largely because the book is designed as a collection of interwoven short stories. Each of the storylines has tension and a conclusion,...

The book doesn’t follow a single Booker’s Seven plot type, largely because the book is designed as a collection of short stories. It opens by raising the question of how well a daughter knows...

Jing-mei learns that her long-lost sisters have been found. She is to visit them in China, and break the news that their mother has died.Mothers and daughters share their life stories with each ot...

In the movie version of the novel, Ming-na Wen plays Jing-mei. Later in her career, Ming-na Wen played a different girl named Jing-mei, on ER. (Source)The Joy Luck Club began when Tan wrote a short...

There’s actually a significant amount of sex in this book, but 1) it’s rarely explicit, and 2) it’s never really about sex. Instead of long bodice-ripping passages, Tan uses all these dry eup...

Sunset magazine (II.3.40)Life magazine (II.1.51)The Ed Sullivan Show (II.4.22)Ripley’s Believe It or Not magazine (II.4.13)Good Housekeeping magazine (II.4.13)Reader’s Digest (II.4.13)