The Joy Luck Club Events Quotes

The old woman remembered a swan she had bought many years ago in Shanghai for a foolish sum. This bird, boasted the market vendor, was once a duck that stretched its neck in hopes of becoming a goo...

"Auntie, Uncle," I say, repeatedly, nodding to each person there. I have always called these old family friends Auntie and Uncle. And then I walk over and stand next to my father. (I.1.38)

I watched my mother, seeing her for the first time, this pretty woman with her white skin and oval face, not too round like Auntie’s or sharp like Popo’s. I saw that she had a long whit...

I watched this same movie when you did not come. The American soldier promises to come back and marry the girl. She is crying with genuine feeling and he says, "Promise! Promise! Honey-sweetheart,...

So I walked closer yet, until I could see the face of the Moon Lady: shrunken cheeks, a broad oily nose, large glaring teeth, and red-stained eyes. A face so tired that as she wearily pulled off he...

"I don’t believe you. Let me see the book." "It is written in Chinese. You cannot understand it. That is why you must listen to me." (II.Prologue.6-7)

"This American rules," she concluded at last. "Every time people come out from foreign country, must know rules. You not know, judge say, Too bad, go back. They not telling you why so you can use t...

My father, who spoke only a few canned Chinese expressions, insisted my mother learn English. So with him, she spoke in moods and gestures, looks and silences, and sometimes a combination of Englis...

And I too saw Bing trudging wearily at the far end of the beach, his shoes hanging in his hand, his dark head bent over in exhaustion. I could feel what my mother felt. The hunger in our hearts was...

My mother believed you could be anything you wanted in America. You could open a restaurant. You could work for the government and get good retirement. You could buy a house with almost no money do...

"She become so thin now you cannot see her," says my mother. "She like a ghost, disappear." (III.1.94)

And looking at the coat in the mirror, I couldn’t fend off the strength of her will anymore, her ability to make me see black where there was once white, white where there was once black. The...

I had been talking to too many people, my friends, everybody it seems, except Ted. (III.3.36)

And then she pointed her crab leg toward her future son-in-law, Rich, and said, "See how this one doesn’t know how to eat Chinese food." "Crab isn’t Chinese," said Waverly in her compla...

"As your mother slept soundly in Second Wife’s bed, Second Wife got up in the middle of the night and left the dark room, and Wu Tsing took her place. When you mother awoke to find him touchi...

Saint took me to America, where I lived in houses smaller than the one in the country. I wore large American clothes. I did servant’s tasks. I learned the Western ways. I tried to speak with...

How can she talk to people in China with these words? Pee-pee, choo-choo train, eat, close light sleep. How can she think she can blend in? Only her skin and her hair are Chinese. Inside – sh...

The minute our train leaves the Hong Kong border and enters Shenzhen, China, I feel different. I can feel the skin on my forehead tingling, my blood rushing through a new course, my bones aching wi...