joy luck club essay questions

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The Joy Luck Club

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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

The Joy Luck Club: Introduction

The joy luck club: plot summary, the joy luck club: detailed summary & analysis, the joy luck club: themes, the joy luck club: quotes, the joy luck club: characters, the joy luck club: symbols, the joy luck club: theme wheel, brief biography of amy tan.

Historical Context of The Joy Luck Club

Other books related to the joy luck club.

• Full Title: The Joy Luck Club
• When Written: 1980s
• Where Written: California
• When Published: 1989
• Literary Period: Contemporary
• Genre: Novel
• Setting: San Francisco, CA; China
• Climax: Suyuan’s sacrifice of her twin babies on the road to Chungking.
• Antagonist: Various antagonists depending on storyline, including Japanese troops, Huang Taitai, Second Wife, and sometimes the Joy Luck Club mothers themselves.
• Point of View: First-person limited

Extra Credit for The Joy Luck Club

Following In Her Footsteps. Just as June meets her Chinese half-sisters for the first time in The Joy Luck Club’s final chapter, Amy Tan went to China to meet her three half-sisters in 1987 at the age of 32. Her mother was forced to leave them behind when she fled Shanghai before the Communist takeover in 1949.

Shared Names. Amy Tan’s Chinese name is “An-mei,” which translates to “a blessing from America.” An-mei is also the name of one of her protagonists in The Joy Luck Club .

The Joy Luck Club

The joy luck club study guide.

The Joy Luck Club is Amy Tan 's first novel, published in 1989. Just two years before the book's release, Tan was succeeding as a speech writer and self-proclaimed workaholic. Feeling unfulfilled, she found her calling in fiction writing. Tan explains that she did not set out to write a novel but a series of stories. She met a critic who told her, "If I were you, I would start over again and take each one of these and make that your story. You don't have one story here, you have 12 stories. 16 stories." Indeed, The Joy Luck Club was published as a collection of interrelated stories, but it was labeled and reviewed as a novel. It became an instant bestseller, catapulting Tan onto the international stage. Reviewers praised Tan's heartfelt yet gritty examination of mother-daughter relationships, following in the footsteps of Asian-American women writers such as Maxine Hong Kingston. The book exceeded an astounding 40 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was nominated for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Award. It received the Commonwealth Gold Award and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. Tan and co-screenwriter Ron Bass adapted the work as a feature film in 1994, which was directed by Wayne Wang, and in which Tan made a cameo appearance in a party scene. The movie was a great success, and it was nominated for a BAFTA award for best adapted screenplay.

The Joy Luck Club Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Joy Luck Club is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Waverly's relationship with her ex-husband?

When Waverly and her first husband Marvin Chen eloped, Waverly's mother picked him apart until Waverly too saw his flaws and lost interest.

What is the author's view of marriage in the book?

The fact that many of the mothers and daughters have unhappy marriages creates a common ground on which they can relate. But marriage has different meanings for each generation. For the mothers, it is permanent and not always based on love....

Why is June uncomfortable at the Hsus' house?

In Chapter One, June goes to the Hsus' house, where she takes her mother's place in the Joy Luck Club. Although she is only one generation younger than everyone else, she feels out of place, as she realizes that her mother has made excuses for her...

Study Guide for The Joy Luck Club

The Joy Luck Club study guide contains a biography of Amy Tan, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Joy Luck Club
• The Joy Luck Club Summary
• Character List

Essays for The Joy Luck Club

The Joy Luck Club essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.

• Spiritual Reassessment and Moral Reconciliation
• Mother-Daughter Evolution in The Joy Luck Club
• Music as a Motif in The Joy Luck Club
• Intergenerational Relations in “Rules of the Game”
• The American Dream in The Joy Luck Club

Lesson Plan for The Joy Luck Club

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The Joy Luck Club
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The Joy Luck Club Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for The Joy Luck Club

• Introduction

The Joy Luck Club

61 pages • 2 hours read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-4

Part 2, Chapters 5-8

Part 3, Chapters 9-12

Part 4, Chapters 13-16

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Why do the daughters call the other mothers in the Joy Luck “Auntie,” when they are not related? What is the significance of this to the story?

Rose had thought that her mother was saying “fate” when she said one had to have “faith.” How did An-Mei’s ideas of fate and faith change over time? How did they stay the same?

What were the motivations of the mothers in sending Jing-Mei to China?

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Rules of the Game

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The Kitchen God's Wife

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The Joy Luck Club

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Available to teachers only as part of the teaching the joy luck clubteacher pass, teaching the joy luck club teacher pass includes:.

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Sample of Discussion & Essay Questions

• Why is the book entitled Joy Luck Club ? What is the purpose of the club, both in China and in America? How does the club bring the different groups of women together, across time and nations? What would you have named this book?

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Joy Luck Club (Tan) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions   1. Although the women in The Joy Luck Club are Chinese or Chinese American, and their heritage plays an important part in their lives, they also have experiences that all of us face, regardless of culture, even today. They struggle with raising their children, contend with unhappy marriages, cope with difficult financial circumstances, and are disheartened by bad luck. Which of the eight main characters did you identify with the most? Why?

2. When Jing-mei’s aunties tell her about her sisters, they insist that she travel to China to see them, to tell them about their mother. They are taken aback when Jing-mei responds. “What will I say? What can I tell them about my mother? I don’t know anything. She was my mother” (p. 36). Jing-mei thinks that the reason this upsets the aunties is that it makes them fear that they may not know their own daughters either. How does this exchange set the stage for the stories that follow? To what extent do you think that Jing-mei is right? How well do any of the mothers and daughters know each other in this book?

3. Discuss the topic of marriage as it is represented in The Joy Luck Club . Each of the women faces difficult choices when it comes to marrying—whether it be Lindo Jong being forced into an early union with a man she loathes, Ying-Ying St. Clair starting life over with an American man after being abandoned by her first husband, or Rose Hsu Jordan, who is facing divorce from a man whose family never understood her. How are the daughters’ romantic choices influenced, if at all, by their mothers, who had fewer choices of their own?

4. When she is young, Waverly Jong is a chess prodigy. It is a common conception in the United States that young Asian children are more driven than their peers and more likely to excel because their parents demand more of them. However, it is Waverly’s mother who influences Waverly to quit chess, due to a hurtful argument. What do you think of mother and daughter’s reactions to this event? Find other examples that challenge American stereotypes of Chinese culture in The Joy Luck Club .

5. While Waverly was a prodigy and grew up to be successful in her career, Jing-mei (or “June” as she is called in America) has had more difficulty. Her parents also wished for her to be a “genius,” as if hard work alone could will it. Using Jing-mei Woo’s chapter “Best Quality” (p. 221) as a platform, discuss the differences between the daughters of the members of the Joy Luck Club. What does the dinner scene between Waverly and June say about each of their characters? How is their behavior influenced by family and culture?

6. Throughout their stories, the women in The Joy Luck Club and their daughters exhibit many signs, at different moments, of both strength and weakness. On page 170, when Lena St. Clair is describing her relationship with Harold, she claims that “I think I deserve someone like Harold, and I mean in the good sense and not like bad karma. We’re equals.” Knowing what you do about Lena and Harold’s relationship, do you think that’s true? Does a thought like this represent strength or weakness on Lena’s part? What are some other moments of strength and weakness, both major and minor, that you can identify in the women in this book?

7. The title of the book, The Joy Luck Club , is taken from Suyuan Woo’s establishment of a gathering between women, first in China, and later in San Francisco. The club has been maintained for many years and undergone many changes since its inception—for instance, the husbands of the women now attend, and they pool their money to buy stock instead of relying only on their mahjong winnings. What do you think is the significance of these meetings to the women who attend them? Why do you think these four families have continued to come together like this after so much time has passed? Can you think of any rituals that you have with friends that are similar to this?

8. In Rose Hsu Jordan’s story, “Half and Half,” a terrible tragedy befalls her youngest brother Bing while she is watching him. At first she is fearful that her parents will be angry with her, but instead her mother relies on both her Christian faith and Chinese beliefs in ancestor worship. On page 140, Rose says the following: “I think about Bing, about how I knew he was in danger, how I let it happen. I think about my marriage, how I had seen the signs, I really had. But I just let it happen. And I think now that fate is shaped half by faith, half by inattention.” What does she mean by this? Do you agree with her? Do you think that Rose’s mother, An-mei, truly lost her faith that day when they lost Bing?

9. Suyuan Woo is the only member of the Joy Luck Club who does not have her own voice in this book—she died a few months before the story begins. Why do you think the author made that choice? Why is it significant that her daughter is the main narrator, and that it is the story of her lost daughters in Kweilin that serve as a beginning and end to the book?

10. When Jing-mei visits China with her father toward the end of the book, she is constantly struck by the signs of capitalism everywhere: in the hotel she finds “a wet bar stocked with Heineken beer, Coke Classic, and Seven-Up, mini-bottles of Johnnie Walker Red, Bacardi rum and Smirnoff vodka, and packets of M&M’s, honey roasted cashews, and Cadbury chocolate bars. And again I say out loud, ‘This is communist China?’ ” (p. 319). What does she mean by this observation and question? What do you think she was expecting when she made the trip? In this scene, Jing-mei is also visiting her parents’ homeland for the first time, after hearing so many stories about it. Have you ever visited a foreign place and found it to be very different from what you had imagined?

11. What are your thoughts on the structure of The Joy Luck Club ? It is not a traditional novel told by one narrator, but the stories are very intricately connected. How did that affect your reading experience? What were some of the differences you noticed in the way that you read this book as opposed to other novels or collections of stories?

12. Amy Tan’s work has been highly anthologized for students, and her books, especially The Joy Luck Club , are read in more than thirty countries around the world. Why do you think this book has such a universal appeal? What are some of the elements of the plot and aspects of the characters that make so many different kinds of people want to read it? ( Questions issued by publisher .) top of page (summary)

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The Joy Luck Club essay

Joy luck club is a moving story of four Chinese women immigrants and their four Chinese-American daughters and how they tried to cope with each other amidst their differing and oft-times clashing cultural aspects. Primarily set in the Chinatown of modern-day San Francisco, the book utilizes the representation by the number four throughout the story. There are four sections in the novel, each of which makes up four chapters as there are four seats at the mahjong table and as each chapter deals with a woman (to one mother or one daughter).

The story began when, after the death of Suyuan Woo, Jing-mei (“June”) was asked by her father Canning Woo to take the place of her mother in the Joy Luck Club. Her mother’s club was a group comprised of three other fellow Chinese immigrants to America—Lindo Jong, Ying-ying St. Clair and An-Mei Hsu—who would play mahjong and eat native Chinese delicacies together. June’s initial feelings towards her newfound club were one of shame because she deemed the old women’s traditional customs and dressing were rather strange and outmoded.

Through a series of flashbacks woven into the table gatherings, the novel depicts how the difficult relationships between the feudal-born mothers and their American-bred daughters were somehow harmonized as they explored their past and as the latter found their mothers’ heritage. Ying-ying as a young girl had, during the Moon Festival, secretly wished upon the supposedly one-day-only-visible Moon Lady, only to discover that the Lady was just a man in Joy Luck Club 3 make-up. She moved to America and remarried again after her Chinese husband left her for another woman.

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Her daughter Lena is resentful of, and frequently argued, with her successful but miser-of-a-husband Harold over equal division of household expenses. An-mei Hsu’s story told of her mother committing suicide to free her from the powerful Wu Tsing who had forced her mother into concubinage. In America, An-mei married but suffered the accidental death of her youngest child. She describes her timid daughter Rose as lacking the element of wood, that is, she is able to bend in all directions and unable to stand on her own especially after being left by her husband Ted.

Lindo, who managed to escape the family of her cruel first husband, got a job in America in a factory of fortune cookies and later met her second husband Tin Jong. Her daughter Waverly is wary of having her honeymoon with her husband Rich in China owing to her apprehensions over blending in so well with her heritage that she would no longer be allowed to go back to America. The Joy Luck Club told of the struggles of the mothers and daughters with their differing aspects of cultures and generations.

As the mothers tried hard to inculcate in their daughters the understanding of the Chinese culture and to change their attitudes towards the opposite sex and the so-called “unglamorous” jobs, the young women in turn viewed the seniors as out-dated, out-of-reach, domineering and rather threatening. A central sub-plot in the novel was Suyuan’s shocking revelation that upon leaving China during Japan’s invasion, she had to abandon everything including her two baby daughters by her Chinese husband.

It was when Jing-mei traveled to China to meet with her twin half sisters that she at last found her identity and her ancestral heritage. Suyuan had ardently wished Joy Luck Club 4 to come back for her long-lost twins. June’s fulfilling this wish is the symbolic resolution for all the protagonists—forging the connection in spirit between the mothers and their respective daughters. Review The spirit of hope operates in the novel The Joy Luck Club throughout and much more than the spirit of joy or the turn of luck.

Bounded together by a rich heritage, a newfound city called San Francisco and unspeakable tragedies that marred their past, the four aging women protagonists clang on to hope rather than sink into desperation. Deciding to collect their strengths and hopes for a future, they started to regularly meet and talk over mahjong and delicious dim sum. As the stories each unfolded, the older women exhibited how they ultimately mustered their individual strengths in the face of grave loss and crises.

Holding on to the hope of building for themselves and their daughters and sons better lives in a foreign land and culture, they struggled to cope with American living and to face the calling of the past. The daughters, the modern Chinese in American, had Western minds and ways of handling situations and obviously didn’t understand their mother’s beliefs and ways. Despite these, the daughters’ personalities, strengths and weaknesses have been strongly influenced by their mothers.

As portrayed in the novel, it was really up to the modern Chinese women to decide for themselves whether to live a life of strength or of weakness. Yet, the seniors had always hoped that their daughters would understand them and would emulate more of their positive characters and absorb more of Chinese culture. Except for Ying-ying and her daughter, the mother pairs fought or argued with, or misunderstood each Joy Luck Club 5 other. Suyuan and Lindo who were both strong women also wanted their daughters to be strong like them.

Even fatalistic An-Mei who wasn’t as strong had hoped Rose would stand up on her own against her husband. Ying-ying also hoped that Lena would absorb more of the good chi or “tiger spirit” to be able to find and choose her path of happiness. In the end, the yearning wish of the mothers that they be able to forge with their daughters spiritual understanding and unity that is founded on the heritage of their hopes, characters and their Chinese culture would be realized.

Reference Tan, A. (1989). The Joy Luck Club. USA: Putnam Adult.