Reviews with content warning for Eating disorder - The Joy Luck Club

The Joy Luck Club contains beautiful, captivating, and heartwrenching stories about the early lives of four women in China. It is difficult to conceptualize the hardship they each faced at such young ages; their strength truly is inspiring. It felt so intimate being invited into the Joy Luck Club, observing the deep, familial bond that these women have nurtured in America. They each attempt to impart their wisdom and lessons to their daughters, but their meaning is lost in translation across cultural and language barriers. It was lovely to see how these mother-daughter duos eventually connected as the daughters became adults themselves.

This book will certainly leave you with a warm feeling

Content Warnings

hanfaulder's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

It has been a little while since I read this book, but I do remember thoroughly enjoying my experience of it. This can be largely attributed to Amy Tan's vividly evocative writing style. It was as though the world Tan presented to her reader - one of complex, multi-layered relationships between immigrant mother's and their daughters - could jump out of the page at any moment; the words giving-way to ocean water and tears, smelling of fresh garlic and chillies sizzling, as in the far distance I could see the shining red of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Tan describes things with vibrancy and intention, and with every tactile description there is a palpable emotional weight behind it, which only adds to the story being told. While the characters explored in The Joy Luck Club are not always pleasant, and sometimes far from it, they are very real. I appreciated the complexity of these stories, and the grey morality of the characters. The deftness with which Tan observes and brings to life this story was touching, and it opened my mind to the challenges immigrants face raising their children in a world very different to the one they came from. The struggle of acclamation to American culture, as well as interesting critiques of western values, the dichotomy explored between the daughter's embrace of change and the mother's honouring of tradition was nuanced, and the balance found between these two sides was fascinating to read, and emotional in places, to see these relationships so raw.

However, I have to admit that not everything in the story has aged well for a modern audience. This did not subtract from my experience reading the book, but it is an interesting point to bring up. I will also say that, for me personally, I did find the format of the book a little muddied, occasionally loosing track of which characters were which and having to jog my memory with every new chapter. This wasn't a huge issue, as I still felt the themes and understood the core relationships being presented, though this problem did knock my rating down somewhat, and I would warn people before reading this book that it can become overwhelming. Otherwise, I thought that The Joy Luck Club was a fascinating read, more than worthy of recommendation for Tan's expressive wringing style alone.

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readerette's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

While this story and the characters are not always pleasant, they feel very real. I was touched by the weaving of the mothers' and daughters' stories, how American culture bled into the lives of all the characters, the struggles of being an immigrant and a parent (and how individual each set of struggles is). Relatable and also informative on aspects of a culture I'm not that familiar with.

That said, the weaving of the characters' stories did get muddy for me, I didn't get enough about the Joy Luck Club itself, and all of these people supposedly friendly with one another could be incredibly petty and cruel to their "friends". Perhaps I'm just leading with my white American eye on that last part though--friendship looks different to different people.

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uhu's review against another edition

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emotional funny informative reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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lmshearer's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This has been on my TBR list for a while, ever since we read "Two Kinds" in middle school English class. I loved the structure of this book and the vignettes of each mother/daughter. I look forward to rereading the essays out of book order to fully understand some of the relationships and their stories I may have missed on this read-through.

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baponthecob's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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