Book Review: The Joy Luck Club is both universal and intensely personal. The book encompasses, inter alia, intergenerational conflict, disintegrating tradition, immigrant collision with a dominant culture, and mother-daughter rivalry. For me the biggest issue here is (isn't it always?) a failure to communicate. Constructed along the lines of a mah jong game, the story consists of four sections of four chapters told by mothers born in China and daughters born in the U.S. There was some confusion while reading in matching specific mothers and daughters, but in the end it didn't really matter as the family tensions and stresses came through clearly. I'm unfamiliar with the issues, but Amy Tan and her first novel The Joy Luck Club have been denounced for being disloyal to the Chinese and Chinese-American communities (just as early in his career Philip Roth was criticized for being unfaithful to the Jewish community -- at what point does the immigrant rebel against old cultural strictures?). I can't speak to the validity of these challenges, but the substance of every criticism seems rooted in Amy Tan's own immigrant experience. I can't condemn her for the life that made her and her choices. Every immigrant must individually balance the urge to assimilate with the desire to retain culture. Many are the stories of Mexican parents forbidding their American children from speaking Spanish. My mother played "Mah Jongg" and I've always been enamored with the little, brightly-colored tiles with their exotic smell. Although I never learned to play, I wish more of The Joy Luck Club had involved the game itself. As it is, the examination of parents from one country and children from another makes this groundbreaking book worthwhile and valuable. [4★]
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