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What books should everyone read before they die?Add Book
The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan
Literature
James Mustich
Jul 30, 2018
Thirty-six-year-old Jing-mei, also known as June, hasn’t been to her mother’s mah jong club since she was a teenager. Her father has asked her to take the seat at the table which has been empty since her mother died two months earlier. Arriving at the house of one of the “aunties” who occupy the other three corners of the Joy Luck Club, she is dismayed by the sameness—nothing has changed in the apartment; the aunties and uncles still follow their decades-old routines—and yet she feels completely out of place. Jing-mei has always been embarrassed by her mother and her friends and their persistence in their nostalgic ways. As Jing-mei takes her seat at the table, her mother’s stories come back to her, and as The Joy Luck Club progresses, Tan moves around the table, unfolding the lives of the aunties and their grown daughters. The deftly woven web of tales and tellers catches all the women’s hopes and heartaches, dreams and disappointments, some especially Chinese American, others the lot of immigrants of any nationality, almost all familiar to mothers and daughters everywhere. Encouraged by the older women, Jing-mei travels to China to reconnect with those her mother left behind, allowing Tan to close a magical narrative circle that is warm and wonderful in its embrace of family, forgiveness, and the joy and luck that can redeem misfortune.
Similar to another book on this list, Between The World And Me, The Joy Luck Club immerses the reader in the lives of Asian women in China and after immigrating to the United States. Although it's a fictional novel, it's highly realistic, and gives readers of prvilege - white, male, hetero, cis - an important immersion into lives that are all too easy to "other".
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This is the first book my book club shared in the early 90s. The book was a revelation, but so was my first book club experience!
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Better read this again so I can remember why I liked it!!
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"1,000 Books To Read Before You Die" is a registered trademark of Workman Publishing, Inc. Based on the book: 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die by James Mustich, (Workman Publishing Co., Inc.: © 2018 James Mustich)
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