The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

♥♥♥♥♥
After reading various excerpts from The Joy Luck Club in English classes, i finally got around to reading the entire thing. This well-known bestseller is centered on four Chinese mothers and their American daughters, and the ways in which they finally learn to understand each other. June, who begins and ends the book, must grow to understand her recently deceased mother as she prepares to go to China to meet her long-lost twin sisters in place of their mother, who had spent her life searching for them.

As the mothers recall their youth in China, their mothers, the ways they found strength, and the hope they had, the daughters recall their own sorrows and pressures as children in California. The daughters grow up to face unhappy marriages, divorce, and introducing a fiance to a mother for whom no one could ever be good enough, they struggle against their mothers reactions and manipulations. Meanwhile, the mothers marvel over and ache from how little their daughters understand them, and how awkwardly their hopes for their daughters translated into their lives as adults. By the end of the book, each daughter finally begins to understand her mother, sometimes in very subtle ways; but their new insight into who their mother is gives them each new insight into who they themselves are. The book begins with an expression of enormous hope; life is difficult, but the telling of each family's tale ends with hope, too.

I had a slightly hard time sorting out who was whose daughter and who is she married to, and had to check the little mother-daughter chart at the beginning of the book quite often. But even so, each tale is fascinating and powerful; i especially enjoyed the mothers' stories of their lives in China. I recommend it.