1. Have you been, or will you ever be, a confused teenager?
2. Do you have a mother? Do you totally not understand her, ever? Do you love her? Do you sometimes hate her?
3. Do you have dreams? Wishes? Desires?
4. Do you feel like you’re always falling short of your parents’ expectations?
5. Do you feel like you know what’s wrong in your life but you just can’t fix it?

If you answered "yes" to any one of the above questions, you’ve got everything in common with the women of The Joy Luck Club. Amy Tan basically took a ton of universal themes, zoomed in on the lives of several Chinese-American women, and then presented the result to us as a nice book. At its heart of hearts, The Joy Luck Club is about understanding the people who have an interest in our lives – the people who changed our diapers, made sure we ate our vegetables, drove us to school – in short, our parents. It’s about realizing that our parents are real people, with their own hopes, dreams, histories, weaknesses, and triumphs.

If you’re still doubtful that you’re going to see any part of your own life reflected in The Joy Luck Club, you might want to read it just because it’s a good story. Off the top of our head, The Joy Luck Clubhas: extra-marital love affairs, food, laughter, blood and gore, war, faith and fate, twins, chess, superstition, abandoned children, elopement, and much, much more. It’s drama, it’s people. It’s stuff that could compete with Desperate Housewives any day of the week.

The first story begins two months after Jing-mei "June" Woo loses her mother, Suyuan, to a brain aneurysm. Her mother's best friends-June's "aunties"-invite June to take Suyuan's place at their mah jong table so she can sit at the East, "where everything begins."

Suyuan Woo had invented the original Joy Luck Club in China, before the Japanese invaded the city of Kweilin. They had used the group to help shield themselves from the harshness of war. As they feasted on whatever they could find, they transformed their stories of hardship into ones of good fortune.

After Suyuan reaches the United States, she resurrects the Joy Luck Club with three other Chinese émigrés, and the four reinvent themselves in San Francisco 's Chinatown. These four mothers hope the mix of "American circumstances with Chinese character" will give their daughters better lives.

In each section of the novel, June recounts her late mother's fantastic tales on evenings after "every bowl had been washed and the Formica table had been wiped down twice." Every time Suyuan tells her daughter about Kweilin, she invents a new ending. But one night she reveals the real ending-how she lost her twin daughters while fleeing the Japanese invasion: "Your father is not my first husband. You are not those babies."

After her mother's death, June realizes that she had not fully understood her mother's past or her intentions. She journeys to China to discover what her mother had lost there. She is feverish to find out who she is, where she came from, and what future she can create-so she can finally join the Joy Luck Club.

• Suyuan Woo - Suyuan's story is told through her daughter. She was forced to leave her twin babies on the road in China while fleeing the Japanese invasion.
• An-mei Hsu - At age nine, An-mei joins her widowed mother, who is exiled as a rich man's fourth wife. Her mother commits suicide. In the U.S., An-mei questions her faith when her youngest son drowns.
• Lindo Jong - As a child, Lindo outwits her mother-in-law to escape her arranged marriage. Later, she brags about her American-born daughter but also longs for Waverly to notice their similarities.
• Ying-ying St. Clair - When her philandering husband dies, Ying-ying leaves her wealthy family and starts over as a shopgirl. She marries an American merchant and emigrates but suffers from episodes of depression as an adult.

• Jing-mei (June) Woo - June is a sensitive child whose mother wants her to become a piano prodigy. After learning the truth about her mother's past, she travels to China to find her lost sisters.
• Waverly Jong - A chess champion as a child, Waverly grows up to become a successful tax attorney. She worries about her mother's opinion of her white fiancé.
• Rose Hsu Jordan - Timid Rose is overwhelmed by American choices, but she finds conviction in the midst of a bewildering divorce.
• Lena St. Clair - Generous Lena shares her mother's powers of intuition but remains powerless to act on them. The prickly division of household expenses reveals the impoverishment of her marriage.

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1. We feasted, we laughed, we played games, lost and won, we told the best stories.

At the dinner following the wedding ceremony, guests feasted on chicken cordon bleu, asparagus in hollandaise sauce, chocolate mousse, and champagne. Feasted means?

2. The hostess had to serve special dyansyin foods to bring good luck of all kinds-dumplings shaped like silver money ingots, long rice noodles for long life, boiled peanuts for conceiving sons, and of course, many good-luck oranges for a plentiful, sweet life.

The survivors of the shipwreck did not starve on the island because of the plentiful coconuts and tropical fruits. Plentiful means?

3. The hostess had to serve special dyansyin foods to bring good luck of all kinds-dumplings shaped like silver money ingots, long rice noodles for long life, boiled peanuts for conceiving sons, and of course, many good-luck oranges for a plentiful, sweet life.

When we toured the United Sates Mint in Philadelphia we saw row after row of stacked silver ingots that would eventually be melted and used to make certain coins. Ingots means?

4. People thought we  were wrong to serve banquets every week while many people in the city were starving, eating rats and, later, the garbage that the poorest rats used to feed on.

As Michael's best man, I was forced to make a speech at the wedding banquet. Banquet means?

5. What was worse, we asked among ourselves, to sit and wait for our own deaths with proper somber faces?Or to choose our own happiness? My younger brother looked particularly somber on the last day of his summer vacation. Somber means?

6. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost.

We were down by fifteen points in the fourth quarter, but the coach told us not to despair. Despair means?

7. My table was from my family and was of a very fragrant red wood, not what you call rosewood, but hong mu, which is so fine there's no English word for it.

The flowers were beautiful, but they were a little too fragrant and she found herself sneezing often. Fragrant means?

8. How often did the Joy Luck Club held its parties?

9. What is the speaker's mah jong table is made of?

10. Why did the speaker create the Joy Luck Club?

11.Know what the hostess of the Joy Luck Club might serve .

12.
There were four members of the Joy Luck Club because...

Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work

Language As Barrier and Bridge

People

stubborn
self-centered
willful as a child;as an adult
jealous

suspicious
quick to anger
aware of her failings
willing to change
talented only at minor job
apparently unambitious

to introduce June to China

Aiyi

Aunt and dear friend of Canning Woo that he and Jing mei met in China

to show "old" China in present time

Lili

Mei Ching

Woman in China that found Suyuan's twins on the side of the road and raised them

to show selfless love

Chwun Yu and Chwun Hwa Wang

Twin sisters from Suyuan Woo's first marriage that she left on the side of the road

Places

Who lived there?