Book Bucket List | The Joy Luck Club

My mother really has a talent in driving me crazy, and I'm sure most daughters feel the same way about their mothers. (My own mother is really, really, really good at it though.)  This past weekend, my mother informed me that she, a terrible driver, had signed up for a CAR RACING CLASS.  Her husband thought that this would be a good way to build up confidence behind the wheel. I think that she has too much confidence behind the wheel.  So this discussion got me thinking about evolving mother/daughter relationships, and this week, I am featuring one of my favorite books, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.

When four women meet at San Francisco's First Chinese Baptist Church after immigrating to America, they decide to start playing mah jong together.  They name their group the Joy Luck Club, and soon become close friends.  The book is composed of a series of vignettes told from the perspective of these women and their daughters.  The women use the club as a place to tell their stories, come to terms with their pasts, and grow into independence.  The book also focuses on the difficulties of mother/daughter relationships and the difficulty of communication.  The American-born daughters have difficulty understanding the reasoning and motivations of their mothers, and vice versa.  A lot of this has to do with the fact that this is a universal issue, but also due to the language differences between the separate generations.

In 1993, the book was made into a movie.  Watch the clip of it here.