LITERATURE ANALYSIS #6

The book I chose to do my literature analysis on was The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.

1) This book is divided into four different sections with women from four different families narrating a chapter in each section. In the first chapter of section one you learn about the origin of the Joy Luck Club, which was started by Jing-Mei Woo, who is planning on going to China to meet her half-sisters. Next, you meet An-Mei Hsu who stays with her grandmother after being abandoned by her mother. Her mother returns only to leave again because she is unwelcome. Next, there is Lindo Jong who is at a young age given to another family so that she will marry their son. After getting married, Lindo manages to break up the marriage and escape to America. Next is Ying-Ying St. Clair, who attends the Moon Festival as a child but falls off the boat. In the next two sections you meet these four women's daughters,  Waverly Jong, Lena St. Clair, Rose Hsu Jordan, and Jing-Mei Woo. You learn about how Waverly was a chess master as a young girl, but abruptly quit after too much pressure form her mother and about her struggle to share with her mother her new relationship with a man named Rich after her failed first marriage.  Lena has to cope with her mother's failed pregnancy and high tension level in the family following, along with a controlling husband who does not treat her as his equal. Rose must deal with the tragedy of her younger brother Bing being swept into the ocean, and later with a divorce suggested by her husband that she later realizes is because he has a new woman in his life. Jing-Mei deals with her over-bearing mother who tried to force her into learning the piano and later in life with her general feeling that she is a failure. In the last section we learn about the mother's perception of the events going on in their and their daughters lives, as well as what happens when Jing-Mei goes to visit her half-sisters.

2) The theme of this novel can be identified as "The Challenges of Cultural Translation."