CBBC Week One: The Joy Luck Club, Part I

Welcome to the first week of the Cool Bloggers Book Club (CBBC) where we will be discussing The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan! CBBC makes it sound like this is some exclusive club, but anyone can join, blogger or not. You're already cool if you're here. I'm happy you are here and making this journey with all of us. As always, the ground rules for CBBC are:

1) Don't apologize. Don't apologize for having a lot or a little to say in the comments. Don't apologize because you're not an expert on something. Don't apologize because you don't have a doctorate in English literature. Don't apologize if you fall behind or can't keep up. Have fun and say what you have to say. You and your thoughts are important.(If you need more information on this, see my post on Foster's How To Read Literature Like a Professor.)

2) Feel free to come back and respond to comments more than once! I love it when there's a dialogue in the comments.

3) Have fun reading, thinking about the book, and discussing it! Don't feel limited to my discussion prompts - talk about whatever you feel like talking about.

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Who is Amy Tam?

Amy Tan is an American author best known for writing her debut novel The Joy Luck Club, a 1989 book that was later adapted into a 1993 film. She is the second of three children born to Chinese immigrants John and Daisy Tan. Her father was an electrical engineer and Baptist minister who traveled to the United States, in order to escape the chaos of the Chinese Civil War. When she was fifteen, her father and older brother, Peter, both died of brain tumors within six months of each other.

Her mother Daisy subsequently moved Amy and her younger brother, John Jr, to Switzerland. During this period, Amy learned about her mother's previous marriage to another man in China, of their four children (a son who died as a toddler and three daughters). She also learned how her mother left those children in Shanghai, which is an integral part of the story of The Joy Luck Club. 

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What happened in these chapters?

In the first section, "Feathers From A Thousand Li Away," each chapter focuses on one of four women who make up the Joy Luck Club, a club formed in China under Japanese occupation that was revived when the women met again in San Francisco. 

The first chapter is told from the perspective of Jing-Mei Woo, whose late mother Suyuan Woo has recently died. Jing-Mei has taken the place of her mother in the Joy Luck Club and she recounts the story of how her mother Suyuan was forced to flee from her home in Kweilin and abandon her children. Suyuan later found out that her first husband died. After that she married June's father and immigrated to the United States where June was born. June learns from the other female members of the Joy Luck Club that her half-sisters are alive. They ask June to go to China and meet her sisters, and tell them about Suyuan's death.

The next three chapters finish the section with a childhood tale from each of the founding women in The Joy Luck Club. 

An-Mei Hsu's story relates how she was raised by her maternal grandmother. Her mother returns only to cut off "a piece of meat" from "the softest part of her arm" ("Scar") (!!) to cook a soup in hopes of healing An-Mei's grandmother, though An-Mei's grandmother still dies.

Lindo Jong explains how a matchmaker connected her with her future husband when she was an infant. This match led to a loveless marriage. Lindo was continually pressured by her mother-in-law's desire for Lindo to produce grandchildren , even though Lindo's husband was not holding up his end of the bargain to make that happen. Lindo lies in such a way as to annul her marriage and she emigrates to the United States.

Lastly, Ying-Ying St. Clair tells the story of how she fell into a lake on a family boat ride during the Moon Festival when she was four. She's a spoiled little girl with a hovering nanny, but she wants to play like the boys. After being rescued by a group of professional fisherpeople, she realizes that she is lost. The fisherpeople DROP HER OFF ONSHORE and Ying-Ying wanders into an outdoor performance featuring the Moon Lady, who is supposed to grant unspoken wishes. But when Ying-Ying approaches the Moon Lady after the play to wish to be returned to her family, she discovers the Moon Lady is played by a man. 

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Hat mentions (why hats?):

None.

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Things I looked up:

Second Sino-Japanese war ("The Joy Luck Club") - Suyuan flees China as a young woman when Japanese forces invade the city of Kweilin. This reflects actual historical events in the Second Sino-Japanese War, which was fought between 1937 and 1945. During the eight-year war (which overlapped with World War II), Japan aggressively attacked mainland China, hoping to expand the Japanese empire onto the Asian continent. Over twenty million Chinese citizens were killed or displaced during the ground invasions. Japan succeeded in capturing many major Chinese cities, including Shanghai and Nanjing, until it became involved in World War II in 1941, fighting against the United States and other Allied countries. Japan surrendered to Allied forces in 1945, after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing millions of Japanese citizens. As part of the surrender agreement, China regained all its seized land in 1946.

tl;dr - Imperial Japan invaded China, killing lots of innocent civilians in the process. (I felt a wave a familiarity when I realized Pachinko was a similar book about a Japanese invasion.)

Basic geography of China (where is Kweilin as related to Shanghai?) ("The Joy Luck Club")

Kuomintang ("The Joy Luck Club") - a Chinese political party that ruled mainland China from 1927 to 1949 prior to its relocation to Taiwan as a result of the Chinese Civil War

rules of mahjong ("The Joy Luck Club") - Ha ha ha. I'll link to the Wikipedia page. I got confused about three sentences in. I'm a simple lady who likes my games to be simple. 

The Moon Festival ("The Moon Lady") - This is a harvest festival. On this day, the Chinese believe that the moon is at its fullest and brightest, coinciding with the time of harvest in the middle of autumn. 

Mama's aunt...who still plucked her forehead bald ("The Moon Lady") - During the Middle Ages, a high forehead was deemed especially beautiful, and women and girls not naturally endowed with this characteristic plucked their foreheads (sometimes burning the follicles with hot pins to keep them from regrowing) to achieve the almost baby-like bald forehead.

So mama's aunt was still doing this in the 1900s? That seems...weird. 

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Lines of notes:

That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain. ("Scar")

This is how a daughter honors her mother. It is shou so deep it is in  your bones. The pain of the flesh is nothing. The pain you must forget. Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother before her. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh. ("Scar")

I watched as she took out a sharp, thin knife and began to slice open the fish bellies, pulling out the red slippery insides and throwing them over her shoulder into the lake. I saw her scrape off the fish scales, which flew into the air like shards of glass. And then there were two chickens that no longer gurgled after their heads were chopped off. And a big snapping turtle that stretched out its neck to bite a stick and - whuck! - off fell its head. And dark masses of thin freshwater eels, swimming furiously in a pot. Then the woman carried everything...("The Moon Lady")

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Questions to ponder:

1) Was anyone else sort of grossed out by this book? Eating human flesh? The bird abuse in "The Moon Lady" and that vivid description of preparing the food just above? I was not expecting to gag so much reading this book. 

2) I think we can already tell from the first chapter that a big theme of this book is going to be about difficult mother/daughter relationships. Do you have any predictions about what's going to happen? Is Jing-Mei going to meet her half-sisters? Will they accept her? I also suspect there will be a lot in here about identity (Chinese? American? Chinese-American?) and difficulties between multiple generations of immigrant families. 

3) I feel I have given short shrift to Lindo's chapter "The Red Candle." What does the candle represent? Do you think it was ethical for Lindo to essentially weasel out of her marriage by making up a symbolically rich dream that indicated bad outcomes for her in-laws or do you think it was a smart thing to do for her to save herself?

4) "See my sisters, tell them about my mother," I say, nodding. "What will I say? What can I tell them about my mother? I don't know anything. She was my mother." 

This is a paragraph from the first chapter. What is Jing-Mei trying to tell her aunties here? What do you think it's foreshadowing about what's to come? To what extent do you think it's true that daughters can never really know their mothers?

5) Does anyone else read these books and realize that your knowledge of world history is abysmal? 

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Homework for you: How are you reading this book? Paperback, ebook, audiobook? Where are you reading it? If you have a photo of your book (maybe in the cozy chair where you read!) you'd like to share with the rest of the group, send it in and I'll make a collage for next week.  Deadline for sending it in to make next week's post is 10/19 by noon central. dominique100 @ hotmail dot com

I'm listening to an audiobook and referencing a paper copy I got from the library. 

"The symbol on the book is for Tan. Penguin Drop Caps is a series of twenty-six hardcover editions of fine works of literature, each featuring on its cover a specially commissioned illustrated letter of the the alphabet by Jessica Hische." 

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Upcoming CBBC schedule:

October 20: Part II - The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates
October 27: Part III - American Translation
November 3: Part IV - Queen Mother of the Western Skies

November 10: Wrap up!