The Joy Luck Club is a group of sixteen interrelated stories, arranged around the diverse emotional relationships of four different mother/daughter pairs. To escape their hard lives of war and poverty, the four mothers emigrate from China to America. In the U.S., they struggle to raise their American-born daughters in a culture that is different than what they are used to.
The novel opens with the death of Suyuan Woo, the head of the Joy Luck Club, a social group of women who play the Chinese tile game mah-jongg and use the group as a way to depend on each other for support. Jing-mei, Suyuan's daughter, takes her mother's place at the east side of the game table. Jing-mei's relationship and interactions at the table with the older women signifies the generational conflicts that play a major role in all of the different stories. Each of the mother and daughter pairs has their own personal and cultural problems that are unique to their situation. In each relationship, events in the mother's past deeply affect how she identifies with and relates to her daughter.
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They take on their own unique roles depending on cultural demands. In China, society demands that the mothers be obedient wives and are expected to never challenge authority. In America, the daughters learn to be independent like having the option of divorcing and taking most any job. When the daughter in the prologue of Queen Mother of the Western Skies looks in the mirror, because she is sitting with one mirror in front of her and one at her back, she sees infinite reflections of her own face. This makes her realize that she is part of one multifaceted spirit that extends forever into past and future generations. While her country of residence, job, marriage, and language may be different from her mother's, they are still connected irrevocably, as will be the case with her own