Life Exposed In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

An exhausted, young woman walks the side of the road, heaving a baby in each arm with two loaded bags containing her only food. She reaches her limit, places the girls under a tree, and walks away with the two bags of rice, unaware that she would reunite with her abandoned daughters almost 40 years later. A powerful story, such as this, is one of the many contained within The Joy Luck Club. Amy Tan writes this particular chapter based on a similar event involving her mothers' escape from Communism and the desertion of her two daughters. Upon doing so, she also introduces eight other stories. In the novel, four mothers immigrate to California and are given the ability to create a better life for their daughters. The Joy Luck Club brings attention to these opportunities,

Additionally, her future writings would bring attention to the lives of immigrants. Amy says her influencers derive from “The American Dream and a Chinese family's interpretation of that...The early deaths of my older brother and father...Understanding Chinese but not being able to speak it” (About Amy Tan). As a free time hobby and way to rid of stress, Amy began to write. In fact, her family members deaths had such an impact that Amy said her mom “had a knife, a cleaver, and she backed me up to the wall with this up to my throat, and she said she was going to kill me” (Amy Tan: Her Mother's Daughter). Throughout the course of Amy's life, she learned more about her mother’s past in China and with this information, she created The Joy Luck Club. This Chinese-American novel tells the story of eight individuals, four Chinese mothers and their American daughters who have approximately two chapters each. The book begins and ends with the Jing-Mei Woo's story who reflects the life of Amy herself. Jing- Mei's mother dies in the book allowing her to discover the past her mom left behind including her three abandoned daughters. The second