The Joy Luck Club features 4 Chinese immigrants and their 4 American born daughters. The book is broken up into different chapters that highlight an individual woman and a insight into her life.It is mainly a look into mother-daughter relationships and how the generations misunderstand each other. I enjoyed the focus of Chinese American woman, a group I know little to nothing about. I will say it was kind of hard to keep the characters/their stories/which mother- daughter pair went together.
However, it really could be the story of many women and their mothers.
How many times have we felt embarrassed of our own mothers or felt they were trying to do things to embarrass us? How many times have we felt they just don't understand? How often have you wondered, what do I really know about my mother?
I have realized in the last few years, how very little I know/knew about my mother and her mother and her mother before her. How even though we are a close family and share stories all the time, there are things I will never know or should have asked that now I cannot because of death. It's hard to know that you could be the fountain of all this information, but you were too self-absorbed or too busy or too something not to ask or attend certain things that now are impossible.
I do not think these feelings are special to me and that quite a few of us no matter how good of relationships we have with the women in our life, realize after death or other life altering moments how little we know. How we wish we could know more and could have done more or been more.
This novel made me think and I know it will make you think if you give it a shot. Perhaps, it will push you to make that phone call or write that letter or take that visit. Just don't be left sitting some day wishing you had more to tell your own daughter.
What was the last book that really made you think?
