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Book Summary and Reviews of The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

The Joy Luck Club

by Amy Tan

  • Published:
  • Mar 1989, 288 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

The Joy Luck Club explores the tender and tenacious bond between four daughters and their mothers. The daughters know one side of their mothers, but they don't know about their earlier never-spoken of lives in China. The mothers want love and obedience from their daughters, but they don't know the gifts that the daughters keep to themselves. Heartwarming and bittersweet, this is a novel for mother, daughters, and those that love them.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Intensely poetic, startlingly imaginative and moving, this remarkable book will speak to many women, mothers and grown daughters, about the persistent tensions and powerful bonds between generations and cultures ... Tan's first novel is a major achievement." - Publishers Weekly.

"What a wonderful book! ... this novel is full of complicated, endearingly human characters and first-rate story telling in the oral tradition. It should be a hit in any fiction collection." - Library Journal.

" ... a splendid first novel - one that matches the vigor and sensitivity of Maxine Hong Kingston in her tributes to the abundant heritage of Chinese-Americans." - Kirkus Reviews.

This information about The Joy Luck Club was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Amy Tan Author Biography

Born in the US to immigrant parents from China, Amy Tan failed her mother's expectations that she become a doctor and concert pianist. She settled on writing fiction. Her novels are The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, and Saving Fish From Drowning, all New York Times bestsellers and the recipients of various awards. She is also the author of a memoir, The Opposite of Fate, two children's books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa, and numerous articles for magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's Bazaar, and National Geographic.

Tan has lectured internationally at universities, including Stanford, Oxford, Jagiellonian, Beijing, and Georgetown, both in Washington, DC and Doha, Qatar. Tan also served as the Literary Editor for the ...

... Full Biography
Link to Amy Tan's Website

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