The Joy Luck Club

The brief opening tale sets the stage for the exploration and appreciation of this theme. A Chinese woman has brought a swan---which she is told was once a duck which stretched it neck trying to become a goose---to America to one day give to her unborn daughter as a symbol of the capacity to become "more than what was hoped for" (3). The bird is taken by customs officers, but the woman keeps a feather, hoping one day to give it to her daughter and to tell her the story and its meaning in "perfect American English" (4). This tale is an encapsulation of the message of the book, containing as it does the hope and ambition for a better life passed from the mothers to their daughters.

In fact, the Joy Luck Club itself was formed out of the desire of the narrator's mother for a sense of hope in the new world of America and a sense of continuity with the old world of China. When the narrator, Jing-Mei Woo, joins the Joy Luck Club after her mother's death, the other members e

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unteract any such threat to hope for generational communication: For all these years I kept my mouth closed so selfish desires would not fall out. And because I remained quiet for so long now my daughter does not hear me. She sits by her fancy swimming pool and hears only her Sony Walkman, her cordless phone, and her big, important husband asking her why they have charcoal and no lighter fluid (64). But by the end of her story about the Moon Lady, it is clear that Ying-Ying has cast off those traditional chains of silence and passivity and has determinedly dedicated herself to passing along the essential hope of her life to the younger members of her family: "I remember all these things. And tonight, on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, I also remember what I asked the Moon Lady so long ago. I wished to be found" (83). Every story is touched with at least a note of hope, and most of the stories are drenched in it---hope for a better day, hope that the suffering of life's worst moments would pass, hope that such moments of pain would one day make sense, hope that action could be taken which would bring suffering more quickly to such a rewarding end. In Lena's story about the voice from the wall, for example, we read of the
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Moon Lady, Luck Club, Lindo Jong, China America, Lady Ying-Ying, St Clair, American English, Sony Walkman, joy luck, Joy Luck, joy luck club, luck club, life fate, mother daughter, York Ivy, mothers daughters, one's fate, one's life, tell sisters, own lives, hope continuity, existence joy luck,
Approximate Word count = 1649
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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