Book Review – Tan, Amy. “The Joy Luck Club” (1989)

Overall 4.0 / 5.0 (recommended)
Gay Content 0.5 / 5.0
Gay Positive 1.0 / 5.0

When I walk my dog at night, sometimes I’ll pass a house where the window curtains remain undrawn, and I can peek for a second or two into the alternate universe of someone else’s life. It fascinates me. That’s how reading this book feels. I don’t imagine I am the target demographic for this novel, so I definitely feel like an outsider looking in. Not only am I foreign to Chinese culture, I’m not a mother or a daughter. Men figure only incidentally in this book.

But as I said, that’s part of the appeal. It’s like traveling to an exotic locale without worrying about knowing the customs or language, and fundamentally this book is about human relationships: loves, fears, uncertainties. We see the difficulties of navigating relationships (parental, romantic, and platonic) through miscommunication, cultural divides, and personal woundedness. We are treated to examples of the human spirit shining despite ourselves.

The novel tells the stories of eight women – four Chinese immigrants to the United States, and four of their American daughters. Many of the daughters have siblings, but they are largely ignored. Each woman tells her story over the course of two chapters.

I have seen the movie adaptation several times, so I had visuals in mind when I read about the characters and certain plot points. That helped me to keep the characters and stories distinct in my mind. Be warned though – if you’re new to this novel, it may be difficult to keep track of who is who. For the most part, Tan succeeds at creating unique and richly textured characters, but it can still be tricky to distinguish characters when there are a lot, and many with similar names.

Tan’s greatest strength lies in her prose. She is a poet writing narrative, and as I read I marked several pages just because I thought the words she had written were so beautiful, powerful, and apropos. However, I must admit that the novel did not have the same emotional impact on me as the movie. Perhaps I felt more removed from the book because I did not connect to the characters or stories visually.

Interestingly, the movie follows the book quite closely, and yet emphasizes different plot points, creating a different feel. The movie’s ending also departs somewhat from the book; in fact, while I thought the movie’s ending a little too sudden, it is edited to be more intense, while the novel waters down the finale with additional narrative.

On the whole, I recommend “The Joy Luck Club” as a powerful and well-written foray into the lives of eight very different and yet universally human characters. Despite humanity’s sheer diversity, we all share common threads. This novel illuminates that principle elegantly and powerfully.

Gay-wise, there is one brief mention of a gay hair stylist (he is only referenced; he does not appear). One of the characters (Waverly) identifies him as gay and suggests he has AIDS, leading another character (Jing-Mei, who gets her hair cut by him) to feel momentarily diseased. This portrayal may be appropriate for the specific characters; in fact, the author may have intended it to characterize Waverly as mean and spiteful. Nevertheless, every time a defamatory stereotype, such as gay men being diseased, appears without positive images to balance it out, the portrayal functions as confirmation of the stereotype.