Reading Notes A, Week 12, The Joy Luck Club

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

The Mothers                              The Daughters

Suyuan Woo                               Jing-mei “June” Woo (36YO)

An-mei Hsu                                 Rose Hsu Jordan

Lindo Jong                                   Waverly Jong

Ying-ying St. Clair                      Lena St. Clair

When Suyuan Woo was young, she was married to an officer, with two small children, people from many different lifestyles all fled to Kweilin to escape the Japanese. Suyuan Woo started the Joy Luck Club when she was in Kweilin. “My idea was to have a gathering of four woman, one for each corner of my mah jong table. I knew which woman I wanted to ask. They were all like me, with wishful faces.” (23) The woman would gather weekly, they took turns hosting the party, to raise money and their spirits. They would eat and play mah jong.

Suyuan Woo started the Joy Luck Club in San Francisco in 1949.

Suyuan Woo died and her daughter Jing-Mei Woo was asked by her father to sit in her mothers spot, at the fourth corner of the mah jong table.

Suyuan Woo would tell her daughter Jing-mei about her time in Kweilin, as Jing-mei grew older the story had different endings, until one day when it ended with her mother having to leave Kweilin with her two young children slinged to her, with a wheelbarrow to push any of her belongs that would fit, one of the items was her mah jong table. As she pushed toward Chungking to be with her 1^st husband, she slowly started loosing her stuff, the wheel broke, she used slings and bags, but by the time she arrived at Chungking, she only had three fancy silk dresses that she was wearing. Suyuan Woo only said that the babies were not Jing-mei, but did not speak about them again.

Jing-mei’s father said that Suyuan Woo died she had a thought in her head but before it came out, it grew too big and busted. The doctors said she died of cerebral aneurysm.

Jing-mei played mah jong with her aunts and after a long time she tried to leave but before she could the aunts had to tell her something. They told her that her mothers children were alive in China and they were daughters. The aunts gave Jing-mei $1200 to go to China to meet her sisters.