The Joy Luck Club Questions and Answers
by Amy Tan

Recently Answered Questions

• The Joy Luck Club
  What's the subject of A pair of ticket?
  In this chapter near the close of the novel, Jing Mei meets her estranged sisters. The title might be interpreted in two ways. First, the "tickets" are the meeting of the two cultures within the...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  Early in the story, Jing-mei insists, “I could never pass for true Chinese.” What does she mean by this claim? What does the phrase “true Chinese” seem to mean to her? Do her ideas about what is and is not Chinese change over the course of the story?
  Throughout all of the chapters of The Joy Luck Club that she narrates, Jing-mei Woo reflects on her identity as a second-generation Chinese American. Her mother, Suyuan, is from China, but Jing-mei...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  What is an example of a thesis for the short story "Rice Husband" in The Joy Luck Club?
  A thesis is defined as a claim or theory given by the author of an essay or piece that gives their research a direction. When creating a thesis about a literary work, you can have some flexibility...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  What are Rose's dreams?
  Rose Hsu Jordan has always dreamed of Mr. Chou. As a child, whenever Rose was afraid of nightmares, her mother used to tell her that Mr. Chou guarded the door to dreams. Rose’s complaint was that...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  How did the American immigration authorities categorize Lena’s mother?
  The US immigration authorities don't quite know how to deal with Lena's mother. As the Chinese bride of an American citizen, she doesn't seem to fit into any of their ready-made categories. As...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  In "Two Kinds", what happens when the narrator performs at the talent show?
  When the narrator, Jing-mei, performs at the talent show, it becomes quite clear to all in the audience that she has not practiced and was not prepared to participate. She feels incredibly...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  How does June's father think her mother died?
  Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club begins with June and her family mourning the loss of her mother, Suyuan, who has recently died from a brain aneurysm. June’s father, Canning, tells her that Suyuan died...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  What keeps Jing-Mei grounded in The Joy Luck Club?
  The first daughter we meet in Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club is Jing-Mei, daughter of Suyan. Jing-Mei is recovering from the recent, very sudden death of her mother. Her grief is compounded by...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  What is Ying-Ying St. Clair's character like in The Joy Luck Club?
  Ying-Ying St. Clair narrates two chapters of The Joy Luck Club, one about her childhood and one later in her life. In the childhood chapter, "The Moon Lady," Ying-Ying describes her upbringing,...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  What does June learn from “Perfectly Contented” and “Pleading Child” in The Joy Luck Club?
  June knows that the piece she played so long ago in the disastrous recital is called "Pleading Child," but she did not realize that there is a companion piece on the opposite page of her sheet...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  Jing-mei’s memories of her mother seem troubled by guilt and by a sense of having failed to understand her. What kinds of conflicts or problems did she seem to have with her mother? How does her journey to China resolve some of those tensions,...
  Jing-mei, or June, has a complicated relationship with her mother, Suyuan. Especially as a child, June was painfully aware that she could not achieve enough to meet her mother’s very high...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  All of us have, at times, felt pulled in multiple directions by our families, different groups of friends, or cultures we're a part of. Some of us even have multiple cultures represented in our own homes. How do you relate to Jing-mei or Amy Tan's...
  In answering a question like this, I would first consider the various people whom you meaningfully interact with in the course of a typical day. Then consider what each of these groups expects from...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  The Joy Luck Club is about a group of four Chinese mothers, each with at least one daughter, who are close friends in San Francisco. "A Pair of Tickets" is the culmination of all the stories of Chinese mothers and their Chinese American daughters....
  There is no one answer to this question, as different readers will relate to different characters. However, Jing-Mei (June) is the focus of both the first and last stories in The Joy Luck Club, so...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  How are Ted and Rose like yin and yang?
  The relationship between Rose Hsu Jordan and her husband Ted Jordan is explored in the chapter “Half and Half.” The Daoist concepts of yin and yang refer to two parts of a whole that are halves and...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  What are the main problems in the chapter "Without Wood" in The Joy Luck Club and how are they solved?
  The chapter “Without Wood” in Amy Tan’s novel is concerned with Rose Hsu Jordan’s relationship with her mother, An-mei, and her husband, Ted Jordan. Ted had earlier told Rose that he wanted a...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  Why did Amy Tan choose the chapter title "Without Wood"?
  The story "Without Wood" from Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club centers on Rose Hsu Jordan, namely her marriage to Ted. The title comes from something Rose's mother, An-mei, says about her: "She said I...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  How are Ted and Rose like yin and yang?
  First, let's establish what "yin" and "yang" mean and describe the relationship between the two. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, "in Eastern thought, [yin and yang are] the two complementary...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  What is the significance of the crab dinner?
  The significance of the crab dinner lies in what it tells us about Jing-mei's character. Jing-mei's mother is cooking dinner for eleven people at the New Year's celebration. Mrs. Woo goes with her...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  Analyze the quote "I look at their faces again and I see no trace of my mother in them. Yet they still look familiar. And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood. After all these years, it...
  To analyze the quote more fully, we need to put it into the context of the story and the novel. The quote actually references an earlier conversation between the narrator of the story—Jing-Mei...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  Analyze the quote “long-cherished wish” (The Joy Luck Club, "A Pair of Tickets") and connect it to the theme of hope. Describe how the passage works as a part of the chapter as a whole and thus as an ending to the novel.
  In the chapter “A Pair of Tickets,” the Chinese American woman whose uses the names of June and Jing-Mei travels to China for the first time. A significant event during this journey is meeting her...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  Analyze the following quote from The Joy Luck Club ("A Pair of Tickets") and connect it to themes of family and what it means to be Chinese, and describe how passage works as part of the chapter: "As soon as I get beyond the gate, we run towards...
  In the final chapter of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, "A Pair of Tickets," Jing-mei Woo goes to China with her father, Canning, to meet her long-lost half-sisters. Jing-mei's mother Suyuan has...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  Analyze the quote "...I know we all see it: Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth..." (The Joy Luck Club,"A Pair of Tickets"). Connect it to theme of communication and to Jing-mei's concerns about whether she had truly...
  This quote occurs near the end of "A Pair of Tickets," the last chapter in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. In this quote, Jing-mei describes a scene in which she and her half-sisters, who have just...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  Cite four examples of situational irony in a story "A Pair of Tickets" from The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.
  Situational irony is a type of irony that depends on plot events and circumstances. In a literary work, situational irony occurs when something happens that is the opposite of what is intended or...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  What did the daughters in The Joy Luck Club teach their mothers?
  I think that the daughters taught several elements to their mothers. One of the most basic elements taught is the idea that there are certain "universalities" in being a woman. While the...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  How are women's experiences demonstrated throughout The Joy Luck Club?
  The Joy Luck Club details the experiences of eight women (one is seen in the book only through memories) in two different generations: the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomer Generation. In The...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  In The Joy Luck Club chapters 1–8, with reference to the life and experiences of An-mei, discuss how the writer conveys the importance of tradition and culture.
  An-mei's story, "Scar," speaks to the importance of tradition and the way in which it marks people. She says that her mother was a ghost, someone the family wanted to forget because she had brought...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  Compare and contrast the marriage of Rose Hsu Jordan to that of Lena St. Clair in The Joy Luck Club.
  There are many similarities and differences between the marriages of Rose Hsu Jordan and Lena St. Clair. Both women are caught in unhappy marriages: Rose Hsu Jordan to Ted, and Lena St. Clair to...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  What lesson did the parable "Feathers of a Thousand Li Away" in The Joy Luck Club teach us?
  The parable "Feathers from a Thousand Li Away" is intended to teach the reader about the power of hope. In the parable, the mother carries a swan feather overseas with her, hoping that one day...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  In "Two Kinds," why is the daughter at first excited about her mother's ambitions for her?
  In “Two Kinds” June (Jing Mei) is excited that her mother intends to make her a prodigy. While most children would fight against such a plan, June goes along with Suyuan’s ideas at first. She is...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  How does Amy Tan convey the importance of continuity in the novel The Joy Luck Club?
  Continuity is an important motif in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. Tan reveals that continuity is critical to cope with life’s difficulties. To teach this lesson, she juxtaposes women and their...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, how does the narrator's point of view of her father change by seeing him in a different environment in the chapter "A Pair of Tickets"?
  Jing Mei and her father travel to China in "A Pair of Tickets" to meet her half-sisters. The culminating story of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club depicts Jing Mei's final appreciation of her mother's...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  What was the impact of The Joy Luck Club?
  I think that the greatest impact of Tan's work was to increase voice in the literary lexicon. Tan's work increased awareness to what it meant to be Chinese, Chinese- American, and helped to spawn...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  Why does Kweilin lose its beauty for Suyuan in The Joy Luck Club?
  Kweilin was reputed to be a very beautiful city, with "jagged peaks lining a curving river, with magic moss greening the banks". In China, "everybody dreamed about Kweilin", but as is often true...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  Why does Amy Tan use so much descriptive language in the "Two Kinds" section of her novel The Joy Luck Club?
  In the “Two Kinds” chapter of her novel The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan uses a good deal of descriptive language, particularly when discussing physical appearances. This method of writing seems...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  Why did Suyuan keep her twin daughters a secret?
  Suyuan effectively abandoned her twin daughters, and so it's not surprising that she wanted to keep it a secret. Having said that, she really didn't have much choice in the matter. Due to the...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  What does Waverly's discussion with her mother about playing in a tournament suggest about Waverly's understanding of her mother's expections?
  In "The Rules of the Game," a selection from Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, Waverly learns to play chess and also learns strategy from her mother just by observing the way her mother communicates and...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  What does An-Mei mean when she says that her mother's pain is worth something?
  As a child, An-Mei lived with her grandmother, Popo. An-Mei's mother was not welcome in the home because she had married a man who already had other wives. An-Mei's mother had tried before to...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  In “Rice Husband,” in The Joy Luck Club, why does Harold insist they split expenses 50-50? What evidence suggests that he is taking advantage of Lena by doing this?
  If anything, the text suggests that it is Lena who insists on splitting everything in half more than Harold, even though this means she often has to pay more because she only has a salad for the...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  Why did Suyuan organize the first Joy Luck Club in The Joy Luck Club?
  The Joy Luck Club begins because of a former club that Suyan was part of that forms part of the rich mythological heritage that her daughter is brought up with and is told to the reader in the...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  When Jing-mei (June May), of Amy Tan's story "A Pair of Tickets," arrives in Guangzhou, what are some details that seem familiar to her, and what are some that seem exotic?
  When Jing-mei (June May), of Amy Tan's story "A Pair of Tickets," arrives in Guangzhou, some details seem familiar to her, and some seem exotic. Among the details that seem familiar are the...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  what are the themes in The joy luck club?
  There are so many themes in the Joy Luck Club. In fact, there are so many of them that I will have to limit my answer to three them. First, there is the theme of inter-generational communication....

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• The Joy Luck Club
  What does Jing-Mei's mother want her daughter to become? Why? What does she make her do in order to reach her goal?  
  Suyuan, Jing-mei’s mother, wanted her to become a child prodigy like Shirley Temple and Lindo’s daughter. Suyuan urged her daughter to attempt practicing certain skills in order to establish and...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  How does the symbol of the piano in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club illustrate the different worldviews of Jing-mei (June) Woo and her mother, Suyuan Woo?
  [eNotes editors are only permitted to answer one question per posting. Additional questions should be posted separately.] In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, in the chapter called "Two Kinds," the...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, discuss Lindo's past experiences and how they are reflected in her daughter, Waverly.
  In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, one of the women in the club is Lindo Jong. We are first introduced to Lindo as a two-year old, who is betrothed to her one-year old fiancé, Tyan-yu. At the age of...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  In Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club, what are the themes, tones, and the narrative styles of the chapter titled "Rice Husband"?
  In Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, the chapter titled “Rice Husband” is narrated by Lena St. Clair. Some of the themes, tones, and narrative styles of the chapter might be described as follows:...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  In Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club, what are some themes, tones, and narrative styles of the chapter titled "Scar"?
  In Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, the chapter titled “Scar” is narrated by An-Mei Hsu. Some of the themes, tones, and narrative styles of the chapter might be described as follows: THEMES...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  In Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club, what are the themes, the tones, and the narrative styles of the chapter titled "The Voice from the Wall"?
  In Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, the chapter titled “The Voice from the Wall” is narrated by Lena St. Clair. Some of the themes, tones, and narrative styles of the chapter might be described...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  What is the theme, the tone and the narrative style of the chapter "Magpies"?
  "Magpies" is a chapter told from the perspective of Rose's mother, An-Mei. The chapter opens with a line about Rose's marriage falling apart. What follows is a reflective chapter in which An-Mei...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  In "A Pair of Tickets," a chapter in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, what does the final "it" refer to in these sentences:  "It is my family. It is in our blood. After all these years, it can finally let go."
  At the very end of Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, one of the characters, Jing-Mei Woo, is finally able to meet her two long-lost twin sisters, who had had to be abandoned by their mother in...

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• The Joy Luck Club
  In The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, how does An-mei's mother show motherly love towards An-mei?
  In The Joy Luck Club, An-mei's mother's sacrifice displays maternal love. An-mei's mother was dealt a terrible blow in being Wu-Tsing's fourth wife. When An-mei's mother comes back to her, all she...

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