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2006-01-14 13:40
From: melancolia
(Vienna, Manila)
a review of The Joy Luck Club
After I called up my husband to tell him that Amy Tan’s “Joy Luck Club” made me cry, he suggested, “Then stop reading it.”
I declined. After all, it was a hard decision.
As soon as I informed a friend that I decided to read it she issued me a warning.
“Don't get me wrong, this book is one of the best but the author tends to repeat her themes in every book she has written.”
Perhaps, but this book is a work of art, a brilliant masterpiece everyone should read.
Amy Tan’s “Joy Luck Club” is a story of four immigrant Chinese women who went to America during the 1950s to escape the hostilities in China during the Japanese invasion and before the start of the Chinese Revolution. This is in contrast with their first-generation Chinese-American daughters who grew up in USA and acquired the American way of life. These mothers lamented that their daughters have lost their Chinese culture/thinking/superstitious beliefs in them. These include divorce and materialism, and the perils of interracial relationships.
The story is simple, but full of emotions. I just discovered that Amy Tan wrote so much colours and smells and movements that I couldn't help imagining some scenes in my mind. I had seen the movie yes but the scenes I saw in my mind's eye, they were completely different, as if they were taken out from the book and became a reality to me. Opening up new possibilities here and there. I felt someone old and wise enough was telling me a fairy-tale story. Things that I have missed because I've never been close to my grandparents. Until all of them died. No grandparent told me that there was a magical and sinister ghost who would snatch me if I wouldn't sleep immediately.
There's a passage in the book where the mother complained to her daughter that she never talked to her but instead the daughter paid a huge sums of money to a shrink. (Shrink, ironic, this term. perhaps it's the truth, the shrinks shrink your spririts more than lifting them up.)
"Why can you talk about this with a pysche-atrik and not with a mother?"
"Psychiatrist."
"Psyche-atriks," she corrected herself.
"A mother is best. A mother knows what is inside you," she said above the singing voices. "A psyche-atriks will only make you hulidudu (confused), make you see heimongmong (dark fog)."
Oh, so true...
This review is helpful to 3 person.
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By Amy Tan
Ivy Books
ISBN: 0804106304
Release Date: 1990-04-30
Mass Market Paperback
List Price: USD 7.99
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