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A Log for Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club
This novel has been chosen to provide you with a rich reading experience that can occur on several levels. I want you to enjoy reading JLC, and I also know that reading it carefully and thoughtfully will help you understand themes and ideas applicable not only to our current unit, “Survival & Adaptation,” but also to major themes and ideas that appear throughout our year’s study of American Literature.
Some of the questions in this log deal with plot, but most deal with character, inference (assumptions made based on observed evidence), setting, themes (the fundamental “big ideas” explored in a literary work), motifs (recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text's major themes), and symbols (objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts).
One of the themes in this novel (which is split into four sections, which feature 16 short stories told by four mother-daughter pairs) is the difficulty of cultural translation. The Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters encounter barriers of language and cultural expectations separating them from one another. The mothers literally and figuratively speak a different language from their daughters.
Other important themes include issues of immigrant identity (What compels an individual to leave everything behind for the unknown? What does one need to survive in a new land? How does one adapt and forge a new identity in a new land?) and the power of storytelling. All eight women featured in JLC tell powerful and compelling stories; some of the stories, especially the mothers’ tales, sound like old Chinese folk tales. What life experiences and lessons do they share through storytelling? Of course, there are many other themes to consider beyond the ones mentioned here; the log questions will point more out to you.
Pay attention to motifs that recur throughout the novel, which include: gender inequality, power over one’s destiny, and sacrifices for love (and not just romantic love!). Symbols also add an important element to these 16 stories; questions in this and other logs will ask you to consider various objects as symbols for characters and their relationships.
The Mothers / The DaughtersSuyuan Woo / Jing-mei “June” Woo
An-mei Hsu / Rose Hsu Jordan
Lindo Jong / Waverly Jong
Ying-ying St. Clair / Lena St. Clair
Part I: “Feathers from A Thousand Li Away”
We will read the opening parable (a tale which illustrates a lesson or a moral) together.
1. What lesson does the story of the swan teach?
2. A “big” idea: It is important for a person to develop individual identity so she/he has the strength to survive hard times.
In what ways does the parable at the beginning of this chapter help to support this theme?
3. Some critics believe that the swan feather stands for something larger than itself. What do you think the swan feather might represent in this story?
4. Why do you think the author started the novel out with this parable?
5. What tone (the attitude a writer takes towards a subject or character: serious, humorous, sarcastic, ironic, satirical, tongue-in-cheek, solemn, etc.) does this parable set for the novel? What evidence in the parable makes you say this?
The Joy Luck Club: Jing-mei Woo (daughter) & Suyuan Woo (mother)
1. In the second paragraph of this chapter, there is an allusion to Chinese superstitious beliefs. Superstition plays an important part in this novel. What does the superstitious belief pertain to? What is the “practical” solution to this superstitious belief?
2. Why does Suyuan begin the first Joy Luck Club in Kweilin?
3. Briefly describe a typical Club meeting.
4. Why do the women name their parties “Joy Luck”? Is there anything ironic about this choice of name?
5. Suyuan tells her daughter “…to despair was to wish back for something already lost.” What is the “something” Suyuan lost during the Japanese invasion of China? Why do you think she decides to finally reveal this painful part of her past to her daughter?
6. Why does the San Francisco Joy Luck Club play the stock market?
7. List three of the five elements Suyuan believes comprise each person. In what way does too much of each element impact a person’s life?
1.
2.
3.
8. One of the themes in this novel is the inability of the Americanized daughters to understand their Chinese mothers. Find an example of this conflict between Suyuan and her daughter.
9. Define the Chinese word chaswei.
10. How does Jing-mei Woo know which seat at the mahjong table was her mother’s place?
11. What does the story of Auntie An-mei’s trip to China reveal about Communist China?
12. In the following passage from the story Jing-mei Woo is talking about her problems communicating with her mother. She says, “My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each other’s meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more.” Find an incident from the story that supports Jing-mei’s statement.
13. What is the significance of the last line in this story: “And I am sitting, at my mother’s place at the mahjong table, on the East, where things begin”?
Scar: An-mei Hsu (mother) and Rose Hsu Jordan (daughter)
1. Why is An-mei taught that her mother is a ghost?
2. Briefly summarize the parables about the pregnant girl and the girl who refuses to listen. What lessons do the parables teach young An-mei?
3. What does it mean to have no shou?
4. Why is An-mei afraid of her father’s portrait? Based on what you researched about women’s roles in the family, why is her fear unsurprising?
5. For what reasons do you think Popo continually tries to scare An-mei with parables and stories about her father’s painting?
6. How did An-mei’s neck become scarred? What evidence is there in the story that Popo knows how strong An-mei’s love is for her mother?
7. What does Popo’s daughter (An-mei’s mother) do to illustrate the great bond between a mother and a daughter?
8. At the end of the chapter, An-mei remembers her mother’s actions and remarks, “The pain of the flesh is nothing. The pain you must forget. Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother before that. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh.” What does she mean? What can “scar,” “skin,” and “bone” possibly symbolize?
The Red Candle: Lindo Jong (mother) & Waverly Jong (daughter)
1. What does Lindo Jong mean when she says her daughter’s promise to come to dinner is “only fourteen carats”?
2. Why does young Lindo’s mother refer to her daughter as Huang Taitai’s daughter? What does this tell you about the role of daughters in traditional Chinese families?
3. What is Lindo’s first impression of the Huangs’ home? Why does Lindo work very hard learning to sew and cook in the Huangs’ servants quarters?
4. In what ways in Lindo like the wind?
5. What is the significance of the red marriage candle? Under what circumstances does Lindo decide to blow out her husband’s end of the candle?
6. Why does Huang Taitai remove all of Lindo’s gold bracelets? How does Lindo feel without her gold bracelets?
7. List the three parts of Lindo’s dream that convinces Huang Taitai to end Lindo’s marriage to her son.
1.
2.
3.
8. Why does Lindo buy another gold bracelet for herself every time she gets some extra money? For what reasons does she remove all of her gold on the day of the Festival of Pure Brightness?
The Moon Lady: Ying-Ying St. Clair (mother) & Lena St. Clair (daughter)
1. Why do you think Amah makes up the story of the five evils when Ying-Ying asks about the stink from the burning incense?
2. What is the definition of a secret wish? Why is the Moon Lady special?
3. Why does Ying-Ying love her shadow? What do you think the shadow might represent in this story?
4. For what reasons can the story of the Moon Lady be called a myth? A myth is a story that explains some natural phenomena in imaginative ways. Unlike a legend, a myth does not have any historical basis.
5. Use the following passage from the story to illustrate how the story of the Moon Lady can also be considered to be a parable:
“For woman is yin,” she cried sadly, “the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.”
6. One of the themes in this novel is the idea that appearances are often different from reality. Find an incident from this chapter that helps illustrate this theme. You can describe this incident OR you may, in the space below, draw a “clip” of the scene and include a brief caption (as often seen in cartoons or storyboards).
7. Another theme in this novel is the inability of the Chinese mothers to communicate with their Americanized daughters. What do the following lines from the beginning of this chapter tell the reader about Ying-Ying’s relationship with her daughter? In what ways are Ying-Ying and her daughter alike (reread the first few paragraphs of this chapter to help your analysis)?
“And I want to tell her this: We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.”
If you finish before the due date, you may hand this log in early (after looking over it to make sure you have answered everything) and continue reading the next section in the novel, “The Twenty-six Malignant Gates.” You may also begin the reading log for the next section – just let me know that you need the next log.