Name: ______
The Joy Luck Club
Feathers From a Thousand Li Away – The Joy Luck Club (Jing-Mei Woo)
Directions: Complete the summary using the words in the Word Bank.
Suyuan Woo recently passed away. She was the ______of
the Joy Luck Club in both ______and America. As Jing -mei (June),
her daughter, prepares to take her mother’s place in the club, she remembers her
______and the stories that she told.
Suyuan Woo ______the second Joy Luck Club
in 1949. The Woos met the Hsus, Jongs, and the St. Clairs when they arrived in ______from China. Suyuan could see in the eyes of each woman
that they had suffered some type of ______. That is what drew her
to them.
Jing -mei (June) then tells her mother’s story of the original Joy Luck Club: It was
______when Suyuan arrived in the Chinese village of Kweilin with her first husband and two babies. He was an ______in the army and thought that his family would be safe from the Japanese. _He left his ______so that he could return to the battle. ______from all over China came to the village of Kweilin for safety.
The ______for the Joy Luck Club came to Suyuan one
evening. She needed something ______in her life. She picked three
young ______-- one, an army officer’s wife, a girl from a ______
family and a girl who had married well – to form the group. Each week the four
women would meet at one of their houses to raise money and their ______.
The hostess would serve special ______and then they would play
mah jong. When the game was over they would eat some more and ______
for long hours. This was how they dealt with their ______and poor
conditions. This gave them ______and happiness.
One day Suyuan received a ______to leave Kweilin – the
Japanese were coming. There were no trains. Suyuan would have to walk with her
______and her possessions. She ______for days. When
her ______broke, she left her possessions on the side of the road. She
made a ______to carry each baby and started walking with small
bags of her possessions. Eventually her bags became too ______
and she dropped them. When she got to ______-- all she had were three
silk dresses. ______else – not even her babies.
We move to the present and Jing -mei (June), the ______,
arrives at the Hsus house for the Joy Luck Club. Jing -mei is 36 years old. Today
the club has a president/secretary and the club ______in stock.
What remains the same is the gathering of ______, food,
conversation and the game. Jing -mei has many childhood ______of
her mother and ‘aunties’.
She remembers that her mother, Suyuan, had said that Jing -mei had too
much of the element ______. She flowed in too many
______. Jing -mei also remembers that she spoke ______
and her mother spoke Chinese – different languages, different worlds. They
never seemed to ______each other.
After a while Jing -mei is ready to ______. Her ‘aunties’
______her to stay. They have a ______for her from
her mother.
They remind her that Suyuan was ‘a ______woman, a good mother’
(pg. 39). In her heart, Suyuan knew that the ______she had left behind in China
were still alive and she wanted to ______them. Suyuan had written many
______-- searching for her children. At last, she got an ______.
The ‘aunties’ continued the search and discovered Jing -mei’s
______. They gave Jing -mei $1,200 so that she could travel to
______, meet her sisters and tell them about their mother. She had
no ______what she would tell them, but, she would go.