Author: Amy Tan
Version: PaperbackHow I Heard About It: It's just one of those books that everyone reads and loves and is on every list of 'best books, what to read, top ten..' and so I decided it was time.
Let's start off by saying firstly that this is not a novel, not really. It is a bunch of vignettes about different Chinese women living in America all squished together and rearranged so that none of it is cohesive, or organized or anything that might resemble a novel. It is about these Chinese mothers that came to America to make better lives for their families and they formed a club that met every week to play mahjong and gossip and have a grand time counting their blessings. Well at least that's what it says it is about. What it's really about are the bratty daughters that came from these women who don't appreciate their mothers, or their culture or their traditions. They are spoiled and horrible and spit on every warning or premonition or offering of luck that their mothers give them.
These American born women grow up with very traditional Chinese mothers, mothers who risked their lives and at times their happiness to bring them to a safer country then China was at that time. All they ever ask in return is that their daughters love and respect them and take to heart their traditions, which is apparently too much for these daughters to do. There is Waverly Jong who was a child chess prodigy and her mother was so proud to have a genius daughter that she would tell all those she met of her famous chess playing daughter. One day after winning a tournament Waverly and her mother are walking in the market and her mother is telling all the grocers about her smart daughter and Waverly decides she is embarrassed by her mother's boasting yells at her and runs away.
Jing-Mei Woo's mother tried to instill in her the belief that she could be anything she wanted. So trying to push her to become a child prodigy in something Jing-Mei's mother took her to dance class and made her study history and science until Jing-Mei decided she wanted none of this and stopped trying. When her mother discovered an old piano teacher lived in their building and then saw a young Chinese girl on TV playing the piano Suyuan decided her daughter could do just as well and signed her up for lessons. Of course being stubborn Jing-Mei did the very least that she could and when she realized that her teacher was deaf she basically just went through the motions. Suyuan believing the best of her daughter signed her up for a talent show knowing her daughter would make her proud. When the show came and Jing-Mei hadn't practiced she made a complete fool of herself up on the stage missing notes, playing wrong note after wrong note. She was so bad that she brought shame on her whole family and got nothing but pity from the audience. Her solution to this? Ignore her mother, blame her and start living a life of doing the absolute least she could do.
These are just a couple small examples of the horridness that were these daughters. All four daughters described in the story were just like this growing up. Stubborn, willful, angry at their mothers for wanting them to take pride in their Chinese heritage. In short they are absolutely awful people.
I know that there are mothers out there that can be truly terrible people, they hit their kids or worse, the so-called stage moms that try to force their kids into being something they could never be. There are moms that drink and do drugs and moms that leave their kids for no reason and even moms that kill their kids. I know this, I know that their are some women that just should never be moms. I would understand the anger and resentment of those kids, kids that survived a childhood like that. But the women that Amy Tan writes about are kind, and loving, and sacrificing for their daughters. They want only the absolute best for them, the best food, the best education, the best husbands. They want their daughters to understand love and luck and Chinese living and to grow with that knowledge. And their daughters treat them like they are monsters, very few of them even know any form of Chinese. It's one disrespectful act after another towards their moms and it made me want to throw the book out of a moving train.
Yes I know very little about Chinese history or culture but Amy Tan was not writing that. What she was writing was about the relationships of mothers and daughters. And this I know. As a daughter I know it and even though my mom and I haven't always seen eye to eye in life I have never spit on her way of life or thinking or the traditions she has tried to pass down. Nor would I ever. There is a vast difference between disagreeing with someone and blatantly disrespecting them. The daughters of the Joy Luck Club, Waverly, Jing-Mei, Rose Hsu and Lena spend most of their time intentionally misunderstanding their mothers and what they are trying to accomplish.
Waverly who was once a chess wizard decided she didn't like the way her mother was taking pride in her and quit chess forever, and now is a tax attorney with one failed marriage and and American fiancee who refuses to even try to get along with her family. Lena works in her husband's agency coming up with spectacular design ideas for innovative restaurants that he eventually takes credit for. He walks all over her and she lets him, and when her mother tries to help give her some spirit Lena dismisses it as silly. Rose who was married and now in the middle of a divorce and feels as if her whole world has come undone. She goes to her mother for comfort and her mother tries to comfort her in the only way she knows how, by sharing the story of her terrible childhood but showing her that in the end it was all for the best. Rose dismisses this as stupid and ridiculous and still whines about how terrible it all is for her. Jing-Mei always blamed her mother for making her want to be average, never let herself try to be anything other than just there. When her mother dies and Jing-Mei is faced with finding her lost twin sisters and finally wanting to know more about her mother she realizes 'oops I guess it's too late now.'
I felt that this was an awful book. The daughter characters are terrible, selfish human beings. They are the worst type of Americans, perhaps this says something about Ms. Tan's views? I have read one other book by Amy Tan and didn't like that one all that much either. There is nothing in her writing or storytelling that blows me away or in anyway makes up for the terrible characters she has depicted. In my opinion, and I know that this will be very much in the minority, this book is not worth the paper it was printed on. The praise and acclaim that this books has garnered is absolutely a mystery to me. There is nothing mind blowing or innovative about it. If it had been a book simply about these brave mothers then I think it could have been something great. Because their stories touched my heart. But Ms. Tan decided instead to shine a spotlight on the daughters and how flat out mean they were to these women that raised them and loved them. It makes my skin crawl thinking about it.
I do not under any circumstances recommend this book to anyone. It is not a testament to anything, or a beautiful struggle between two different generations. It is simply one generation spitting on anything the older generation tries to share. I cannot describe fully how angry this book made me. I get too worked up just thinking about it. So I shall leave you with this warning, don't read it, don't buy into this 'top-ten books to read of all time' hype that surrounds it. After this I will never try another Amy Tan novel again, she has just made me loose all faith in her ability as an author. If I ever decide to read more about China or Chinese stories or novels about the Chinese I will look elsewhere. All I can do now is keep reading, book after book to get the sourness of this atrocity out of my mind.
