In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan's first novel, short-story-like vignettes alternate

back and forth between the lives of four Chinese women in pre-1949 China and lives of

their American-born daughters in California. The book is a mediation on the divided

nature of this emigrant life. The novel is narrated horizontally as well as vertically;

friendships and rivalries develop among the daughters as well as the mothers.(Matuz 92)

As Jing Mei Woo describes, "Auntie Lin and my mother were both best friends and

arch-enemies who spent a lifetime comparing their children. I was one month older than

Waverly Jong, Auntie Lin's prized daughter. From the time we were babies, our

mothers compared the creases in our belly buttons, how shapely our earlobes were, how

fast we healed when we scraped our knees, how thick and dark our hair was, how many

shoes we wore out in one year, and later, how smart Waverly was at playing chess, how

many trophies she......

Join Now to view the rest of this term paper!
Members: Login to view this research paper.

Title: The Joy Luck Club
Approximate Word Count: 2312
Approximate Pages: 10 (250 words per double-spaced page)

With the Term Papers Lab Membership Pass, you get instant access to every essay on this site, including this essay on The Joy Luck Club, for as long as you remain a member.

Other essays sites charge almost $100 for a single term paper. At Term Papers Lab, you can get instant access to over 100,000 research papers for as little as $29.95!