The Joy Luck Club

The main idea of this book is the relationships between mother and daughter, and the factors that influence it. The book follows the lives of four women and their daughter's lives. It goes through different tales from their lives demonstrating Chinese morals. The tales also give reasons why the mothers treat their children the way showed in the book. Usually a traumatic event makes the mother pull back or judge harshly. Other conflicts in the book are the acceptance of culture in the American-born daughters. They would follow trends to fit in and ignore their mothers, but as some grew up they would travel to China to earn more. The Joy Luck club is a group where these four women would meet to build up hope and happiness when things were not looking so well, like in times of war or traveling to a foreign land. And many of the women in this group have had their share of bad times, as seen in the stories, but still stayed brave and hopeful. I enjoyed the book because I liked hearing of all these inspiring stories, and I will try to read the author's other book as well.