The first section of the book is called "Feathers from a Thousand Li Away."

Prologue

A Chinese immigrant, when she lived in China, had bought a swan from a vendor who told her it was a duck who "stretched its neck in hopes of becoming a goose." The woman dreamed of having a daughter who, like the swan, "became more than what was hoped for." But when she arrived in America, the officials took the swan away from her. All she could save of it was a feather. She had a daughter, just as she hoped, who spoke only American English and lived a comfortable life. She wanted to give her daughter the swan feather, but only when she could explain its meaning "in perfect American English."

Chapter 1: Jing Mei "June" Woo--The Joy Luck Club

June's mother, Suyuan Woo, has died recently. Her father has asked her to take over her mother's corner of the Mah Jong table in the Joy Luck Club. June's mother started the first Joy Luck Club in China during the Second World War. When she moved to San Francisco with June's father in 1949, she started the second Joy Luck Club. June's mother picked An-mei, Lindo, and Ying-ying for the second Joy Luck Club, because she could tell that they too had endured horrible things in China.

June explains that her mother would repeatedly tell her the story of the origins of the Joy Luck Club. When Suyuan was a young woman, her first husband moved her and their two babies to the city of Kweilin to keep them safe from the encroaching Japanese. Then he left to fight, because he was a member of the Kuomintang. Every week, Suyuan and three other women took turns hosting meetings of the Joy Luck Club. They would play Mah Jong, eat special good-luck foods, and tell funny stories. They called it the Joy Luck Club because their only joy was to wish for luck. Eventually, Suyuan was forced to flee Kweilin on foot and abandon her babies.

June goes to the Hsus' house, where she takes her mother's place in the Joy Luck Club. She feels out of place; she not only is one generation younger than everyone else, but she realizes that her mother has made excuses for her to the other members. For example, although June dropped out of college, her mother told them that she might go back for a degree. The men talk about stocks while the women play Mah Jong and gossip. The women tell June that her mother finally made contact with her lost daughters in China after trying for years to find them. They give June enough money to fly to China and meet them. They make her promise to tell her sisters about their mother's life, because she is responsible for her mother's legacy. Her mother's corner at the Mah Jong table is East, and Jing-mei puts forth that East is also "where things begin."

Chapter 2: An-Mei Hsu--Scar

An-Mei remembers growing up with her grandmother Popo in China. Her father is dead, and her mother disgraced the family by leaving after her husband's death to become the third concubine to a rich man. When Popo is dying, An-mei's mother returns. An-mei meets her as though for the first time; she rubs the scar on An-mei's neck and begins to cry. We learn why the scar upsets An-mei's mother so much. An-mei got the scar when she was four years old, just before her mother left. Her mother tried to take An-mei with her, but Popo would not let her. In the midst of the chaos, hot soup fell on An-mei's neck and burned her very badly. Now, with Popo on her deathbed, An-mei watches her mother make a sacrifice. She cuts a piece of flesh from her own arm to make Popo a curative soup. Popo dies anyway. Even as a young child, An-mei understands the principle this act embodies regarding physical pain: losing some of one's flesh is a small sacrifice to make for one's mother. It is also sometimes the only way to understand her.

Analysis

The prologue to each section lays out an underlying theme for the four essays that follow. This first prologue also introduces us to Tan's rich and slightly fantastical style of storytelling. The main theme of these opening chapters is sacrifice. Jing-mei's and An-mei's stories show how part of the burden of being a woman is enduring pain for the sake of others, especially one's mother and daughters. The mother is like the duck, but with the help of guidance and privilege, the daughter could become the swan that she could not. In having such high hopes for her daughter, the mother unknowingly places a heavy burden on her. Now the daughter must become "more than was hoped for" or have failed her mother. But she cannot understand the fervency of her mother's hope, having not experienced the same hardships and pain. All she has to guide her are her mother's memories. They are only small parts of her mother's experience, just as the swan feather is a small part of the swan. The feather represents the swan, but one cannot possibly understand a swan by examining a single feather. This pattern creates tension between the generations, because neither can understand the other fully.

As soon as Jing-mei is thrust into her mother's place at the Joy Luck Club, she realizes how little she knows about her mother, being American and a generation younger. She is skeptical that she will be able to fulfill her mother's legacy and honor her spirit. The other mothers sense this issue, and it frightens them, because they worry about how much their own daughters know about them. Jing-mei must sacrifice her pride and sense of control in order to pay her debt to her mother. Her mother sacrificed everything in order to create a new life in America, including her baby daughters. Therefore, the burden now falls on Jing-mei to reclaim what her mother lost, to put her neck out and become the swan.

An-mei's story focuses on both physical and emotional sacrifice. Even though An-mei's mother betrayed Popo, she still came back to care for her. This meant enduring terrible humiliation, but she understood that she owed this to Popo. Her physical sacrifice of her own flesh symbolizes how visceral is any sacrifice made for one's mother, because if one were to try to excise one's mother from oneself, one might as well cut off one's flesh. To understand one's mother, one must take the biggest risk of all--looking deep within. As An-mei says, "You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother before her. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh." The situation also calls upon us to question what sacrifice is really about. An-mei's mother sacrifices her very flesh, but her sacrifice can revive neither Popo nor their mother-daughter relationship. In the same vein, no matter how deeply she scars her own arm, An-mei's mother can heal neither An-mei's physical scar nor her emotional scars. Perhaps then, Tan suggests, the sacrifice is more for the person who sacrifices (in this case, An-mei's mother) than she for whom it is made (Popo and An-mei), since it allows her to resolve her own guilt over two acts she cannot take back: disgracing her mother and abandoning her daughter.

The first section introduces the novel's main theme: daughters and mothers are inextricably connected in spirit. Suyuan is the only main character who never tells a story (she is already dead); therefore, from the very beginning of the novel, Jing-mei is responsible for fulfilling her mother's wish not only by going to China, but by telling her mother's story. Just as Jing-mei takes over Suyuan's corner of the Mah Jong table, she takes on full responsibility for being her mother's daughter. The novel, then, chronicles each daughter's process of piecing together an understanding of her mother--a swan herself--from the feathered fragments of her stories and her spirit. It is not only the daughter who figures as the swan, the realization of all her mother's hopes, but the mother too--for she holds the key to her daughter's triumph in life.

Chapter 3: Lindo Jong--The Red Candle

Lindo tells her daughter, Waverly, that she does not understand the meaning of a promise. When Lindo was two years old, she was promised to Tyan-yu, the spoiled son of a woman named Huang Tai Tai. When Lindo was twelve, a flood ruined her family's house and crops. Her family left, forcing her to move in with the Huangs before marrying Tyan-yu. The Huangs' luxuries were for show; in reality, they lived in a crowded and uncomfortable house. From the first day, Huang Tai Tai and Tyan-yu treated Lindo like a servant. She learned to be an obedient wife and never to think of her own needs or dreams.

Bad luck fell on the wedding day. The Japanese had occupied the region, it rained, and barely anyone came. Before the ceremony began, however, Lindo had had a revelation. She realized she was strong, and she promised herself that she would remain true to herself while honoring her family's wishes. An important part of the marriage ceremony was burning a special red candle with a wick on each end, one for the bride and one for the groom. The candle was lit and placed in the charge of a servant, who had to watch all night to make sure the candle burned equally at both ends until it was ash, as proof of the marriage's permanence.

Instead of consummating their marriage, Tyan-yu told Lindo to sleep on the couch. She was relieved and went where the servant was guarding the red candle. When the servant left it unattended, Lindo blew out Tyan-yu's end of the candle. She wanted an excuse not to spend the rest of her life with such a bad husband. But in the morning, the candle's ashes were shown as proof that it had not gone out. Lindo's fate was decided. Tyan-yu and Lindo never had sex, because Tyan-yu had no desire for Lindo (or perhaps for any woman). Yet, he told Huang Tai Tai that they were having sex all the time, so she would think their lack of children was Lindo's fault.

Lindo developed a scheme to end the marriage on the day of the Festival of Pure Brightness, a day of the ancestors. She told Huang Tai Tai what happened to the red candle, but she pretended that it was a nightmare and that a wind blew out the candle. She said the ghosts of her ancestors told her that if they stayed married, Tyan-yu would die. She pointed out supposed signs of this. She even convinced Huang Tai Tai that a servant girl was Tyan-yu's intended wife and was already carrying his child. (In fact, the child was that of a delivery man.) Lindo succeeded: the marriage was broken off, Tyan-yu married the servant, and Lindo received enough money to come to America. Lindo tells Waverly that every year on the day of the Festival of Pure Brightness, she revels in the fact that she was strong enough to keep a promise for her family while remaining true to herself.

Chapter 4: Ying-Ying St. Clair--The Moon Lady

Ying-Ying describes how both she and her daughter lost themselves; they have become "unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others." She lost herself gradually by trying to hide her own pain and "selfish desires."

Ying-Ying takes us back to a time when she was her full self, when she told the Moon Lady her secret wish. She was four on the day of the Moon Festival in 1918. Her Amah (nanny) dressed her in special clothes and explained the coming night's festivities. She would meet the Moon Lady and tell her one secret wish. She could tell only the Moon Lady this wish, because telling it to anyone else would make it a selfish desire, and in everyday life "a girl can never ask, only listen."

On the festival boat, Ying-ying wandered by herself and dirtied her clothes. Amah found her, scolded her, and stripped her to her underwear. She was left all alone. Ying-ying was so startled by some firecrackers that she fell into the water. Some fishermen took her to shore, where she found actors performing the myth of the Moon Lady. In the myth, the Moon Lady steals the peach of eternal life from her husband, the Sun, and is banished to the moon. The central moral of the myth is: "Woman is yin...the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds." After the show, Ying-ying ran backstage to tell the Moon Lady her secret wish. As the wish escaped her lips, she saw that the Moon Lady was really just a man in a costume.

Ying-ying recalls this moment as the first time she lost herself, the beginning of a long process of becoming "nothing." For a long time after, she forgot her wish along with the memory of what it is like to be whole. But she remembers her wish tonight, on the night of the Moon Festival, decades later. She has wished to be found.

Analysis

Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the themes of superstition and deceptive appearances. As young women, Lindo and Ying-ying learned hard lessons about the fact that things are not always as they seem. The Huangs seem grand on the surface, but their luxury is just the facade over a rotten family structure. Tyan-yu is not the strong-willed man his family thinks he is; even his own mother does not know the truth about how dispassionate he is. In the end, Lindo harnesses this superficiality, making everyone else believe something that on the surface seemed to be true. This is first time we see how the mothers practice "the art of invisible strength" in their lives as they do in Mah Jong. Lindo does not lie outright to get out of her quandary, the equivalent of upturning the Mah Jong board in frustration, but rather uses facts already in place to vanquish her opponent, the Huang family.

In this story, Lindo's belief in superstition is questionable. By using superstition as a weapon of deception, Lindo rejects it to some extent; however, using superstition also affirms its power. It is unclear whether Lindo blows out the candle because she wants to use the belief in magic to her advantage, or because a part of her believes that the superstition is true, even if only symbolically. In turn, we are made to question whether magic is really involved. Despite the fact that Lindo harnesses the superstition of the candle, does the marriage fail because of her actions or because the superstition is true?

Ying-ying learns her lesson about superstition when she finds out that the Moon Lady is really a man in a costume. The magic disappears, and she finds herself more alone than ever. Now, not only has she been separated from her family, but also she realizes that there is nowhere, not even in fantasy, where she can express her desires. She was deceived into thinking that she could have one moment to be selfish and assert her identity, but the superstition was a lie. At the same time, Ying-ying and readers must question again whether magic was truly involved. After all, Ying-ying did get her wish of being found that night. Still, this wish goes deeper than her desire to be reunited with her parents at the festival. Throughout her life, Ying-ying carries the desire to find herself. She has been lost again as an adult; she has become so afraid to express her "selfish" desires that she has become "unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others." Therefore it is with both courage and desperation that she tells Lena the same wish she told the Moon Lady: she wants to be found, but this time she needs Lena to be the one who finds her.

The red candle represents the fate from which the mothers have escaped, that of being bound by what others want for them. Both Lindo and Ying-ying were expected to be quiet and "dark," not expressing their own opinions. They grew up in a society that urged them to forget their own desires; any wishes they had were sinful by definition. Like the Moon Lady, they would be punished and shamed for taking what sweetness they wanted out of life. This made them begin to disappear, to depend on others for illumination while finding only darkness within. This idea of desire and fulfillment connects these chapters with the theme of sacrifice. Both Lindo and Ying-ying had to sacrifice the approval of their families in order to get what they really wanted. This is really what all four mothers want for their daughters, to be independent and strong and fulfill their secret wishes. Ying-ying wants to impart this lesson unto Lena before she, too, becomes invisible and constrains her means of expression. But by encouraging their daughters to be strong and independent like them, they risk losing them. This is why Lindo wants to teach Waverly the meaning of a promise--so that she will remember to honor her heritage as well. She and Ying-ying, like all the mothers, can only hope that their daughters will realize they are not just old-fashioned, overbearing, unfashionable parents; they are strong, independent individuals who have been through terrible things and have risked everything for their daughters' future happiness.

The second section of the book is called "The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates."

Prologue

A mother tells her daughter not to ride her bicycle around the corner, because she will fall and her mother will not hear her cry. She says this is written in a Chinese book the daughter cannot read called The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates. The book lists all the bad things that can befall a child outside the home. The daughter does not listen and sets out on her bicycle, but she falls before even reaching the corner.

Chapter 5: Waverly Jong--Rules of the Game

Waverly remembers how her mother taught her "the art of invisible strength" from a very young age. This means getting what you want without asking for it or being obvious. She grew up with little means in San Francisco's Chinatown. Waverly's mother Lindo named her after the street they lived on; her formal American name is Waverly Place Jong. Lindo expected Waverly to excel at everything.

When Waverly was seven, her brother Vincent got a chess set at the church Christmas party. She became fascinated with the game, and she learned masterful strategies. She learned that the key to winning at chess is having "invisible strength," getting what you want without revealing your secrets. Then her mother started entering her in tournaments. By the time she was nine, she was a national chess champion. All she thought about outside of school was chess; her brothers had to do her chores, and she stopped playing with other children. Waverly hated the facts that her mother watched her practice and showed her off around town. One day, she told her mother not to show her off anymore and then ran off. When she finally returned home that night, her family shunned her. Alone in her room, she imagined herself vanquished by her mother in a giant, symbolic chess game, and she planned what to do next.

Chapter 6: Lena St. Clair--The Voice from the Wall

This chapter is all about ghosts. Lena recalls that her mother, Ying-ying, told her the story of her grandfather's death. A beggar he sentenced to the worst death possible, the death of a thousand cuts, supposedly came back from the grave to kill him. He pulled grandfather through the wall to show him the terrors of the afterlife. Lena says that she always acknowledged the ghosts in their house; her mother ignored them so much that she became one herself.

Lena says she got her dark side, her "Chinese eyes," from her mother. From a young age, she began seeing danger and evil spirits all around her when others could not. She has always had this special Chinese power even though she is only half Chinese (her father is American). Lena's father says he saved Ying-ying from a terrible fate in China. When he signed her immigration papers, he changed her name to Betty St. Clair and accidentally wrote down the wrong birth year, causing her to lose part of her identity. Lena says that her mother eventually lost any and all identity, or "the struggle to keep her eyes open." Lena's mother spoke little English, and her father spoke very little Chinese. Because Lena spoke both languages, she witnessed how much of her mother's intentions were lost in translation. After a man on the street scared Lena's mother, she became uneasy and kept rearranging the furniture in the house to "balance" it. It turned out she was having a baby but, strangely, this realization brought her no joy.

Every night as she lay in bed, Lena could hear a mother beating her daughter next door. She imagined that the mother was killing her daughter night after night. When she saw Teresa, the girl who lived next door, she was ashamed to be so acquainted with the life Teresa lived. After Ying-ying's baby boy died soon after birth, Lena's mother became depressed and ghostlike. It comforted Lena that she still had a better life than the girl next door.

One day, Teresa came over. She said her mother had kicked her out. She used Lena's fire escape to crawl back into her bedroom. That night, Lena was shocked and overjoyed to hear Teresa and her mother reconciling. After that, she still heard them fighting. In her mind, she pictured the girl telling her mother she must die the death of a thousand cuts. Then she cut her mother up, but her mother was unscathed. The mother finally understood that she had already suffered the worst thing possible. The daughter told the mother that now that she understood this, she could return to the other side. The daughter pulled her mother through the wall.

Analysis

The second section of the novel focuses on superstition and ghosts, as well as the consequences of ignoring a mother's wisdom. It asks the question: when should a daughter be independent, and when should she follow the details of her mother's tradition--represented by a book such as The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates? The book itself is written in Chinese, so the daughter in the prologue cannot read it. The daughters can never completely understand their mothers' Chinese wisdom, because certain things are lost in translation; this fact separates the generations. At the same time, the daughters depend on their mothers to translate this wisdom for them, which bridges the generations.

Sometimes it seems as though the mothers resent their daughters' independence. Yet, they acknowledge that they achieved their own triumphs by being independent. Unlike An-mei's Amah or Huang Tai Tai, the mothers do not want their daughters to be passive and obedient, but they do want them to respect the older generation. Optimally, the daughters should strike a joyful balance between fulfilling their own desires and honoring those of their mothers. The daughters struggle to find this balance, often finding themselves caught between their mothers' wisdom and their own intuition. Furthermore, such a balance is struck by trial and error; Waverly and Lena suppose they must reject and even be violent towards their mothers in order to experience what it is like not to have them at all; then they can carefully tread their way back to an equilibrium.

It is a daughter's responsibility to save her mother from becoming a ghost and losing her true identity in the foreign country of America. Lena dreams of bringing her mother back to life. Ironically, it is only because she inherited the ability to see spirits from Ying-ying that she now can watch her mother turning into one. She wishes she and her mother could at least fight, even if it meant cutting her into a thousand pieces, because pain is, at least, a sure sign of life. While Ying-ying is passive to a terrifying extreme, as though fulfilling her Amah's ideas about women, Lindo Jong is an overbearing, overinvolved stage mother. Waverly also sees herself as responsible for making her mother's life vibrant, but it is Lindo who pushes this point by making Waverly a star.

Each daughter's life is spent in battle with her mothers' actions (or in Ying-ying's case, the lack thereof), and each is both her mother's destructor and her savior. Waverly sees herself as a pawn to Lindo's queen, weaker and younger, in that she can win only by outsmarting her. In this way, Waverly sees herself as Lindo's destructor; she must vanquish her mother in order to focus on her own desires. Yet, even when Waverly thinks she has vanquished Lindo by shaming her in public, she has not. Like the daughter in the prologue, she hurts herself by ignoring her mother's advice. Waverly sees only that Lindo wants to control her, not that she needs her to relive her own childhood as she wishes it was by having Waverly live out the American dream. Juxtaposed with Lindo, Ying-ying seems to be even more passive; she is involved in Lena's life primarily by being uninvolved. Lena thinks that she can save her mother not by destroying her, but by proving to her that she has already been destroyed to the point of death, and therefore can only reach with both hands for life. Ironically, Lena thirsts for the kind of fight with her mother that makes Waverly so miserable, because it would affirm that Ying-ying is in fact alive. But Lena's fight remains a fantasy; she cannot help but be passive like her mother. Therefore, Lena is right in more than one way when she says she gets her "dark side" from Ying-ying. Lena uses "dark side" to mean her ability to see ghosts, which she did inherit from Ying-ying, but in the story of the Moon Lady, women are the "dark side" and need men to enlighten them. Ying-ying and, as we learn later, Lena feel as though they are kept in the dark in their marrriages, unable to find joy; they need one another to find the light.

Chapter 7: Rose Hsu Jordan--Half and Half

Rose says that her mother, An-mei, uses her small Bible to prop up one leg of her kitchen table. She no longer carries it around as proof of her devoutness, but even though she has made it into a prop, she keeps it pristine. Rose watched her mother sweep around the Bible as she waited to tell her she was divorcing her husband, Ted. She knew her mother would want her to fight the divorce. This was ironic, since her mother originally had not approved of Ted because he was American.

Rose had a similar reception in Ted's family. At the Jordan family picnic, Ted's mother took Rose aside and told her that she could not marry Ted. She said that people would not respect a doctor with an Asian wife. Rose tried to break things off with Ted, but he was deeply upset by his mother's actions. The fact that their families hoped to keep them apart made Rose and Ted fall more deeply in love. Once they were married, Rose let Ted make all their decisions. Then, after he lost a malpractice suit, he started pushing Rose to make all their decisions. One day before Ted left on a business trip, he picked a fight with Rose to try to show her how they had grown apart. Then he called from his trip and asked for a divorce. It made Rose wonder how she could be strong when she could trust no one.

Rose says she learned to trust fate the day her mother lost her faith. Her parents had always believed in their ability to do whatever they set their minds to; they called this faith nengkan. One day, their whole family went to the beach so her father could fish. Rose had two sisters and four brothers. At the beach her mother left Rose in charge of her youngest brother, Bing. Rose watched him carefully, thinking of The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates, which showed all the terrible things that could befall a child. In a moment of chaos, she took her eyes off Bing. He fell into the water and could not be found. The family did not blame Rose for what happened, but her mother asked her to help find Bing's body. Rose went back to the beach with her mother to search for Bing. Her mother had more nengkan than ever. She prayed from her Bible and tried Chinese rituals, but they still did not find him. Rose thought she saw her mother lose faith for the first time.

Now Rose knows that she can no more save her marriage than recover Bing. Just as she saw Bing fall but could not stop him, she saw her marriage crumbling and could not prevent it. She says she has learned that "fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention." When you lose something you love, you rely on your faith like Rose's mother did. Rose's mother never really lost her faith. She still keeps the Bible around. She wrote Bing's name under "Deaths," lightly and in pencil.

Chapter 8: Jing-mei "June" Woo--Two Kinds

Jing-Mei says her mother, Suyuan, shunned regret and always looked to make things better. For her, America was the ultimate proof that one could get whatever one wanted. When Waverly Jong became a chess prodigy, Suyuan became convinced that Jing-Mei could be a prodigy too, a Chinese Shirley Temple. When she was not at work cleaning houses, she made Jing-Mei imitate videos of Shirley Temple and memorize impressive facts. Jing-Mei liked the attention and the idea of becoming perfect. However, she soon grew tired of her mother's trying to make her into a wonder child. One night she promised herself not to be something she was not, and she stopped trying in order to make her mother lose hope.

Jing-mei's mother left her alone for a few months, until she saw a little Chinese girl playing the piano on the Ed Sullivan Show. She enrolled Jing-Mei in daily piano lessons, expecting her to be even better than the little girl on television. Jing-Mei resented her mother's expectations for her, and she learned to get away with playing sloppily. Because her piano teacher, Old Chang, was deaf, she could play wrong notes without his noticing. When Jing-mei heard her mother bragging to Lindo Jong about how talented she was, she decided to humiliate her mother.

Suyuan and old Chang entered Jing-mei into a talent competition at church. She was to play a piece called "Pleading Child," which she did not put much effort into practicing. All the members of the Joy Luck Club came to watch Jing-mei play. Despite her lack of preparation, she was fearless when she took the stage. As she intended, she played the piece terribly, so that only deaf Old Chong applauded. After the show, Waverly told Jing-mei: "You aren't a genius like me." But it was Suyuan's silence that really devastated Jing-Mei. She knew she had let her mother down.

Even after the fiasco, Suyuan expected Jing-mei to practice piano. Jing-mei flatly refused, saying she would never be someone she wasn't. Suyuan dragged her to the piano and told her, "Only two kinds of daughters ... Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter!" Jing-mei shouted back, "Then I wish I wasn't your daughter. I wish you weren't my mother ... I wish I'd never been born! ... I wish I were dead! Like them" (referring to the babies Suyuan abandoned in China). As though Jing-mei had said the magic words to destroy her mother, Suyuan left the room meekly--and Jing-mei stopped her piano lessons.

From then on, Jing-mei "asserted ... [her] right to fall short of expectations," disappointing her mother time and again. She never discussed what had happened with her mother, for fear of finding out how disappointed she really was. A few years back, Suyuan offered the old piano to Jing-mei, but she refused it. Only after Suyuan died did Jing-mei have the piano restored. When she sat down to play "Pleading Child," she noticed that it was only the first half of a song; the other half was called "Perfectly Contented." She was pleasantly surprised that after all this time, she could play both pieces.

Analysis

Chapters 7 and 8 deal with the shame and lessons learned in letting one's mother down. Jing-Mei fails at piano and insults her mother, and Rose lets Bing die on her watch. The titles of these chapters, "Half and Half" and "Two Kinds," emphasize the dichotomies that arise from being Chinese and American, both one's own self and one's mother's daughter. Suyuan wanted Jing-Mei to understand the importance of her Chinese identity, but at the same time she wanted her to be American and privileged, to be proof (like the swan from Feathers from a Thousand Li Away) of just how far her mother had come. She wanted Jing-mei to imitate the quintessentially American Shirley Temple, to become an American swan. Like what Lindo wanted for Waverly, Suyuan wanted Jing-mei to have the childhood she could not; ironically in both cases, in their desire to have daughters who were the image of the carefree American child, they allowed them to have no time or cares of their own. Jing-mei pokes fun at the American dream when she calls disappointing Suyuan her "right to fall short of expectations." She asserts that her mother's goals of perfection and obedience are actually Chinese. Being truly American means having the freedom to do what she wants, even if it is "unglamorous" and imperfect. Jing-mei does not grasp until after her mother's death that in truth, Suyuan understood this point. She begins to realize it when she sits down to play the piano after many years--suddenly she understands that Suyuan has always wanted her not to be perfect, to live up to an unreachable standard, but to be "perfectly contented."

Like Waverly, Jing-mei finally got the independence she wanted, but at the price of wounding her mother very deeply. For these two daughters, renouncing their mothers meant renouncing a part of themselves. Therefore they ended up hurting themselves like the daughter in the prologue who falls off her bike. Throughout their lives, the daughters identify their Chinese identities very strongly with their mothers. Therefore, by renouncing their mothers, do the daughters renounce their Chinese identities?

Tan suggests that they do not. Even when as a child Jing-mei renounces Suyuan, as an adult she proves the key to a wish that can be fulfilled only by reclaiming her Chinese identity and actually traveling to China. Furthermore, if the daughters' Chinese identities depended on their mothers, there would be no hope for them to carry on their legacies when they died. The daughters have a Chinese heritage all their own, shaped by their unique experiences.

Rose, who is more mild-mannered than Jing-mei, finds herself more or less connected to her Chinese heritage depending on the situation. In one sense, marrying an American affirms that she is American; in another, it marks her as Chinese. An-mei wants Rose to marry someone Chinese like her, and Ted's mother disapproves of Rose's Chinese appearance. The story about Bing reveals that Rose's faith is what connects her so strongly to An-mei, and the faith itself is both Chinese and American. When Bing drowns, An-mei tries to bring him back using Chinese nengkan. The rituals An-mei performs seem foreign to Rose; even as an adult, she feels as though she lacks her mother's gift. Perhaps, if she had it, she could make things right with Ted. The other half of An-mei's faith is Christian, symbolized by the Bible.

Rose feels as though she is a victim of fate, which is "shaped half by expectation, half by inattention." She pretends her problems do not exist until they are so bad she cannot ignore them. She also demonstrates that, like An-mei, she is a person of faith. Just as An-mei keeps the Bible nearby as a sign that she still has not given up on Bing, Rose lives in the house she shared with Ted and waits to sign the divorce papers as a sign that she has not entirely given up on love.

The third section of the novel is named American Translation.

Prologue

A mother complains that her daughter has placed a mirrored armoire at the foot of her and her husband's bed. The mother says the mirror will make all their happiness bounce back. To fix it, she puts another mirror at the headboard. She says it will multiply their peach-blossom luck. When the daughter asks what peach-blossom luck is, her mother tells her it is in the mirror. She says she can see her future grandchild in the mirror, and she tells her daughter to look. When the daughter looks into the mirror, she sees her own reflection.

Chapter 9: Lena St. Clair--Rice Husband

Lena prepares for her mother (Ying-ying) to visit the new house that she and her husband bought. Her mother has always had Chungwan chihan, the ability to predict bad things by paying attention to signs, especially in architecture and the placement of things. Lena wonders what bad signs her mother will find in her new home. As they tour the house, her mother points out all its flaws accurately. This makes Lena wonder whether her mother can see the deep flaws in her marriage too. She also remembers that when she was eight years old, her mother looked at the rice grains left in the bottom of her bowl and told her she would "marry a bad man."

At first, her mother was simply trying to get Lena to finish her rice at meals. She told Lena that her future husband would have a pockmark on his face for every unfinished grain of rice. Soon the superstition grew into a mission for Lena. She was afraid that if she left rice in her bowl, she would marry a neighborhood boy named Arnold, who had a pockmarked face and was cruel to her. An educational film about leprosy (to Lena, people with very pockmarked faces) scared Lena into trying to kill Arnold through superstition. At meals, she left increasingly larger quantities on her plate of not only rice, but all kinds of food. When Lena was thirteen, she had become anorexic and ate barely any food at all. That year, her father read in the newspaper that Arnold died from complications from measles. Lena was terrified because she thought her mother could sense that she caused Arnold's death. That night, Lena binged on strawberry ice cream and then made herself vomit it. She says, "I remember wondering why it was that eating something good could make me feel so terrible, while vomiting something terrible could make me feel so good."

Lena's husband is named Harold Livotny. They work at Livotny & Associates, the restaurant design firm he started. They met when they both worked at Harned Kelley & Davis, before Lena encouraged Harold to start his own firm. Now that their marriage is falling apart, Lena finds it hard to remember why she fell in love with Harold. She feels better after talking with Rose Hsu Jordan, who is already divorced from Ted Jordan. Rose tells Lena that she does not need to worry that the breakup of her marriage is her fault. Both women have worried in the past that their headstrong ways, of which their mothers disapprove, may have contributed. Rose assures Lena that fears of inadequacy are common in her generation, and the breakup is her not fault.

Throughout their marriage, Harold has insisted that he and Lena split money equally; they even have separate bank accounts. They keep a list on their refrigerator detailing how much each of them spent in a week, and on what. Lena is embarrassed to tell her mother this, so she tells her the list is of things they share. Lena's mother is shocked to find ice cream on the list, and she reminds Lena that she has not been able to stomach ice cream since the night she learned of Arnold's death, when she binged and purged. Lena shows her mother to the guest room, where there is an unstable table Harold made when he was a student. Lena's mother uses her Chunwang chihan and says that keeping the table is foolish. Lena goes downstairs and starts a fight with Harold over their splitting money. Soon they hear glass shattering upstairs; the table has fallen and broken. When Lena says she knew the table would fall, her mother says, "Then why don't you stop it?"

Chapter 10: Waverly Jong--Four Directions

Waverly is afraid to tell her mother (Lindo Jong) that she is marrying Rich Shields. Instead of telling her, Waverly brings her mother to see how she is living. She has a wonderfully busy life with Rich and her four-year-old daughter, Shoshana. Despite Waverly's best efforts to get her mother's approval, she does not even acknowledge that Waverly and Rich have moved in together. This makes Waverly feel terrible in a familiar way. She recalls the first time her mother made her feel so.

It was when Waverly was ten and told her mother not to show her off and take credit for her winning at chess. After that, her mother had refused to pay her any attention. To win back her mother, Waverly decided to quit playing chess, but she became stunned and hurt when her mother did not care. Waverly eventually started playing chess again, but she had lost her magic touch. Suddenly she was vulnerable to her own weaknesses instead of skillfully taking advantage of her opponent's. She was convinced that much of the change had to do with the fact that her mother had stopped believing in her. She stopped playing altogether at fourteen.

When Waverly and her first husband Marvin Chen eloped, Waverly's mother picked him apart until Waverly too saw his flaws and lost interest. She almost aborted Shoshana because she resented being pregnant. But when Shoshana was born, she knew her "feelings for her were inviolable." Rich loves Waverly just as deeply as Waverly loves Shoshana. But Waverly is afraid her mother will show her everything wrong with Rich as she did with Marvin. Waverly devised a plan to get her mother to meet Rich. She took Rich to Auntie Su's (Suyuan Woo's) house for dinner, and then told Auntie Su that Rich said hers was the best Chinese food he had ever had. To show up Auntie Su, Waverly's mother invited Waverly and Rich over for a family dinner. Rich did not understand the Chinese customs of politeness, and he unknowingly made a bad impression. The worst was when he insulted Waverly's mother's cooking. Waverly's mother was disparaging her own favorite dish, expecting someone to compliment her in return. Instead, Rich poured soy sauce all over the platter.

The next day, Waverly cannot take the tension and tells her mother she and Rich are getting married. Her mother is not surprised, and she acts as though she had never tried to criticize Rich. Then she tells Waverly about her heritage from her mother's side, the Sun clan from Taiyuan. She says that like herself, Waverly comes from a line of strong and clever women. Finally, Waverly realized that her mother was not a tricky chessboard queen, planning secret attacks on her. She was an old, traditional woman who wanted to be loved just as much as she loved her daughter. Waverly fantasizes about bringing her mother on her honeymoon so that she, her mother, and Rich could all put aside their differences and fly from San Francisco to China, "moving West to reach the East."

Analysis

In Chapter 9, Ying-ying comes to visit Lena, and we witness a daughter's struggle to feel adult and independent in her mother's presence. Even though she is in control of her household and has her own way of living, Lena feels invaded by Ying-ying. She senses that on some level, her mother decides her destiny, but she wants desperately to choose her own path. Just as when Lena was a teenager and resisted her mother's advice to disastrous effect, she resists admitting that her marriage is as unstable and makes as little sense to keep as the table. When the table smashes to pieces under its own weight, Lena can no longer deny these things, which brings her closer to Ying-ying. Still, their opinions on the situation separate them. Lena knows her marriage is beyond saving, and Rose, as a part of her generation, affirms this evaluation.

Nevertheless, Ying-ying asks of the table's fall and by extension, the marriage's--"why you not stop it?" There are two ways to evaluate this question. The first is that Ying-ying places blame on Lena for allowing things to get so bad and wants her to fix things instead of getting a divorce. Therefore, she wants Lena to answer that she will try to save her marriage. The second is that Ying-ying sees Lena suffering the same fate she did, losing her own identity in her marriage, and that she wants Lena to walk away from it and save herself. Therefore she wants Lena to answer that there is no use trying to deny Chunwang chihan and try to save a marriage that is doomed to collapse.

Chapters 9 and 10 deal with just how American the daughters really are, as well as what is lost in translation between the generations. What can the mothers never make their daughters understand, and vice versa? Lena and Waverly live very American lives, complete with unhappy marriages to men who do not understand their Chinese heritage. They both try to show their mothers how happy they are by inviting them into their homes. But they forget that their mothers can read signs. The mothers see their daughters' marriages crumbling and lives losing meaning, and for once, they want them to be disobedient. They want them to harness their Chinese spirit, the spirit of all the women who came before them and will come after them, to prevent themselves from dissolving away.

In the mothers' eyes, strength and the ability to make change have been lost between the generations. While they might not understand or approve of the way their daughters live, the very fact that they can live this way (which Jing-mei called the "right to fall short of expectations") is something gained from being American. Therefore the daughters are "American translations" of their mothers. Here Tan plays on the power of language to simultaneously separate and unite people; without symbols, there is scarce communication, yet translation can complicate and limit communication.

The mothers and daughters are like Chinese and American versions of the same story. They are essentially the same, but it impossible to make them exactly alike, like the reflections that the daughter in the prologue sees. As in literary translation, some things are lost, but new things are found through reinterpretation.

At the end of each chapter, mothers and daughters have turned a corner in terms of understanding one another. Each daughter is made to realize that her mother is not the enemy, but a courageously loving spirit to guide her through life. At the same time, the mothers accept their daughters' American lives while reminding them of their heritage, whether through Chunwang chihan or a description of the Sun clan. Waverly's coming to terms with Lindo is particularly meaningful, since Waverly is the most headstrong of all the daughters. She no longer wants to compartmentalize her mother, making her the Chinese element in an otherwise American life, but she wants Lindo to help her bridge the Chinese and American parts of herself and, furthermore, to help Rich understand her dual identity.

The end of Chapter 10 is particularly important in terms of the idea of translation. Putting an original next to its translation demonstrates that many things have been lost, while many other things may be found. Each mother's or daughter's life is clearer in contrast with the other's, different yet complementary like the white and black squares on a chessboard. Even so, things are not always black and white between the generations. When Waverly talks of moving West to reach East, we realize that the labels "Chinese" and "American," "East" and "West," are not dichotomous but relative. It is as difficult for the daughters to distinguish the Chinese and American parts of themselves as it is for them to determine in any definitive way whether China is East or West.

Chapter 11: Rose Hsu Jordan--Without Wood

Rose recalls that she has always believed everything her mother says. She even dreamed that Old Mr. Chou, a Chinese version of the Sandman, believes what her mother says. Rose and her mother attend the funeral of China Mary, a beloved member of the First Chinese Baptist Church. She tells her mother that Ted sent her a check, and her mother intuits that he was cheating on her, but Rose laughs this off. The check was for ten thousand dollars, and Ted sent it along with the divorce papers. Rose could not bear to cash it or sign the papers. Despite advice from her friends and her psychiatrist, no one can seem to help Rose sort out her feelings. Rose's mother tells her that she is confused because her personality lacks the element of wood. In other words, she does not feel strong enough by herself, so she depends on other people's opinions. Rose says she has always valued American opinions over Chinese ones. But this choice generally leads to trouble because American opinions are so complicated.

Rose becomes depressed and sleeps for the majority of four days. She is dreamless for the first time in her life. Her mother finally calls and wakes her up to tell her she is coming over. Then Ted calls and asks why Rose has not cashed the check or signed the divorce papers after two weeks. He wants the divorce finalized so he can marry someone he was seeing while they were married--Rose's mother was right! Laughter overcomes her, and she invites Ted over to see her one last time. When he arrives, she shows him the garden. He used to tend it meticulously, but now it has become overgrown and wild with weeds. Rose tells Ted she is keeping the house. She has not signed the divorce papers. For once, she has forced him into submission instead of the reverse. That night, Rose dreams of her mother and Old Mr. Chou bending over a planter box, in which her mother has planted wild, fast-growing weeds for them both.

Chapter 12: Jing-mei "June" Woo--Best Quality

Jing-mei says that a few months before her mother (Suyuan) died, Suyuan gave her a special jade pendant. At the time, Jing-mei considered it tacky and did not wear it, but now that her mother has died, she wears it all the time. She knows her mother gave her the pendant because it has a special meaning, something which Jing-mei will never know because she never asked.

Jing-mei recounts the events of the night her mother gave her the necklace. It was a crab dinner for the Chinese New Year. She had accompanied her mother on a grocery shopping trip. She listened to her mother complain about her tenants, who accused her of poisoning their tomcat. Jing-mei wondered if her mother really had poisoned the cat. Jing-mei's mother bought crabs and ended up having to take one with a missing leg. Dinner was hectic and full of misunderstandings. Because out of politeness Jing-mei's mother chose last, she ended up with the damaged crab and did not eat it. Jing-mei was the only one who noticed, and she tried to take the crab instead, but her mother would not let her. Waverly was catty with Jing-mei just like when they were children. To get back at her, Jing-mei tried to humiliate Waverly. She teased her about her tax firm's being so late in paying Jing-mei for some writing she did. This charge backfired, because Waverly ended up revealing that the work was considered unacceptable, so Jing-mei would not be paid in full.

After dinner, Jing-mei's mother shows she understands her. She knew Jing-mei would be the only one to offer to take the damaged crab. She says Jing-mei is special because she thinks differently than Waverly and others do, and Jing-mei is generous. This is when she gives Jing-mei the jade pendant.

At the end of the chapter, the narrative returns to the present. Jing-Mei is cooking her father dinner, and the tomcat appears at the window. She is relieved that her mother did not poison him after all. She finds herself equally annoyed by the neighbors as their tomcat lifts his tail to spray her mother's window.

Analysis

Chapters 11-12 examine how the daughters come to terms with their mothers' wisdom, realizing, like the daughter in the prologue, that they cannot help but share their mothers' strong spirits. Rose realizes that her mother is urging her to save not her marriage, but her spirit. Both Rose and An-mei are represented by the wild weeds in Rose's garden and her dream. Mother and daughter are sometimes quiet as plants, afraid to assert their own needs and desires, and as a result, they sometimes they do not get enough attention. On the other hand, like plants, they refuse to be confined or clipped back, being wild and strong in spirit.

Tan notes that some plants are so strong that they can undermine a house's foundation--so, to remove the weeds, one would have to pull down the house. In this way, An-mei has taught Rose how to secretly get what she wants. Just as weeds creep under the bricks of her house to secretly weaken it, Rose already has the power to end her marriage and keep the house for herself. Ted may have ended their marriage in some ways, but he cannot break Rose's spirit; to take the house from her, he would have to destroy her and it together. Thus, Rose unwittingly had the strength of 'wood' in her personality all along. All she has to do is use it to pull apart her marriage in the name of honoring the brave, independent spirit she shares with An-mei.

Jing-mei also becomes closer to her mother than before. When Suyuan gives Jing-mei the jade pendant, she says, "See, I wore this on my skin, so when you put it on your skin, then you know my meaning." For many years, Jing-mei does not understand Suyuan's meaning. Like Rose, she sees her mother's attempts to impart wisdom as controlling and out of touch. Only in retrospect does Jing-mei realize how much her mother valued her. All her life, Jing-mei thought that Suyuan wanted her to be like Waverly. Lindo might pride herself on having shown Waverly to pick the best crab for Shoshana; her love for Waverly is deep, but it is based in a desire to be one of the best, whether that means being chess champion or a member of the Sun clan. Yet, Suyuan is proud instead of Jing-mei's humility--she is the only one who would choose the damaged crab. Although we do not find out what the jade pendant means, we know it honors the quality Jing-mei proved she had that night, that of wanting the best for others and not only herself.

As she thinks about that night, Jing-mei begins to understand that her mother was just like her, thinking for herself and creating her own special happiness. Jing-mei has inherited her mother's knack not for being the best, but for making the best of a situation, as Suyuan did by creating the Joy Luck Club. All along, Suyuan recognized in Jing-mei her own "Best Quality"--her strong-willed and generous spirit. Jing-mei in this way, too, is the "American translation" of herself.

The fourth section of the book is called "Queen Mother of the Western Skies."

Prologue

A grandmother cuddles her baby granddaughter, pondering whether it is wise to laugh innocently like babies do. She tells her granddaughter that she once was naive and happy but then learned to recognize evil around her in order to protect herself. The grandmother interprets the baby's giggles, teasing, "You say you are Syi Wang Mu, Queen Mother of the Western Skies, now come back to give me the answer!" and takes the advice the baby has supposedly given her. She says the advice is to learn "how to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever."

Chapter 13: An-mei Hsu--Magpies

An-mei Hsu laments that her daughter (Rose Hsu Jordan) is doing nothing to stop her marriage from dissolving. She says she herself was "Raised the Chinese way ... Taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, to eat my own bitterness." Even though she tried to raise Rose another way, Rose turned out the same. An-mei posits that the Chinese attitude is inherited along the maternal line, that perhaps mothers and daughters are "like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way."

The narrative flashes back to sixty years earlier, when An-mei's disgraced mother returned from Tientsin. The night before her mother was to leave again, she told An-mei a fable: when she cried into the pond as a girl, a turtle ate her tears and thereby knew her sorrows. Then magpies came out of the turtle's mouth and sang happily, taunting her. The moral of the story was that one person's sorrow is another's joy, so one must swallow one's tears.

In the morning, An-mei chose to leave with her mother, though her family told her she would be disgraced as well. As they neared Tientsin, she became somber and dressed herself and An-mei in fancy foreign clothes. They lived happily in Western luxury for two weeks, and then Wu Tsing, to whom An-mei's mother was Fourth Wife, returned home with a very young concubine called Fifth Wife. An-mei soon learned that her mother had the worst position in the household; Wu Tsing came to her at night only when he was done with Fifth Wife. When Second Wife gave An-mei a pearl necklace, her mother crushed one bead of it to show that it was fake, and then gave her a beautiful sapphire ring instead.

An-mei's only friend was her mother's servant, Yan Chang. Yan Chang told her the story of how her mother had been tricked into being Wu Tsing's Fourth Wife when she was newly widowed. Second Wife was eager to have someone else bear Wu Tsing sons, so she invited An-mei's mother to play mah jong and then to stay in her bed. In the middle of the night, Second Wife changed places with Wu Tsing, who raped An-mei's mother. Already disgraced, she had no choice but to leave her family and become Wu Tsing's concubine. She bore him a son, Syaudi, whom Second Wife claimed for her own. From then on, An-mei saw how Second Wife manipulated everyone in the household, and she grew to hate her. One day, An-mei's mother poisoned herself and died. An-mei grieved. But she then became strong, and finally she stood up to Second Wife by crushing the pearl necklace under her foot in front of Second Wife. She had finally found her strength.

Back in the present, An-mei addresses Rose. She says that it is foolish to live one's life passively as though dreaming. She describes a newspaper story about a community in China that united to kill off the magpies, which were eating the seeds they planted and the tears they used to water them. She asks: "What would your psychiatrist say if I told him that I shouted for joy when I read that this had happened?"

Chapter 14: Ying-ying St. Clair--Waiting between the Trees

We return to the moment when Lena St. Clair has set up her mother (Ying-ying St. Clair) in the guest room of her house. Ying-ying explains that she sees the signs of coming destruction everywhere in her daughter's house, especially in the unstable nightstand that we know she breaks soon after arriving. She confirms what Lena told us earlier: she has always been able to predict the future.

The narrative again flashes back to her childhood in Wushi, where she lived luxuriously. Her mother named her Ying-ying, "Clear Reflection," because she was just like her mother. She had her first premonition at the age of sixteen. A wind knocked a flower head from its stem, and she knew she would marry an older man she called Uncle. She did, and at first she loved him, but soon she became pregnant with a son and he left her. Her joy turned to hate, and she aborted the baby. Ying-ying thinks her daughter does not understand how strong she is and how much she has endured--that she is a Tiger lady.

Ying-ying also was born in the year of the Tiger, which has special significance. The tiger's yellow stripes represent ferocity, and its black stripes signify cunning, and together they allow the tiger to hide between the trees. After her first husband left and she aborted her son, she moved in with poor relatives outside Shanghai, 'waiting between the trees' for her next move. There she met Clifford St. Clair, Lena's father. Because his surname meant "light," she knew she would marry him and that he would make her dark side disappear. She made him wait to marry her until she received word that her first husband had died, murdered by the woman for whom he left Ying-ying. When she married Clifford St. Clair, or Saint, she lost her tiger spirit and became a ghost.

Ying-ying states her intention to pass her tiger spirit, her chi, onto Lena, who has none. She has accepted Lena's Americanness, but she cannot die without teaching Lena what it means to be her mother's daughter. She knows Lena will resist, so she will have to fight her, to "penetrate [her] daughter's tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose ... Because this is the way a mother loves her daughter."

The chapter ends with a final premonition. Ying-ying knows her daughter will hear the table breaking and come upstairs to check on her; then, like a cunning tiger, she will overpower Lena in order to give her the strength she needs to stand up for herself and live happily.

Analysis

In the fourth section of the book, the mothers' and daughters' stories are increasingly indistinguishable. The prologue gives us insight into how the mothers felt when they first held their baby daughters. They saw them as blank slates, but somehow wise in their innocence. Babies are impressionable, while their grown daughters are much harder to instill with Chinese wisdom--and therefore must be tricked into accepting it. The prologue expresses the mothers' wishes that their daughters will learn from their own daughters, in turn, what they could not learn from their mothers. Each generation teaches the ones before and after, sometimes in unexpected ways.

It may seem strange that the grandmother addresses her granddaughter as "Queen Mother of the Western Skies" as though she is ancient. The baby cannot avoid being ancient, because the spirit of her mother and all those mothers before her are in her very bones. While the grandmother titles her baby in jest, "Queen Mother of the Western Skies" could be the name of the spirit that women of all generations share. Therefore her name expresses each mother's hope for her daughter, that she will learn "how to lose [her] innocence but not [her] hope," which is to be wise but not jaded, and "how to laugh forever" in true joy.

Throughout the book, the mothers' and daughters' stories have involved one another, but the stories have been about different events. In Chapters 13 and 14, for the first time, we hear stories that daughters have already told from their mothers' point of view. We have heard Rose's and Lena's "American Translations" of these stories, and now we hear An-mei and Ying-ying's "Chinese translations." When Rose tells the story of her mother's visit, she is terrified that her mother will blame her for being unable to save her marriage. An-mei is frustrated that Rose is not saving her marriage, but instead of blaming Rose alone, she also blames heritage and therefore herself. When she lived on Wu-Tsing's estate, An-mei saw her own mother swallow her pain so often that one day she could bear no more and ended her life. An-mei took one step up from her mother when she stood up to First Wife and ran away. Therefore she sees in Rose a similar potential to lift herself up in taking the next step: standing up to Ted instead of letting her life fall apart. In this way, An-mei's story affirms Rose's dream about her mother planting weeds in her honor. An-mei desperately wants Rose to demand joy from life instead of "eat[ing] her own bitterness" and letting Ted prune her spirit back. What An-mei does not understand, though, is that in order to honor her own spirit and those of all the women in her family, she must not try to stay with Ted, but divorce him, and do so on her own terms.

Lena is right when she fears her mother's cleverness, because when she visits, Ying-ying is indeed using Chunwang chihan to predict Lena's fate. She is also correct in thinking that Ying-ying wants her to be more like herself; she says she wants Lena to embrace her Tiger spirit and use her cunning and strength to find happiness. Yet, Lena does not know that Ying-ying admits to having become a ghost, and she wants Lena to be "a step above" her in wisdom and happiness. In "The Voice from the Wall," Lena wishes she could cut her mother to pieces to jolt her to her senses and guide her back to life. Ying-ying too wants to express her love violently, ripping Lena apart like a tiger to unleash her own Tiger spirit. At the end of their story, this mother-daughter pair stands as an example of how passionate and painful love between the generations can be.

An-mei and Ying-ying cannot stand the way their daughters live life passively, giving up so much happiness in the name of comfort and routine. As usual, they refer back to their own lives in China to show their daughters how to be strong. Both Rose and Lena have magpies in their lives-their husbands. Ted and Harold feed off their wives' sorrow unknowingly, taking advantage of the women's generosity and inability to stand up for themselves. An-mei and Ying-ying want their daughters to have joy and luck while recognizing and obliterating the evil around them. They must go through life like their mothers, carefully subverting others in order to achieve true happiness.

But there is a problem in translating this wish; neither mother understands that her daughter's happiness might depend on divorcing her husband. Recalling the prologue, each daughter is part of the same story, but one that changes with every generation. Were one to translate a story an infinite number of times, even just back and forth between two languages, the original meaning would eventually get lost. Even so, mothers and daughters share more than just a story; as we learn in the prologue, they share a common spirit and wishes for wisdom and happiness. Unlike a narrative or a story, this spirit and wish are inviolable and cannot be lost in translation, though they manifest themselves differently in each generation.

Chapter 15: Lindo Jong--Double Face

Lindo Jong describes how upset her daughter (Waverly Jong) was when she told her she does not look Chinese. She tried to teach Waverly how to be Chinese, but Waverly wanted to be American and became so. Now that being Chinese is "fashionable," Waverly wants to claim her heritage, but "Only her skin and her hair are Chinese. Inside--she is all American-made." Lindo says this result is her fault, because she wanted her daughter to have "American circumstances," to believe that anything is possible, while retaining Chinese wisdom, but Lindo failed to impart that wisdom.

The scene changes to Waverly's beauty salon, where she has taken her mother for a haircut before her wedding. Waverly and the hairdresser, Mr. Rory, decide what to do with Lindo's hair without consulting her, and while pretending she does not understand what is going on. Lindo is ashamed that Waverly is ashamed of her. When Mr. Rory says they look alike, Waverly is displeased. She puts her face next to Lindo's. As she looks at their similar faces in the mirror, Lindo is reminded of life with her own mother back in China.

The narrative flashes back to Lindo's childhood. She looked in the mirror with her mother as she and Waverly are doing in the modern-day salon. The difference is that back in China, Lindo wanted to look even more like her mother, who pointed out all the signs of good luck in their similar features. But she could not prevent growing up to look and be different from her mother. After the flood and her first marriage, she came to America and paid another Chinese girl to teach her how to fit in, or lose her "Chinese face." Lindo hates considering that Waverly always makes her seem more "backward" than she really is.

Lindo tells Waverly the true story of how she "lost [her] Chinese face" and made her the way she is. When she arrived in America, she learned that Americans would respect her if she said she was religious. She got a monotonous, low-paying job in a fortune cookie factory, where she met An-mei Hsu. An-mei was already married, and she took Lindo to the First Chinese Baptist Church to introduce her to Ting Jong. Tin was Cantonese and Lindo spoke only Mandarin, so they had to communicate using the little English they were learning, or else by writing things down. An-mei and Lindo found a fortune that would tell Tin that Lindo wanted to marry him; it said: "A house is not home when a spouse is not at home." They were married and had Winston (who died in a car accident at age sixteen) and Vincent. Lindo had named both of them with names that sounded lucky: "Wins ton" and "Wins cent." When Waverly was born, she wanted her to have everything she had never had. She named her after their street with a twofold intention; Waverly should feel like she belonged in America just as much as their street, and when she left, she would take a piece of the place and her mother with her.

The scene shifts back to the hair salon. Lindo notices for the first time that Waverly's nose is crooked like hers. Waverly says that similarity means they are both two-faced, so they are good at getting what they want. Lindo thinks about faces and how being two-faced, that is, having an American face and a Chinese face, always means sacrificing some of one for the other. She recalls that when she returned to China for the first time in forty years, people could tell she was no longer completely Chinese and saw her as a foreigner. She plans to ask Waverly what she thinks she has gained and lost by living in America.

Chapter 16: Jing-mei "June" Woo--A Pair of Tickets

As Jing-mei takes the train with her father from Hong Kong to visit her aunt in Guangzhou, she realizes she is becoming Chinese. Her mother had warned her this would happen, but she had denied it until now. After they visit her aunt, they will go to Shanghai to meet her long-lost sisters. When Canning Woo received the letter from the sisters, he gave it to the Joy Luck Club ladies. Instead of writing a letter breaking the news of Suyuan Woo's death, they wrote a letter to the sisters saying she was coming to see them, and they signed it with her name. Jing-mei begged Lindo to write another letter explaining that their mother had died, afraid her sisters would think their mother died because Jing-mei did not appreciate her enough. Lindo seemed satisfied at Jing-mei's recognition of her own shortcomings and wrote the letter. All of Suyuan's family died when a bomb struck their house. This makes Jing-mei and her sisters the only links to their mother's past.

When they arrive in Guangzhou, Canning Woo's aunt, Aiyi, is there with the rest of her family to greet them. Aiyi is only five years older than Canning, and they cry openly with joy upon seeing each other after so long. The whole family goes back to the hotel where Canning and Jing-mei will be staying. Jing-mei is embarrassed by the luxuriousness of the hotel, having not realized that they would have such lavish accommodations for such little money. The family decides to catch up over American food in the hotel, and Jing-mei finds herself hard-pressed to find what she expected of Communist China amid her surroundings. She suddenly misses her mother and wishes she could ask her questions about all the little things she took for granted.

Jing-mei's father tells her that her sisters' names are Chwun Yu, "Spring Rain," and Chwun Hwa, "Spring Flower." Suyuan's name means "Long-Cherished Wish" written one way, and "Long-Held Grudge" written another. He tells Jing-mei that Jing means "pure essence" and mei means "younger sister." This means she is her "mother's long-cherished wish ... the essence" of her sisters. Jing-mei considers how disappointed her mother must have been in how her wish turned out. Then Canning tells Jing-mei the story of why her mother abandoned her sisters in China.

When Suyuan fled Kweilin to find her husband, she took her babies and as much as she could carry. Eventually, horribly weak with dysentery, she had to abandon everything. Not wanting her babies to die with her, she stuffed valuables and information into each of their shirts, along with a note asking that someone take care of them and return them to her address in Shanghai. Then she walked away to die. She awoke in the care of missionaries, and when she reached Chungking, she found out that her husband was dead. Canning met her in a rehabilitation center, terribly weak and pulling out her hair.

A peasant woman named Mei Ching had found Jing-mei's sisters. She and her husband lived in a cave during the war, and they cared for Chwun Yu and Chwun Ha. After her husband died, she took them to Shanghai to the address written on the note. But the address was for a factory, and besides, Suyuan and Canning had already left for America. Over the years, Suyuan wrote to many old friends in China, asking them to look for her daughters to no avail. She insisted that she and Canning go back to China, but he told her it was too late, thinking she just wanted to go for a visit and not to find her daughters. He thinks the possibility that they were dead, which he must have accidentally planted in her mind, is what grew until it killed her in the form of an aneurysm. After Suyuan's death, her schoolmate happened upon the long-lost sisters by accident and gave them Suyuan's address in San Francisco.

The next day, Jing-mei and Canning fly to Shanghai to finally meet her sisters. As soon as they step into the airport, Jing-mei's sisters recognize her and yell for her. They look strangely like and unlike Suyuan. They embrace, and Jing-mei suddenly realizes that the Chinese part of her is persisting within her family. Canning takes a Polaroid of the three sisters together. As it develops, they see their mother's features come to life in their faces. Finally her "long-cherished wish" has come true.

Analysis

In Chapters 15 and 16, we find the daughters on the cusp of taking their mothers' places. The generations are coming full circle, a pattern echoed in the novel's structure. The Joy Luck Club begins with Jing-mei's story and continues with the mothers' stories, the daughters' stories form the center, and then the novel cycles back to the mothers and ends with Jing-mei. The symmetry in the novel's structure echoes the cyclic pattern of the characters' lives; mothers and daughters diverge in their paths, but all come back to a single point of inviolable love and understanding. Furthermore, the book's symmetry suggests that the stories we read about in the novel have happened in all past generations and will recur in all future generations. Just as one can imagine seeing infinite generations by standing between two mirrors that are opposite each other, one can understand the struggles of infinite generations by hearing the stories of just two.

Although the novel focuses on how similar the generations are in spirit, it is physical appearance that makes Waverly and Jing-mei realize they are truly their mothers' daughters. Lindo Jong's discussion of Chinese and American faces creates a turn in the story line. It is a confirmation that the mothers have become as American as the daughters are Chinese. While we have witnessed the daughters' struggles with dual identity, this is the first time we realize how much American culture-the daughters' culture-affects the mothers as well. In fact, when Lindo returned to China on a trip, she was not even seen as Chinese.

Having a "Double Face," as the chapter title suggests, can mean being isolated from both cultures. But a "double face" also creates an advantage. Just as a tiger's two-colored stripes let it stalk its prey unseen, a person can use her Chinese face in some situations and her American face in others (even if she cannot fully pass as either). Inherent in this idea, though is the negative connotation of "two-faced"; as we have seen, the daughters do view their mothers as deceptive and threatening at times. Even though Lindo and Waverly do not achieve a perfect mutual understanding by the end of the novel, they have a revelation by looking at their two faces, literally, in the mirror. While Waverly often acts ashamed of her mother and the culture she represents, she now sees how much she is like Lindo, flaws and all. Like the daughter in the prologue, Lindo and Waverly look into the mirror and see not only their own faces reflected, but all the past hopes of their mothers and the future hopes of their daughters. Just as Waverly sees her mother's face in her own, when the three sisters watch the Polaroid picture of themselves develop, their images emerge like ghosts from the mist until they form one clear image, that of Suyuan. Ironically, only by examining each other in a superficial, indirect manner-in a mirror or photograph- do the characters finally understand each other. They are looking beyond immediate physical similarities and seeing symbols of intergenerational unities.

Names are crucial to the last two chapters. We first hear about Waverly's name from her, and in a slightly ironic tone; she suggests that her mother named her after their street only so she would sound American, not realizing that "Waverly Place" is a strange name for a child. Even after realizing that she wants Lindo to help Rich understand the Chinese part of her, Waverly still misunderstands what is Chinese, seeing it as backwards. But Waverly's very name affirms that she cannot escape her heritage or her mother; as American as it is, it means that she can never leave her roots behind. Jing-mei also spends most of the book unaware of the affirmation encoded in her name. Suyuan not only has a wish, but also expresses it, because her name means "long-cherished wish." After Suyuan's death, Jing-mei's mission becomes to fulfill that wish, but in fact, she has been fulfilling the wish since birth. Suyuan has always thought of Jing-mei as the "essence of [her] sister[s]." She saw in Jing-mei enough spirit to live for all three of her daughters, should the other two be dead. Hard as they might try at times, neither Waverly nor Jing-mei can escape her mother, the one who named her, the one whose spirit she shares.

As in most of the book, Tan imbues the title of the last chapter, "A Pair of Tickets," with several meanings. In the simplest sense, both Jing-mei and her father travel to China, so they need two tickets. The title also suggests that the long-lost sisters might come back to America with Jing-mei and her father, thus needing "a pair of tickets" of their own. More deeply, Chwun Yu and Chwun Hwa are themselves "a pair of tickets" not only in the fulfillment of Suyuan's wish, but in Jing-mei's understanding of her heritage and her relationship with Suyuan. When in China, Jing-mei finds herself distanced from Chinese culture even as she comes closer to her mother. Therefore it is not Chinese culture as a whole that she and the other daughters inherit, but a sense of being Chinese that is special to them. Even though they relate, each daughter's Chinese identity is as individual as the name her mother chose for her.

The climax comes at the very end of the novel, when Jing-mei meets her sisters. It is the moment when Jing-mei, on behalf of all the characters, understands the point about shared spirit that Tan's reader has been seeing all along. They cannot escape one another, because in many ways they "are" one another. In uniting with her sisters in the flesh, Jing-mei fulfills more than just her mother's wish to be reunited with her sisters in spirit. She has also fulfilled Suyuan's other deep wish, to have Jing-mei understand her and to be able to pass on her legacy. Their meeting is the ultimate affirmation of Tan's continual theme: mothers and daughters in all generations are different 'translations' of the same capable, compassionate and unbreakable spirit.

• Biography of Amy Tan
• About The Joy Luck Club
• Character List
• Major Themes
• Glossary of Terms
• Short Summary
• Full Summary and Analysis
• Summary and Analysis of Chapters 1-2
• Summary and Analysis of Chapters 3-4
• Summary and Analysis of Chapters 5-6
• Summary and Analysis of Chapters 7-8
• Summary and Analysis of Chapters 9-10
• Summary and Analysis of Chapters 11-12
• Summary and Analysis of Chapters 13-14
• Summary and Analysis of Chapters 15-16
• Related Links on The Joy Luck Club
• Suggested Essay Questions
• Asian-American Women Writers
• Author of ClassicNote and Sources
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