Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club was hugely popular when it was first published in 1989, and it quickly found an audience of readers, putting it on the bestseller list. Praise from book clubs and high school reading lists soon followed, and a film adaptation was released in 1993.
Our Classic Book Discussion Group will read and discuss The Joy Luck Club this month.
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BOOK DESCRIPTION: In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to play mah jong, remember the past, and gossip into the night. United in unspeakable loss and new hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club.
With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the memories that display these women’s strength, worries, and determination. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of the matriarchal ties that they believe have stymied their ability to face the uncertainties of the future.
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Copies of The Joy Luck Club can be picked up from the Book Discussion Shelf on our first floor, and it’s also available digitally as an ebook (through Libby/Overdrive) and an audiobook (through Libby/Overdrive or Hoopla).
An in-person discussion of The Joy Luck Club will be held at the library on Thursday, May 22, at 3:00 PM. No registration is required to attend.
Published on May 1, 2025.
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