The Joy Luck Club Part 1

 

Feathers from a Thousand Li Away

A Chinese woman bought a swan that had once been a duck with an overstretched neck. The woman cared for the swan and brought it over to America on a ship, intending to give it to her daughter when she grew older. The customs officers in America seized the swan, and the woman was left with just a feather. She wants to give the feather to her daughter, but she awaits a time when she can explain its significance in good English.

Chapter 1: The Joy Luck Club

Jing-Mei Woo, June, is mourning the loss of her mother, Suuyan, who died suddenly of an aneurysm two months ago. She attends a meeting of the Mahjong club that her mother had founded at the behest of her mother’s friends and her father. June is in her late thirties and feels quite insecure about her professional as well as personal life. She has grown up in the eyes of her mother’s friends, and alongside their cousins as if they had been one large family. June recalls that her mother had founded a similar club when she had been living in China. She had been married to an officer in the army then, and had two twin daughters with him. Suuyan would often tell her about how difficult the circumstances were in China during the Japanese invasion, and that she had created a Mahjong club so that the women could uplift their spirits and create hope for a better future.

June had also learned that the conditions during the war had worsened and Suuyan had been forced to abandon her home on foot with her children. The march to safety was so arduous that she was forced to abandon her children. After June plays an embarrassing game of Mahjong with her mother’s friends, she turns to leave, but they stop her and give her an envelope of cash. They know that Suuyan had wanted to see her missing children ever since she had lost them, but she had never found them. Recently, the twin sisters had been discovered, and the Joy Luck Club ladies wished for June to go to them and tell them of their now-deceased mother. June is overwhelmed by the directive and says that she can’t be the one to go as she hadn’t known her mother well. This upsets all the mothers, and they pressure her into accepting the money and the responsibility of the task.

Chapter 2: Scar

An-Mei Hsu lived in the Chinese countryside with her grandmother, a scary woman who loved her deeply. She called her mother Popo and grew up in Popo’s household with her brother, an uncle, and an aunt. An-Mei knew that her grandmother did not like to speak of her mother because she claimed that her mother had disgraced the family by becoming the fourth concubine of a rich merchant. Her mother had tried to take An-Mei with her when she was four years old, but Popo had forbidden it, and in the ensuing chaos An-Mei had been badly burnt. Her mother returns to the countryside home when Pope’s health begins to worsen, and although her mother is treated poorly by even the servants of the household, she dutifully serves her mother and tries to restore her to health. An-Mei feels safe with her mother, and even though they have been separated from each other for so long, she feels the tenderness of shared love between them. She recognizes that whatever Popo and the other relatives said about her mother does not alter the fact that her mother is a good woman and a dutiful daughter. An-Mei observes her mother slice off a large piece of meat from her arm into a traditional medicinal soup to restore Popo to health, alas she fails to prevent her mother’s death.

Chapter 3: The Red Candle

Lindo was betrothed to marry the son of a wealthy neighbor by her family at the age of two. Lindo did not understand what this betrothal meant, although she always showed her betrothed and his mother a lot of respect when they met her. When Lindo turned 12, her family’s fortunes were ruined by a flood, and so Lindo was sent to live with the family of her betrothed. The family of her betrothed did not treat her much better than a servant, and she was forced to perform back-breaking labor from dusk till dawn. Lindo’s perseverance paved the way for to her be accepted by her in-laws, and she was married at the age of 16. Lindo observed that the matchmaker had entrusted the burning of a ritual candle to one of his servants, but the servant had fallen asleep and the candle had gone out. This was never revealed by the matchmaker, and he instead told them that the ritual candle had burned to its end.

Lindo’s marriage was ideal since her husband was too scared to ever touch her or be intimate with her in any way. However, her mother-in-law soon began to demand an heir, and Lindo used the knowledge of the spoiled ritual to cause her family to break the marriage. She told her in-laws that the ancestors had come to her in her dreams, and told her that her husband would die if they remained married. She added that the important ritual candle had not burned out, and this was confirmed by the matchmaker when he was forced to answer honestly. Lindo moved to Peking with the help of her in-laws, and from there she moved to America.

Chapter 4: The Moon Lady

Ying-Ying St. Clair believes that she has kept her true essence hidden from her daughter, Lena. She recounts a story of an important Chinese festival that celebrates the Lady of the Moon, who had the power to bestow one wish. Ying-Ying had been four when she had first learned of this festival, and on that day her large and wealthy family had set out to spend the day on a pavilion floating on a nearby lake. Ying-Ying wore beautiful clothes, and was being cared for by her governess, but she dirtied her new clothes when she started observing the process of catching and cleaning fish that occurred on board the ship. Her governess became very angry at her and took off her clothes to clean before her mother could see. Ying-Ying remained standing there for a long time, and no one came to find her. The sound of the fireworks toppled her into the lake, but she was rescued by a poor group of fishermen, who try to help her find her family but they are unable.

They deposit Ying-ying on the shore and she observes the play of the Lady of the Moon. She feels that she can get the aid of the goddess to return to her family, so when the show becomes over, Ying-ying hurries to find the Lady of the Moon. The goddess turns into a man in front of her, and she is left shocked. She does not remember what happened afterward, and even though the family eventually found her, Ying-ying believes they found the wrong girl.

Analysis

The book is divided into four short stories over four parts and mimics the play style of the Chinese tile game, Mahjong. Each set begins with a fable that appears before that set of short stories. This first part begins with the story of a duck that wanted to become a duck but ended up becoming a swan. In the fable, the Chinese woman wanted to give the swan to her daughter but she is prevented from doing so, and cannot quite bring herself to tell her daughter about the significance of the swan’s feather. The story indicates a great distance between a pair of mother and daughter, and a similar distance exists between the Chinese mothers and daughters featured in the text. June is the first to express the distance that existed between herself and Suuyan, but all of the other women feel that same distance. June observes this in their vehement reaction to her statement that she did not quite know her mother. The other stories can be seen as the stories of how the duck turned into a swan. An-Mei, Ying-Ying, Suuyan, and Lindo came from diverse walks of life in China, but they all had to overcome significant challenges. Despite these challenges, they were able to create happy lives for themselves in America, yet none of them was quite capable of explaining the significance of their struggle to their daughters.