Amy Tan's novel, The Joy Luck Club, is a moving novel dealing with the relationships between mothers and daughters. The novel is split between two different settings and times. The mother's stories all take place in World War II China, while the daughter's stories are modern day California.

The novel opens with Jing-mei Woo, or June, taking her mother's spot as the east corner on the mahjong table at joy luck. Her mother has recently passed away, and she has left unfinished business. June finds that the sad stories her mother told her about the twin baby girls she abandoned in China were true. She has sisters in China, and just after her mother's death, an old friend in China sent a letter with the babies where abouts. Suyuan Woo's long time friends at joy luck insist that June go to China and tell her sister about her mother. June says that she wouldn't know what to say. The aunties are all upset by this, because they see their own forgetful daughters in June. They worry that their own children know nothing of them and the hardships they lived through to become the people they are today. With this in the minds of the three joy luck club mothers, each begins to tell the story of their lives in China, and their trip to the US.

Each of the four mothers tells a sad story of their life in WW2 China. One mother was forced into a marriage that had been arranged by a village matchmaker at birth. Another mother watched as her own mother killed herself in order to make a better position in life for her daughter. As a little girl, one mother fell overboard a ship at holiday time, and when she met the moon lady who would grant her secret wish, she wanted only to be found. And June's mother tells the story of how she was forced to abandon her precious twin girls on the side of the road while fleeing the Japanese army.

Each daughter also has a section of the book where she talks about her relationship with her own mother. None of the girls seems to truly understand their mothers, and really are typical American children, yet the mothers felt that their daughters should be more. Each mother wanted only to give her daughter the best of American opportunity, while teaching them to think Chinese. This wasn't very successful, and the mothers found it hard to communicate with their own daughters.

This novel's true merit is to be found in more than its great plot and interesting story line. Joy Luck makes you think about your relationship with your own mother. The aunties say it best when they ask June, " How could you not know your own mother! She is part of your bones! She's who you are!" This is something American children don't really think about. Everything a mother does, every story she tells, every book she reads, every dish she cooked, it's all a part of you. Your mother is more than just a part of your bones from genetics, but she is who helped mold you into the person you are today. It's why although the aunties were afraid of being forgotten by their daughters, they need not have worried. Even if we don't realize it, our parents, especially our mothers, will always live on through our children and us and on down the line. We will teach many of the same lessons we were taught. We'll have the same mannerisms, ideals, and traditions. We are just like our parents before us. At the end of the novel, June meets her sisters, and they hug and cry, and June is able to tell them who their mother was. For the first time, she truly understands what her mother's life was about, and finds joy in sharing it with her mother's long cherished and never forgotten babies.

In the front of the novel, where authors write dedications, Amy Tan has written one to her mother, one that is the epitome of what The Joy Luck Club is about. She says, " To my mother and the memory of her mother. You asked me once what I would remember. This, and much more."

This dedication says more eloquently what the novel's true meaning and value are than anything else. This is a story I recommend to anyone who ever had a mother, is a mother, or plans to be one.