Book 56: Finished.

(I want to apologize first for not posting this earlier this week. I thought I had scheduled it. Turns out, I didn't. Brain fart on my part. It happens).

I really enjoyed my time spend with Tan. It was like visiting an old friend I didn't even know I had. There was something very comforting in reading this tale about mothers and daughters, and the gaps that come between them.

I am fortunate that I have a really good relationship with my mother. We disagree sometimes, but we go out to lunch and talk about everything. I am grateful that I have that and can count on that.

So perhaps I cannot relate to the women in this book, who cannot understand who their mothers are, or why they are the way they are. We all have private experiences that make us who we are and that we cannot even begin to explain to even those who are closest to us.

This novel is an example of those moments-those places and times where we fall within ourselves and discover things that we hold private.

I want to share a few small sections that I loved. This first one is from "The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates,"

"When something that violent hits you, you can't help but lose your balance and fall. And after you pick yourself up, you realize you can't trust anybody to save you-not your husband, not your mother, not God. So what can you do to stop yourself from tilting and falling all over again?" (128).

Here is another section from "Queen Mother of the Western Skies,"

"I know how it is to be quiet, to listen and watch, as if your life were a dream. You can close your eyes when you no longer want to watch. But when you no longer want to listen, what can you do?" (242).

My favorite is from the chapter or story called "Feathers from a Thousand Li Away,"

"I wiped my eyes and looked in the mirror. I was surprised at what I saw. I had on a beautiful read dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind," (53).

So yes, the book is about discovering the differences between East and West, the old and the new, and the stories we all have inside and never tell. It is powerful without being overbearing and shouting in your face. It is simple, and beautiful, and everything I needed to read.

"So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. The pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hole that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter's tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and giver her my spirit, because this is the way a mother loves her daughter," (286).

Book 56: On Culture and Language.

A very large part of me is glad that I am rereading this. I am pulling far more out of it than I can remember my tenth grade self understanding.

For one, I am learning to appreciate the cultural significance of this story in a way that blew over my head at fifteen. This has made me realize why this must be deemed a modern classic. It is a novel that truly captures what it means to be an immigrant to the white-dominated United States.

I was most likely ignorant reading this as a high schooler. I grew up in a suburb north of Detroit and while there were students of other races scattered in my classes, it was mainly white, middle-class. It was simply something that I accepted and paid only slight attention to.

Throughout college, I had more ethnic diversity in my classics, but in my subject areas, it was heavily Caucasian. My college has a reputation for being very diverse and home to a large international student body, but I never found that in my own classes.

Now I realize that diversity and culture are everywhere around me, and rereading this has shown me that I do need to make an effort in the future to read more outside of my comfort zone. I need to read more Asian literature, as well as pieces from Africa and everywhere else that isn't close to what I call my own culture.

I guess I owe Tan for showing me what I am missing in bettering myself. But, in the meantime, I can enjoy and love what she does to show me what I am missing.

Tan does have a gift for capturing her culture and language in this novel. Through the voices of the seven main characters, I am appreciating their struggle and strife as part of a minority here. Here is an example:

"And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English...They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation," (31).

While I knew all that-the struggle and pain of seeming to lose culture from generation to generation, I never really experienced it. This made it more real for me, more tangible.

This is why I think Tan's novel is seen as a modern day classic. It captures the thoughts of a new wave of immigrants that are not MY forefathers. My ancestors came over around the turn of the 20th century, or maybe a little after. America as a cultural phenomenon was nothing like it is now. This novel, it captures the power of an American culture, and shows how those who live here and who do not follow that culture can appear to be isolated, and to forget the place where they came from.

I am not an expert on any kind of literature, and I do not know enough about diversity in literature to say anything more than my opinion on this, so bear that in mind. But I find we need more of this publicized for us to grab for. We are not all the same, and we should celebrate our differences in all aspects of our lives and literature is no different.

Anyway, I am sure I am rambling by this point, so I shall cut this stream off. But if you are looking for something to capture the feeling of trying to find a place to belong, I might steer you this direction. For me, it is worth the time and energy to read it.

Book 56: Structure.

Reading The Joy Luck Club for the second time is a completely different experience than the first time. When I read it back in high school, my teacher altered the way in which we read the novel.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the novel, it follows four mothers and their daughters (although one of the mothers is dead at the beginning). There are four sections, each with four short chapters. Each character gets two of their own chapters to tell an overall story in the book.

Back in high school, we read the novel by characters. We would read the mother's two stories, followed by her daughter's. And so on and so forth. It made some kind of linear sense as we read it and it was probably easier for our tenth grade minds to understand.

This time, I am reading the novel straight through. It is different enough that I feel I am pulling more from the novel, but the stories are familiar. I know that one of the chapters/stories, "Rules of the Game" is taught in schools and is found in many of those heavy "literature" textbooks kids get in high school (I know, I taught the story!).

In reading this again, I find that I am thinking a lot about the structure of the novel. It has 16 different parts that equal one big whole. I wonder if Tan tried to write it from one point of view instead of 7, and if she believed that the only true way to tell this story was in the way she did.

I am wondering all of this as a writer myself. I have restarted pieces because it didn't sound right from one perspective. My current WIP was restarted three times to get the sound right and the structure in place so my character's story could be told.

It makes for interesting thinking-the structure of the stories we love so much. If you think about one of the biggest novels from this summer, Mockingjay, it is easy to change how we would ahve viewed it. The novel would have had a different tone and feel had the point of view come from one of the Gamemakers, or from a citizen of the Capitol. Would we have seen Katniss as a friend or foe?

We can take one of Austen's novels, Pride and Prejudice, and think about the structure there. Why did Austen tell it in such a way?

I am beginning to think that sometimes a story can only be told in one way, and it is the author's job to find that right structure for their novel. Perhaps that is why some novels fail, even with good ideas.

I remember thinking back in high school that Tan's novel was a stupid way to tell a story. I had a hard time putting together the pieces of these women's lives and making sense of it. But now, I can see why Tan's structure is so important to the whole. Each piece fits together in a way that a linear novel couldn't accomplish. We get insights about the struggles of being a different race in a white dominated America from more than one person. And together, they paint a picture of racial differences and prejudices I wouldn't have gotten from any other novel.


Yet again, I am amazed at how much more I can pull out of a book on a reread. Every book has value and insight, given that we read it at the right time.

Book 56: The Joy Luck Club and Book Stats.

Title: The Joy Luck Club

Author: Amy Tan (1952-?)

First Published: 1989

My Edition: Ivy Books (seen at left)

Pages: 332

Other Works Include: The Kitchen God's Wife (1991), The Hundred Secret Senses (1995), The Bonesetter's Daughter (2001), Saving Fish from Drowning (2005)

This is actually a re-read for me. I read this novel as a tenth grader for school. My teacher allowed the class to pick and vote for what we would read during the year, and this novel edged out Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. I still have no idea why she let us do that, since we read a lot of things the other classes weren't...and we never read some of the big things we should have.

In any case, I really enjoyed this novel as a tenth grader. It was far more modern than a lot of the other things I had read in school. It can be argued that it maybe shouldn't be here, but it is hailed as a modern classic, so I am just going to accept that.

I haven't read any of Tan's other novels, although I have meant to. I think I have a copy of Saving Fish from Drowning somewhere, but I've never gotten around to it. In any case, I am looking forward to revisiting this novel and seeing what I can pull from it that my 15 year old self ignored.