Jelly Pops Book Club | The Joy Luck Club
Show Notes:
It has been 30 years since The Joy Luck Club film released and our Jelly Pops Book Club pals wanted to dive into this beautiful tale of mothers and daughters.
To get the full episode you can join us over on Patreon.
Transcript:
The old woman remembered a swan she had bought many years ago in Shanghai. For a foolish thumb, this bird boasted the market vendor was once a duck that stretched its neck in hopes of becoming a goose, and now luck. It is too beautiful to eat. Then the woman and the swan sailed across an ocean, many thousands of lay wide stretching their necks toward America.
On her journey, she coed to the swan in America. I'll have a daughter just like me, but over there, nobody will say her worth is measured by the loudness of her husband's belch over there. Nobody will look down on her because I will make her speak only perfect American English and. Over there, she will always be too full to swallow any sorrow.
She will know my meaning because I will give her the swan a creature that became more than what was hoped for. But when she arrived in the new country, the immigration officials pulled her swan away from her leaving the woman fluttering her arms and with only one swan feather for a memory. And then she had to fill out so many forms.
She forgot why she had come and what she had left behind. Now the woman was old. She had a daughter who grew up speaking only English and swallowing more Coca-Cola than sorrow. For a long time, the woman had wanted to give her daughter the single feather and tell her, this feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with all my good intentions.
And she waited year after year for the day. She could tell her daughter this in perfect American English.
Welcome to the Jelly Pops book Club, where we read book to screen adaptations and compare them to their screen counterparts. I'm Julia Washington, your host, and today we are diving into the Joy Luck Club. And here's the thing, this is bonus content for everyone this month.
The Joy Luck Club was, Our June, 2023 Book Club Pick. I have always known about both of these properties, but I have never read or seen the book, so I was very excited that our Jelly Pops Book Club members chose this one. Right now, full episodes are only on Patreon, and I wanna do a shout out to our book club members who support this show.
If you're not a Jelly Pops Book Club member, you can still read along with us every month and enjoy our discussion. Being a paid member means you get in on the live monthly virtual book club, access to extended versions, bonus content, and you get to vote on what we read every month. Full episodes will be released publicly soon, but until then, enjoy this teaser or if you are in our membership book club, enjoy the whole thing.
Okay, let's start with. A little bit about the author. The Joy Luck Club was written by Amy Tan. Amy Tan was born in San Francisco in 1952 and raised in the Bay Area. Her parents emigrated from China to escape the Chinese Civil War before graduating from San Jose State in 19 San 73. She left her previous school and followed her now husband and changed her major from pre-med to English.
This caused a rift between Amy and her mother. In addition to graduating from San Jose State, she graduated from uc, Berkeley a few years later with a master's degree. She worked as a freelance business writer for many years and she attended her first weekly workshop in 1985. She published her first short story in 1986.
Her book offer for the Joy Luck Club was based on a three short story series she wrote. She won the National Book Award in 1989. She's also won a bunch of other awards, and she's had. A lot of award nominations as well. At the time of this recording, she has published six novels and written several short stories, children's books and nonfiction, and there is a seventh novel expected to publish in 2024.
The Joy Luck Club was first published in 1989 and chronicles the stories of four women and their daughters. The description on the back of the book explains in 19 49, 4 Chinese women recent immigrants to San Francisco begin meeting to eat dim sum, play Mahjong and talk, united in shared unspeakable loss and hope.
They call themselves the Joy Luck Club. The themes of this book include mother and daughter relationships, storytelling and tradition, autonomy, immigration, sexism, power. Some of the motifs are control and sacrifice of love. Some symbols include Sue Yen's pendant, Lena's Vase, and Lin's Red Candle. The four women we follow and their subsequent daughters is as follows, the mothers are Sue Yin, Lin, and Yinging.
May or June is the daughter of Sue Yin Rose is the daughter of Anme Waverly, the daughter of Lin and Lena, the daughter of Ying Ying. This book is a series of 16 short stories about each woman's lived experience. Though we never hear about Ian's life directly from her, the book opens with June's short story about joining the Joy Luck Club now that her mother has passed.
This book is a slow burn. The art of storytelling, sitting around and listening to family histories is strong in this novel, and Tan has a way of making you think this is a long, drawn out story and then hooks you in real quick. The reader experiences, love, loss, and life before America through the mother's stories and the love loss and what it's like being the daughter of an immigrant.
In my opinion, the main journey is through June. She is not only reeling from the loss of her mother, but the realization that she never really knew Sue Yen. We learned Sue Yen had children before she immigrated, but because of the war in China, she left them behind this part of the story. Is our bookends.
It opens with June. It ends with June, and everything in between brings it all together. The movie opens with the same story about the feather. Only this time we fine June in an apartment full of people a celebration. All the mothers and daughters are there, with the exception of Sue Yin as well as extended family and friends.
Like the book, the movie is a slow burn, but it is very much how movies were made in the nineties, giving us short flashback vignettes woven into the fabric of the story overall. Like the book, the movie explores the cultural conflicts and difficult relationships between mothers and daughters. The New York Times described this movie as both sweeping and intimate, a lovely evocation of changing cultures and enduring family ties.
It is rare that a film feels like it's source material on the screen, and the Joy Luck Club is part of that exception. While the book, at times can feel weighted, dragging through to get to the point the film plops you into these stories, giving you these scenes in a shorter version without losing the intended emotional impact, the films run time is about two hours and 19 minutes, and you definitely feel that at times.
The first obvious change to me is the opening scene. The movie has everyone gathered around with June planning to fly out that evening to China. The apartment is packed and everyone's eager and excited for her in the book. It opens with June arriving to the Joy Luck Club, and it's just the women and their husbands.
And of course, June's father. There's an explanation of how the Joy Luck Club came to be. But there's also detail about its evolution, how the women used to play for money for their own keeps, but when the same women kept winning over and over again, they decided to pull their money and invest it. Each owning and equal share, including the husbands June, is expecting some kind of show or ceremony over the loss of her mother.
And this being the first Joy Luck Club meeting without her, but that never happens.
There's probably even more details I've missed, but since I operate on big emotions, this is where my emotions took me. And if you're listening to this public version, you'll have to join us on Patreon to get the full details of the differences I found between the book and the movie Jelly Pop's Book Club is.
Produced, written and edited by me, your host. This show was born from our sister show. Pop culture makes me jealous where we analyze pop culture through the lens of race or gender, and sometimes both. We've covered quite a few book to screen adaptations, and that's what we read in our live monthly book club for the month of June in 2023.
Speaking of our live book club, it is one of the perks of being a member through Patreon. You can support the show for just $5 a month by joining the Jelly Pops book club only tier. You'll even get fun perks like bonus episodes. Head on over to patreon.com/julia Washington for more information and it's linked in our show notes.
If you loved this topic, share it with all of your bookish friends, or you can write a review and rate us. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, tell us what you want us to cover next. What is a book to movie adaptation that deserves to be looked at? If you wanna chat about this book or movie, you can find us on Instagram at jelly pops books or on TikTok at Jelly Pops Book Club.
You can find me on TikTok and Instagram at the Julia Washington. I can't wait to dive into more book to screen adaptations with you all. We've got some fun titles coming up. But until then, thanks for tuning in y'all. Until next time.
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