Reading to Reels: The Joy Luck Club

In the past few years, movies with Asian characters and Asian actors have been both critical darlings and a hit with audiences. The movie Crazy, Rich Asians was a box-office success. The Korean drama Squid Game was a popular TV program on Netflix. And the 2022’s Everything, Everywhere, All at Once won a lot of Oscar gold including for best picture. Actors like Michelle Yeoh, Ali Wong, Simu Liu, and John Cho are lauded for playing interesting and three-dimensional characters.

But Hollywood’s portrayal of Asian people wasn’t always so favorable. Asian characters in film and television were often portrayed in horrible stereotypes-the dragon lady, the sexless geek, etc. Often Asian characters were played by white actors. Probably one of the most insulting of a white actor playing an Asian character is the Irish-American white actor Mickey Rooney playing a buck-toothed Mr. Yunioshi in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Sure, I love that movie. It stars the wondrous Audrey Hepburn, but Mr. Yunioshi is downright offensive! Thankfully, things have changed, and we are seeing Asian characters with interesting and unique stories to tell.

In 1993, the dramatic film The Joy Luck Club was released. Based on the novel of the same title by Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club was directed by Wayne Wang with a screenplay by Tan and co-writer Ronald Bass. The film featured a mainly Asian and Asian-American cast.

The Joy Luck Club consists of four Chinese women who immigrated to the United States when they were younger and now live in San Francisco’s Chinatown. These women are named Lindo Jong, Ying Ying St. Clair, An-Mei Hsu, and Suyuan Woo. These four women get together to play mah-jongg, gossip, and tell their individual stories. In China, all of these women dealt with huge tragedies that nearly ruined them.

Ying-Ying (France Nuyen) married a man when she lived in China who was abusive and unfaithful. Ying-Ying becomes hugely depressed, which causes her to drown her son in the bathtub while he’s still an infant. Even after she moves to the United States, and has a daughter named Lena (Lauren Tom), Ying-Ying is haunted by her past and what she did to her son.

An-Mei Hsu (Lisa Lu) was raised in China mostly by her grandmother and other relatives. Her own mother was banished from the family when she became the fourth wife of a very wealthy man after An-Mei’s father died. An-Mei reunites with her shamed mother when her mother comes back into the fold to take care of her own ailing mother. An-Mei never wants to lose her mother again so she moves out with her mother to this wealthy man’s home much to the chagrin of her relatives. Later one, she comes to the United States, gets married and has a daughter named Rose (Rosaline Chao).

Lindo (Tsai Chin) lived in devastating poverty, and is forced into marriage to a wealthy man by her own mother. She marries this man at 15, and the marriage is completely loveless, and Lindo manages to escape after being chastised for not bearing a son. Lindo later comes to America remarries, and has two children, one being a daughter named Waverly (Tamlyn Tomita).

Suyuan Woo (Kieu Chinh) was in China when the Japanese invaded during World War II. She tries to escape with her twin daughters in tow, but the cart she is escaping in breaks down. Suyuan also becomes quite ill. Not knowing what to do, she abandons her daughters, her possessions, and a single photo of her. Not knowing what happened to her twins, torments Suyuan. She remarries once she gets to the United States, and has a daughter named June (Ming-Na Wen).

It is Suyuan’s daughter, June, who narrates the story. Suyuan dies, and June is asked to take her place in The Joy Luck Club. After her mother dies, June decides to go to China to meet her half-sisters. When the movie opens, there is a farewell party for June. And then in flashbacks, the older women tell their stories, which horrify their daughters, but also give them an idea of what shaped their mothers and how they raised each of their daughters.

The daughters are also dealing with issues apart from their mothers. Lindo’s daughter, Waverly divorced, with a daughter of her own, and is now engaged to a white man who nearly breaks up their engagement when he accidentally insults Lindo’s food. June works Waverly as freelancer, their friendship often fraught with rivalry, which was sometimes egged on by her own mother, Suyuan. Rose is married to her college sweetheart Ted, but their is tension in their marriage. Initially assertive and bold, Rose tries to be submissive thinking this will please Ted (who she also suspects is cheating on her). And Lena, too, is caught up in an unhappy marriage, which she tells her mother about. Instead of telling Lena to suck it up, Ying-Ying tells her daughter to leave her husband, Harold, if he cannot live up to her expectations.

During the film the young women learn more and more about their mothers. They grow to appreciate their mothers even more. And they also understand why their mothers were sometimes so difficult to get along with. The young women’s mothers often made mistakes but they truly had their daughter’s best interests at heart.

And though the young women’s stories are compelling, and relatable to many of us when it comes to familial relationships, I found the mothers’ stories to be so much more powerful. Being a white women who grew up in a middle class, Midwestern family, the past lives of Lindo, Ying-Ying, An-Mei, and Suyuan were foreign to me, but affected me greatly. I was simply drawn to their stories, wondering how somebody could overcome so much tragedy. Yet, I admired their strength. And yes, I cried a lot while watching The Joy Luck Club. And if you get a chance to see this movie, I highly recommend having a box of tissues handy. The film adaptation of The Joy Luck Club is wonderful cinematic tribute to such an iconic novel.