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Completed	21 September 2005
Title	The Joy Luck Club
Author	Amy Tan
Published	1989
Quote	"My mother believed in God's will for many years. It was as if she had turned on a celestial faucet and goodness kept pouring out. She said it was faith that kept all these good things coming our way, only I thought she said 'fate,' because she couldn't pronounce the 'th' sound in 'faith'."
Review	I kept getting all the Chinese names mixed up. In creative writing classes, you're told to write what you know. Therefore, writers' first novels are often autobiographical. The Joy Luck Club is no different. This is such a typical first novel. Amy Tan writes of mother-daughter relationships, and specifically, her own stressful relationship with her mother. I have no time or sympathy for women who have "issues" with their mothers. I mean, come on, get over it. Life is short. Love your mother. What's the big deal? Why can't y'all just get along? My mom abruptly passed away when I was 25, and so I have a little insight into the fragility of time and the fleeting nature of life. Life is so very short. So, maybe you can understand why I'm a little tired of hearing people (and some of my girlfriends) complain about their moms. I think daughters should spend more time mending bridges rather than tearing them down. Once I was baby-sitting a seven-year-old girl in Boston. We were in her bedroom, which was pink pink pink. The girl's mother was in the room too, for some reason, and the girl said, "Mommy, I like pink. But you don't like pink. We're different. And that's ok." Seriously, verbatim, that's what the little girl said. Moments later, in the hallway, the mother (who I knew had her own "issues" with her own mother) turned to me and said, "I can't believe what I just heard my daughter say. It's taken me fourteen years of therapy to come to the same conclusion about my own mother." Anyway, the moral of this story is: be nice to your mom. Surely you can find something nice to talk about. Don't waste time pushing each other's buttons. Life is so very short. So, with all that said, this book was not my favorite.

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