The author is grateful to her weekly writers' group for kind ness and criticism during the writing of this book. Special thanks also to Louis DeMattei, Robert Foothen Schields, Amy Hempel, Jennifer Barth, and my family in China and America. And a thouund flowers each to three people whom I have had the joy and the luck to know: my editor, Faith Sale, for her belief in this book; my agent, Sandra Dijkstra, for saving my life; and my teacher, Molly Giles, who told me to start over again and then patiently guided me to the end.

FEATHERS FROM A THOUSAND LI AWAY

    JING-MEI WOO: The Joy Luck Club

    AN-MEI HSU: Scar

    LINDO JONG: The Red Candle

   YING-YING ST. CLAIR: The Moon Lady

THE TWENTY-SIX MALIGNANT GATES

    WAVERLY .JONG: Rules of the Game

    LENA ST. CLAIR: The Voice from the Wall

    ROSE HSU JORDAN: Half and Half

    JING-MEI WOO: Two Kinds

AMERICAN TRANSLATION

    LENA ST. CLAIR: Rice Husband

    WAVERLY JONG: Four Directions

    ROSE HSU JORDAN: Without Wood

  JING-MEI WOO: Best Quality

QUEEN MOTHER OF THE WESTERN SKIES

    AN-MEI HSU: Magpies

    YING-YING ST. CLAIR: Waiting Between

     the Trees

    LINDO JONG: Double Face

    JING-MEI WOO: A Pair of Tickets

"Powerful... full of magic.., you won"t be doing anything of importance until you have finished this novel".

        Los AnQeles Times Book Review

"In The Joy Luck Club, vignettes alternate back and forth between the lives of four Chinese women in pre-1949 China and the lives of their American-born daughters in California In the hands of Amy Tan, who has a wonderful eye for what is telling, a fine ear for dialogue, a deep empathy for her subject matter and a guilelessly straightforward way of writing, they sing with a rare fidelity and beauty".

        The New York Times Book Review

"That rare, mesmerizing novel one always seeks but seldom finds.., a pure joy to read"

        Chicago Tribune

"Amy Tan"s brilliant novel flits in and out of many realities but all of them contain mothers and daughters Each story is a fascinating vignette, and together they weave the reader through a world where the Moon Lady can grant any wish, where a child, promised in marriage at two and delivered at 12, can, with cunning, free herself; where a rich man"s concubine secures her daughter"s future by killing herself and where a woman can live on, knowing she has lost her entire life".

        The Washington Post Book World