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.

Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four 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. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.

With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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