Individualism In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan was born in 1952, in California, to two Chinese immigrant parents, both of whom had fled the country to escape civil conflict during the late 1940s. Some of the events in The Joy Luck Club even reflect stories or experiences from her own mother’s past. Tan began writing the book after her first trip to China, which she took with her mother in 1987. Reading this book, one can easily tell that Tan is a talented storyteller; it beautifully explores a variety of themes, including subjects such as cultural identity and intergenerational conflict. Tan’s writing style in this novel is unique in that it can, at times, feel disjointed and haphazardly organized. In The Joy Luck Club, Tan deviates from the typical conventions of a novel with her

Tan’s novel is meant to chronicle the experiences and stories of not just the individual women, but the group as a community. The way she masterfully weaves together the different voices, stories, and even the different language spoken across the different generations creates a larger image and story of the entire group of women. The way that Tan tells the stories of these women can seem to resemble that of a jigsaw puzzle. While each has their own, individual experiences and stories, they can also be arranged together. Not only are they individual pieces, but they can be fashioned and molded together so that they make up a larger image. When Tan’s storytelling in The Joy Luck Club is examined as a whole, it creates a singular image.
Tan breaks the conventions of a typical novel in her use of narrators, movement throughout time, and language. Her doing so adds to her unique style in storytelling. In breaking these typical structures for a novel, she is able to uniquely craft many stories at once. While she tells the stories of each of the individual women, she also creates a larger image, one singular impression of the women’s lives as a group. Tan successfully creates a picture of how the women as a community live and experience life in a foreign