1st-generation American June Woo is departing for China to meet her long lost twin sisters. Her family and friends have gathered to wish her farewell; in attendance at the bustling party is her late mother’s mahjong/gossip friends, the three other members of the “Joy Luck Club”. We learn each woman, upon immigrating to America, had a daughter and against the backdrop of this farewell party, we dive into the experiences of these four mothers and four daughters in China and in America—their trials, their loss, their misunderstandings, their love, and their hope.
Beautifully written and portrayed, “The Joy Luck Club” is about immigration and parenthood. The film is remarkable in that it tells eight complete character stories, building out each woman in empathic depth while ensuring the story moves with heart and with purpose. If made today, “The Joy Luck Club” would probably be a mini-series but the expertise of author/screenwriter Amy Tan and screenwriter Ronald Bass was lent to a story perfect for film. The movie is significant in that it portrayed eight Chinese-American characters in compelling drama—something you still don’t even see today (with 2018’s “Crazy Rich Asians” being the apparent famous exception). And the wonderful actresses who played these mothers and daughters brilliantly expressed the unique pain, lessons, and bond shared between an immigrant and their first-generation children (not fully understood by the generations before or after).
I think the film was most significant to me because I saw my and Cindy’s families in it. Cindy and I are both “first-and-a-half-generation Americans” who grew up in a multicultural setting. In a meaningful way, this film represents everything that ties our family together—everything we will never understand about our parents and grandparents; all the ways we are just like them; all the hopes and expectations that have landed on our shoulders; and all the cultural choices and heritage we transplant onto Westley. In short, this is a beautiful film about the parent-child relationship (more specifically mother-daughter), filtered through a tapestry of immigrant experiences and the rich, sometimes challenging love found in a multicultural American family.