# The Joy Luck Club

**Author:** Amy Tan
**Lexile:** 930L
**Grade range:** Grades 9–12
**Age range:** 14–18
**First published:** 1989
**Page count:** 288
**Genre:** Literary Fiction
**ISBN-13:** `9780143038092`
**ISBN-10:** `0143038095`
**Canonical URL:** https://readinglist.school/book/the-joy-luck-club
**License:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — please credit ReadingList.school when citing.

## About this book

Amy Tan's novel interweaves the stories of four Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters, gathered around a mahjong table in San Francisco. Across sixteen linked narratives, the women confront the distance between generations and cultures, and the inheritances — of language, loss, and love — that bind them. A staple of grades 9-12 and AP literature, it is widely taught for its structure and its mother-daughter and immigrant-identity themes.

## Themes

- family
- mother-daughter relationship
- immigration
- Chinese-American experience
- identity

## Content notes

- domestic abuse
- wartime trauma

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