Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club was a smash hit when it was released in 1989. The book was structured as a series of vignettes about four Chinese American immigrant families in San Francisco, focusing on the relationships and histories of the (Chinese-born) mothers and (U.S.-born) daughters in each family. Although it immediately had a lasting impact on the Asian American consciousness, it seemed inherently novelistic by nature.
Just four years later, Tan and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Ronald Bass had adapted the book into a screenplay, and the film was released. Against the odds, it managed to maintain the rich tapestry of stories and perspectives that was in the book. In some ways, the unspoken stories of the mothers were even better suited to the screen than the page, and the film adaptation has become not just one of the great Asian American films, but also one of the great mother-daughter films of all time.
The Joy Luck Club is an unvarnished look at the insecurities and hurt and fears that we carry from our youth and experiences that never leave us. It’s also a classic tale where the tensions are constantly threatening to spill over, and showing how little fights and disagreements can turn into resentments lasting a lifetime. When you’re young, it’s easier to relate to the stories of the children as youths, but when you’re older, the stories of the adult children, or even the stories of the mothers, hit you a little differently.
And though its central themes are universally relatable – the expectations and disappointments of the mothers, the rebelliousness of the daughters, and all of the accompanying tears and laughter – the story is distinguished by the Asian-American characters and settings. Watching the film as a Chinese American evokes odd mixed feelings of the foreign and the familiar. The cultural clashes lend a sense of vivid detail and authenticity, whether it is bringing a white boyfriend over for dinner, piano recital performances, or eating crab dishes. Tan explores the complexities of the Chinese-American search for identity and belonging, and even touches a little bit on racist stereotypes in dating Asian and Caucasian men. The lasting wonder of the film is its willingness to burrow into that little space between the words “Asian” and “American” and see what comes up.
The Joy Luck Club is also an incredible landmark for Asian American representation. It is co-written by Tan, directed by Wayne Wang, and filled with a remarkable depth and breadth of Asian American acting talent, scarcely believable even three decades later. As rapidly as the last few years have been improving in this respect, Hollywood has not yet seen anything that has quite matched it. The film should have been a watershed moment, rather than the belatedly recognized historical anomaly it ultimately became. The cast also underlines the importance of the film not just to Chinese Americans but to Asian Americans – featuring those of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese heritage.
The timelessness of the movie is found in the universality of its message. The weight of intergenerational trauma, in various shapes and sizes, leaves an imprint not just on the characters in the film, but on its viewers as well. How quickly the landscape of one’s life can change in the space of one generation! Wang is completely non-judgmental in the way the characters are shown. The stoic parents are struggling with their own losses and traumas too, as are their children. The third act gets pretty heavy and may even teeter on melodrama, but what it tries to do (and largely succeeds in doing) is getting you to tap into the reservoir of deep emotional truth, that every personal story is epic and important in its own way.
There have been some fantastic Asian American films, especially in recent years, in what seems to be a positive trend. The Joy Luck Club still remains the gold standard. It is unrivaled for its thematic richness, the boldness of its honesty, and its scope. Each moment of the film is filled with humor and sadness and regret – the sum of human experiences and desires.
