Table Of ContentBloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations
The Adventures of The Grapes of Wrath One Hundred Years of
Huckleberry Finn Great Expectations Solitude
The Age of Innocence The Great Gatsby Persuasion
Alice’s Adventures in Gulliver’s Travels Portnoy’s Complaint
Wonderland Hamlet Pride and Prejudice
All Quiet on the The Handmaid’s Tale Ragtime
Western Front Heart of Darkness The Red Badge of
As You Like It I Know Why the Courage
The Ballad of the Sad Caged Bird Sings Romeo and Juliet
Café The Iliad The Rubáiyát of Omar
Beloved Jane Eyre Khayyám
Beowulf The Joy Luck Club The Scarlet Letter
Black Boy The Jungle A Separate Peace
The Bluest Eye Long Day’s Journey Silas Marner
The Canterbury Tales Into Night Song of Solomon
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Lord of the Flies The Sound and the
The Catcher in the Rye The Lord of the Rings Fury
Catch-22 Love in the Time of The Stranger
The Chronicles of Cholera A Streetcar Named
Narnia The Man Without Desire
The Color Purple Qualities Sula
Crime and The Metamorphosis The Tale of Genji
Punishment Miss Lonelyhearts A Tale of Two Cities
The Crucible Moby-Dick “The Tell-Tale Heart”
Darkness at Noon My Ántonia and Other Stories
Death of a Salesman Native Son Their Eyes Were
The Death of Artemio Night Watching God
Cruz 1984 Things Fall Apart
Don Quixote The Odyssey To Kill a Mockingbird
Emerson’s Essays Oedipus Rex Ulysses
Emma The Old Man and the Waiting for Godot
Fahrenheit 451 Sea The Waste Land
A Farewell to Arms On the Road Wuthering Heights
Frankenstein One Flew Over the Young Goodman
The Glass Menagerie Cuckoo’s Nest Brown
Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations
Amy Tan’s
The Joy Luck Club
New Edition
Edited and with an introduction by
Harold Bloom
Sterling Professor of the Humanities
Yale University
Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations: The Joy Luck Club—New Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Infobase Publishing
Introduction © 2009 by Harold Bloom
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club / edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom. — New ed.
p. cm. — (Bloom’s modern critical interpretations)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60413-399-8
1. Tan, Amy. Joy Luck Club. 2. Mothers and daughters in literature. 3. Chinese
Americans in literature. I. Bloom, Harold. II. Title. III. Series.
PS3570.A48J632 2009
813'.54—dc22 2008052355
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Contents
Editor’s Note vii
Introduction 1
Harold Bloom
Born of a Stranger: Mother–Daughter Relationships
and Storytelling in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club 3
Gloria Shen
Voice, Mind, Self: Mother–Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan’s
The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife 17
M. Marie Booth Foster
Hanyu at the Joy Luck Club 35
Steven P. Sondrup
Discovering the Ethnic Name and the Genealogical Tie in
Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club 45
Zenobia Mistri
The Role of Mah Jong in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club 53
Ronald Emerick
Feng Shui, Astrology, and the Five Elements: Traditional
Chinese Belief in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club 63
Patricia L. Hamilton
vi Contents
Moving Forward to Reach the Past: The Dialogics of
Time in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club 83
Marc Singer
Mothers’ “China Narrative”: Recollection and Translation in Amy
Tan’s The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife 109
Yuan Yuan
Identity-in-Difference: Re-generating Debate about Intergenerational
Relationships in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club 123
Bella Adams
Choosing Hope and Remaking Kinship: Amy Tan’s
The Joy Luck Club 139
Magali Cornier Michael
Chronology 173
Contributors 175
Bibliography 177
Acknowledgments 181
Index 183
Editor’s Note
My introduction briefly questions the permanent place in an American
canon of Amy Tan’s indubitably charming The Joy Luck Club.
All ten essayists would disagree with my doubts. Canonical disputes can
be resolved only by time.
Mother-daughter relationships are the inevitable topic for all the essay-
ists, including those who extend their view to The Kitchen God’s Wife. It would
be absurd of me to express a preference between one of Amy Tan’s admirers
and another, as they are compelled to center on her one dominant theme.
That there should be a certain sameness in their comments may or may not
indicate a limitation in Tan’s vision.
vii
HAROLD BLOOM
Introduction
I
n an accomplished essay, Myra Jehlen sees Amy Tan, against all odds,
returning to Whitman’s stance and singing a latter-day Song of Myself. That
implicitly is high praise and, if justified, might give The Joy Luck Club an
aesthetic dignity beyond the popular success it continues to enjoy. Will it be
a permanent part of the revised canon of an American literature “opened up”
by consideration of gender and ethnicity, or will it prove only another period
piece, in which we currently abound?
Amy Tan is a skilled storyteller and a remarkable personality. Jehlen
charmingly says: “Amy Tan has read her Emerson, and she doesn’t believe
him. This is not surprising, as he probably would have doubted her.” I would
murmur that it all depends upon which Emerson Tan has read, as there are so
many. Having met and admired Tan, I would recommend The Conduct of Life,
which is consonant with her rugged but amiable stance toward reality.
Jehlen eloquently concludes by stating both Tan’s relation to Whitman
and the significant differences:
Jing-Mei becomes herself finally when, like Whitman, she can
be the writer of the Body and the writer of the Soul, can sing
both others and herself. If she is Whitman’s critic as well as his
descendant, it is because America has lost its innocence in the
matter of individualism. Moreover, the duplicities of the notion of
the universal self have been revealed in our time especially by the
protestations of people of Amy Tan’s kind: women and non-whites.
It is not surprising that Jing-Mei’s claim be not as universal as
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