Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme that was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners. This meme is quite easy to follow – just randomly pick a book from your to-be-read list and give the reasons why you want to read it. It is that simple.

This week’s book:

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Blurb from Goodreads

Four mothers, four daughters, four families, whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who’s telling the stories. In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters’ futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have never heard these stories, think their mothers’ advice is irrelevant to their modern American lives – until their own inner crises reveal how much they’ve unknowingly inherited of their mothers’ pasts.

With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.

Why I Want To Read It

A new week has come. Happy Mondays everyone! I am hoping that everyone is at least having a great start to the week, the first Monday of the fourth month of the year. Just like that, we are already into the second quarter of 2021. I am also hoping and praying that everyone is safe from the virus. As the days pass by, the Manila heat is getting more intense. Summer is really in the air although we had some summer rain earlier today. Summer used to be my favorite season, despite the stifling heat. My autumn experience in South Korea changed my mind. Haha.

Anyway, it is time to go back to the purpose of this post. After immersing in African literature in March, I have decided to pivot towards Asian literature in April. As such, I will also be featuring works by Asian writers in my Goodreads Monday post. For this update, I am featuring Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. It has been nearly five years since I first read a work by Amy Tan, The Kitchen God’s Wife. Since then, I have been looking forward to reading more of her works, such as The Joy Luck Club.

From the blurb alone, there is so much I look forward to in The Joy Luck Club. What is reeling me in is the fact that it is about families and the Asian diaspora. Reading about the Asian American immigration narrative is doubly relevant in light of the recent hate that Asian Americans are receiving in the current USA climate. In reading The Joy Luck Club, I am hoping to understand more about this part of history whilst, at the same time, be warmed up by deep connections between mothers and daughters, and families in general. I just hope I get to have a copy of the book soon.

How about you fellow reader, what book do you want to read? I hope you can share it in the comment box. For now, happy reading! Have a great week ahead!

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