The Joy Luck Club

I finished reading this book for our speech and debate duo, and I thought it was a very good book. The whole story revolves around this idea of Asian parenting a Chinese-American child. The book contains many different vignettes about different children and how they are being treated by their mother and how they see things differently. One particular story that I liked was one that our skit was mainly on, and ironically, also read during English. It was called Two Kinds. This talked about a girl through her journey being born a Chinese-American. Jing-mei, talks about how she was expected to do so many things well as a child to reach her mothers expectations of  being a proud, modest, Chinese daughter. She began taking daily piano lessons from a teacher living in the same apartment. She then attended a piano talent show. There, she messed up pretty badly. It was thought that she brought shame to her mother. Thinking after she bombed her performance, she refused to play the piano again. After having a large fight with her mother, their relationship began to fall apart.
I thought throughout the book, the overall theme was that only those who work hard towards a goal, can become the person who they truly want to be. This is saying that with all the troubles you face through working, those troubles will be the key point in your success.
Jing-mei, the main character, had many characteristics. I believe that her best characteristic is that she can stand up for herself. She wants her mother to understand that she can't be the perfect daughter she wants her to be, so she fights for her reasoning. This I admire because I do not have the will to go against my parents when they want me to do something that I have no intention of doing. Jing-mei's worst characteristic is probably that she still does not put much effort into what she is doing. When playing the piano, she never corrected herself when playing the notes wrong. She dawdled during practices a lot and this is something that I do not like of Jing-mei. Overall, I give this book a 7.5 out of ten. This book does not have a lot of action, but it does contain important morals and has a very dramatic mood to it. If you like more serious, yet having humorous aspects of it, I would recommend this book. Sometimes, I found parts to be just dull and hard to understand because they are transferring between characters a lot.