Books like Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

This book is so powerful with such a bittersweet ending—it really caught me off guard. The colorful imagery is constant throughout, but isn’t too much. It tells the coming-of-age story of first-generation Americans with their traditional Chinese mothers, stereotypical, superstitious, driven. They push away their daughters by their constant criticism fueled by fear. I understand the daughters’ eye rolling, neglecting visits and avoiding phone calls, but gradually as flashback sequences unfold the trauma of their mothers’ horror-filled childhood with shamed concubine mothers, and young adulthoods of starving in war-revenged japan, I understood the lessons the mothers’ tried pounding into their daughters’ heads were survival tactics disguised as Chinese etiquette. The mothers remain the same, but my love and understanding for these hardcore and caring, heartbroken mothers grows through the novel. ❤️❤️ They are such complex characters. This story really was told so beautifully.