In her Auntie An-mei’s home, Jing-Mei reluctantly takes her seat at the eastern corner  of the mahjong table. At the north, south, and west  corners are her aunties, long-time members of the Joy Luck Club. This group of immigrant families  comes together weekly to trade gossip, feast on wonton and sweet chaswei,  and play mahjong. However, the club’s founder, Jing-Mei’s  mother Suyuan, has recently passed away. At first, Jing-Mei struggles  to fill her place at the table. But when her aunties reveal a deeply  buried secret about Suyuan’s life, Jing-Mei realizes she still has a lot  to learn about her mother, and herself. In Amy Tan’s 1989 debut novel,  "The Joy Luck Club," this gathering at the mahjong table  is the point of departure for a series of interconnected vignettes. The book itself is loosely structured  to imitate the format of the Chinese game. Just as mahjong is played over four  rounds with at least four hands each, the book is divided into four parts,  each with four chapters. Alternately set in China  or San Francisco, each chapter narrates a single  story from one of the four matriarchs of the Joy Luck Club  or their American-born daughters. These stories take the reader through  war zones and villages of rural China,  and into modern marriages and tense gatherings  around the dinner table. They touch upon themes of survival  and loss, love and the lack of it, ambitions and their unsatisfied reality. In one, Auntie Lin plots an escape  from the hostile family of her promised husband, ultimately leading  to her arrival in America. In another, the Hsu family’s all-American  day at the beach turns dire when Rose is overwhelmed by the  responsibility her mother assigns to her. The resulting tragedy traumatizes  the family for years to come. These tales illustrate the common  divides that can form between generations and cultures,  especially in immigrant families. The mothers have all experienced great  hardships during their lives in China, and they’ve worked tirelessly  to give their children better opportunities in America. But their daughters feel weighed down  by their parent’s unfulfilled hopes and high expectations. Jing-Mei feels this pressure as she plays  mahjong with her mother’s friends. She worries, “In me, they see  their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths  and hopes they have brought to America.” Time and again, the mothers strive to remind their  daughters of their history and heritage. Meanwhile, their daughters  struggle to reconcile their mothers’ perception of them  with who they really are. "Does my daughter know me?"  some of the stories ask. "Why doesn’t my mother understand?"  others respond. In her interrogation of these questions, Tan speaks to anxieties  that plague many immigrants, who often feel both alienated  from their homeland and disconnected  from their adopted country. But by weaving the tales of these  four mothers and daughters together, Tan makes it clear that Jing-Mei and her peers find strength to tackle  their present-day problems through the values their mothers  passed on to them. When "The Joy Luck Club"  was first published, Tan expected minimal success. But against her predictions,  the book was a massive critical and commercial achievement. Today, these characters  still captivate readers worldwide. Not only for the way they speak  to Chinese American and immigrant experiences, but also for uncovering a deeper truth: the need to be seen and understood  by the ones you love.