Scar, Red Candle, Moon Lady

It is hard for me to choose which of the three stories I enjoyed the most, because I thought all of them were great. In the first story, Scar, An-mei inevitably becomes punished for her mothers bad doings and disgracing the family. Her mother becomes a concubine in China and her children are taken away from her. When she comes back to visit, a pot of boiling hot soup falls over and severely burns An-mei’s neck during the heat of a family battle. Her mother proves herself to be a good person, however, when she came to visit her mother on her deathbed and sacrificed a piece of her own flesh in an attempt to save her mother. All three of these stories have to do with the role mothers’ play to their daughters and the role of women in general according to tradition. The three daughters in these stories do not hate their mothers for their seemingly terrible actions, rather they sympathize with them and realize the sacrifices they had to make for their children. The parable in the beginning of the book about the old woman traveling to America with her swan parallels itself almost perfectly with the underlying story. The woman in the story is like the mothers in the Joy Luck Club. They all started out in one way or another leaving behind everything they knew for something bigger and better. They all had to make large sacrifices along the way and lost many things that they loved. Now, all they wish for is for their daughters to listen and consider the many things they went through in order to provide their daughters with a better life.