SOURCE: "Your Mother is in Your Bones," in Belles Lettres, Vol. 4, No. 4, Summer, 1989, p. 12.

In the following review, Cheng praises Tan's The Joy Luck Club for its accessibility and vision.

With clarity of voice and lucidity of vision, Amy Tan's delightful first novel, The Joy Luck Club, reveals to us that for all life's contradictions and tragedies, the true path of existence is convergence.

This is a hard faith to hold when modern life seems so cacophonous, so divisive. But it is key for immigrants to this country who must try to adjust to the new world without being swallowed up by it, who must raise children whose first impulse is to reject their cultural heritage. The frustration is especially deep for those immigrants cut off from their homeland, as were the Chinese who fled from the extremist politics and social upheaval of postwar China.

Tan's book revolves...