Structure

In presenting the stories of four Chinese immigrant women and their American-born daughters in The Joy Luck Club, Tan uses "cradling," a for mal literary device that can be thought of as telling a story within a story, or nesting. In other words, Tan embeds the daughters' stories within the mothers' narratives. The Joy Luck Club is divided into four main segments that contain sixteen stories. The first and last sections tell eight stories-two for each mother-while the middle two sections each tell a story for each of the four daughters. The entire novel revolves primarily around the stories of Suyuan Woo and her daughter, Jing-Mei ("June"). Jing-Mei takes her mother's place in the Joy Luck Club, a club her mother created when she was in China and that she continued for her Chinese friends in America Jing-Mei learns from her "aunties," the women who are members of...