The Joy Luck Club Flashcards
Jing-Mei “June” Woo
The narrator whoopens the novel. She introduces The Joy Luck Club of San Francisco. Although Jing-Mei is good-natured and large-hearted, she lacks ambition and is content to be a copywriter in a small advertising firm. She ends up in China, meeting her long lost half-sisters and fulfilling her mother’s dying wish.
Rose Hsu Jordan
Another daughter of the Joy Luck Club and the wife of Ted, a physician. Because Rose is timid and accepting, she is often taken for granted. When Ted asks Rose for a divorce, her mother inspires her to stand up for herself. As a result, she refuses to let Ted walk all over her and take away her home.
Waverly Jong
Another daughter of the Joy Luck Club. As a child, she was a prodigy at chess. As an adult, she is a successful tax-consultant and an ambitious, selfish, and strong-willed woman. She has a daughter, Shoshana, and is about to marry her second husband, Rich Shields. Waverly has confused ideas about her mother and her Chinese heritage; she is also afraid of her mother’s disapproval.
Lena St. Clair
Another daughter of the Joy Luck Club and the wife of a successful American businessman, Harold Livotny. He exploits her, refusing to share his wealth with her. Although she is a talented interior decorator, she suffers from her unhappy marriage, is anorexic, and feels she leads a hollow existence.
Suyuan Woo
Jing-Mei’s mother and the founder of the Joy Luck Club. As she tires to survive war-worn China, she abandons her twin infant daughters, hoping their lives will be spared. After she marries Canning Woo and comes to America, she desperately tries to locate her daughters in China. At the opening of the novel, Suyuan has died, and Jing-Mei carries out her mother’s goal in life -to find the twins.
An-Mei Hsu
Rose’s mother and a member of The Joy Luck Club. An-Mei witnessed the sufferings of her own mother, who killed herself in an effort to insure her daughter’s freedom. At a young age, An-Mei managed to escape to America, where she married and had seven children. She considers herself to be an independent and strong woman.
Lindo Jong
Waverly’s mother and a member of The Joy Luck Club. As a young girl in China, Lindo was married off to an impotent husband. She manages to escape her husband and his mother and come to America, where she marries Tin Jong and has three children.
Ying-ying St. Clair
Lena’s mother and a member of The Joy Luck Club. Unlike her friends who came out of poverty in China, she hails from a wealthy Chinese family. When she was a young woman, she married and became pregnant. When her husband abandoned her, she aborted the baby. She later married an American named Clifford St. Clair, whom she grew to love.
Canning Woo
Suyuan’s second husband and Jing-Mei’s father. He asks his daughter to take the place of his wife in The Joy Luck Club and later accompanies her to Shanghai to meet his wife’s lost twin daughters.
Clifford St. Clair
Ying-ying’s husband and Lena’s father. He is a good-hearted man who loves his wife but does little to boost her morale.
Tin Jong
A Cantonese man who woos and marries Lindo while she works in a fortune cookie factory. An unassuming man, he remains in the shadow of his wife and daughter.
Wu Tsing
A wealthy, insensitive old merchant who rapes An-Mei’s mother and forces her to become his fourth wife.
Popo
An-Mei’s grandmother. She disowns her daughter for becoming Wu Tsing’s concubine, not realizing her daughter had no choice. Popo acts as the guardian to An-Mei until her mother takes her away.
Arnold
An unattractive boy in the neighborhood. Lena is terrified she will one day have to marry him. When he dies from the measles, Lena feels responsible for hisdeath and develops an eating disorder.
Ted Jordan
A medical student who marries Rose and then leaves her.
Harold Livotny
An architect who establishes his career with the support of his wife. He refuses to acknowledge her contribution, however, and obtusely insists on dividing their household bills down the middle. His wife comes to resent their mechanical life and tells him she is unhappy.
Rich Shields
A successful tax-accountant in a reputed firm. He loves and becomes engaged to Waverly Jong. He accepts her child, but makes many well-intentioned mistakes trying to impress her family.
Second Wife
Second Wife was Wu Tsing’sfirst concubine. She is deceptive and manipulative. She banks on her husband’s fear of ghosts by faking suicides so that he will give her what she wants, and she trapped An-mei’s mother into marrying Wu Tsing so as to fulfill his wish for heirs without losing her authority.
Shoshana Chen
Shoshana is Waverly’s four-year-old daughter. Waverly’s unconditional love for Shoshana teaches her about maternal devotion.
Mr. Chong
Mr. Chong is Jing-mei’spiano teacher. Mrs. Woo trades housecleaning services for Jing-mei’s piano lessons from Mr. Chong, an elderly piano teacher, who is deaf and whose eyes are too weak to tell when Jing-mei is playing the wrong notes. After being pushed by her mother to become a prodigy, she develops a rebellious attitude toward her mother.
jade
a gemstone that ranges in color from dark green to almost white.
chi
in Chinese spiritual terms, the energy of life, which can be harnessed and put to good use.
concubine
in certain societies that allow the practice of having more than one spouse at a time, a secondary wife, usually of inferior legal and social status
kowtow
to kneel and touch the forehead tothe ground in expression of deep respect, worship, or submission
li
a Chinese measure of distance measuring about one-third of a mile
mah jong
a game of Chinese origin in which tiles, resembling dominoes and bearing various designs, are drawn and discarded until one player wins with a hand of four combinations of three tiles each and a pair of matching tiles
dowry
money brought by a woman to her husband at marriage.
rickshaw
a small two wheeled carriage drawn by one or two persons
yin and yang
the passive female and active masculine cosmic principles in Chinese dualistic philosophy
nenkgan
The power that one can doanything to which one sets one’s mind.
