About this Event
In our Expand-the-Canon book club hosted by bookseller Valerie Hsu, we read and discuss works that are considered classics today, but might be excluded from standard curricula or reading lists because of subject matter, personal identities of their authors, societal reactions at publication, etc. In other words, we read influential texts that you could have read in a high school English class but probably didn’t because of racism, sexism, patriarchy, homophobia, colonialism, eurocentrism, etc. etc. in how our educational systems operate.
If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “I’m embarrassed I’ve never read ____” or “Why didn't anyone tell me about ___?” or “I was too young to appreciate ___ and I’d like to re-read it as an adult,” we’re here to help you out. Fill in your reading gaps with these classics you might have missed, and come discuss with us on the first Tuesdays each month.
This month, we’ll meet on Tuesday, January 12* to discuss The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.
Please note that this month, the meeting will occur on the second Tuesday of the month.
About The Joy Luck Club:
Amy Tan’s modern classic that examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters
In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to play mah jong, remember the past, and gossip into the night. United in unspeakable loss and new hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club.
With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the memories that display these women’s strength, worries, and determination. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of the matriarchal ties that they believe have stymied their ability to face the uncertainties of the future.
Intimate and moving, The Joy Luck Club shows us how the inheritance of pain and unspoken secrets can lead to misunderstanding—and yet how love can still offer the promise of reconciliation.
The Joy Luck Club is available for purchase here!
Event venue & nearby stays
Greedy Reads Remington, 320 West 29th Street, Baltimore, United States
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.