Henrickson is an instructor of English at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Illinois. In the following essay, the critic examines the popularity of The Joy Luck Club and explores how Tan uses various narrative techniques to demonstrate the mother-daughter differences and tensions in the novel.

Published in 1989, Amy Tan's first novel, The Joy Luck Club, remained nine months on the New York Times best-seller list. The book was considered a sensation and its success has not yet been duplicated by any other work of Asian American literature. The film adaptation of The Joy Luck Club, directed by Chinese American director Wayne Wang, was enthusiastically received as well. Though highly lauded, even Tan's later works The Kitchen God's Wife (1991), The Moon Lady (1992)-a children's story based on an episode from The Joy Luck Club, and most recently, The Hundred Secret Senses (1995), have not matched the legendary stature of...