I heard this book "The Joy Luck Club" since I was in my sophermore year. I still could clearly remember Gina introduced this book to us in our English class and proundly mentioned that she had met the author Amy Tan in Berkerly. After so many years, I finally got the book and with Nead Nead’s encouragement, I made up my mind to devote my spare time in reading instead of depressing.
The first chapter just brought me to tears. It’s about the origin of joy luck club, about people’s good wishes and seize for hope during war time. One sentense really touches me is "… men, women, and children who had never lost hope, but had lost their lives instead." However, in the modern society especiallly under this economic conditions, most of us had never lost our lives, but had lost our hopes. Were we foolish? Should we feel ashame in front of those unlucky people in the war time? When I reflect myself, I always ask where I began to lose my faith, lose my hope. "Along the way (escape from Japanese’s slaughter), I saw others had done the same, gradually given up hope. It was like a pathway inlaid with treasures that grew in value along the way… silver urns lying in the road, where people had been too tired to carry them for any kind of future hope…" Do we also do the exact same thing even in a non-war time? Do we also gradually give up a lot of good qualities of human natures: kindness, sincerety, trust, happiness, … along our life paths, since the reality kept on stealing away our faith and our hope?
