KITCHEN GODS WIFE

Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. 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 their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.

Résumé : Née en Californie, de parents chinois, élevée à l'américaine mais héritière des traditions familiales, Amy Tan tente, à travers ses héroïnes, de réconcilier les deux visages de son identité. Olivia, née d'un père chinois, est américaine; sa demi-s?ur, Kwan, est chinoise. L'une, hantée par des angoisses qu'elle ne comprend pas, ne jure que par la logique; l'autre, un modèle d'équilibre, possède des "yeux in", discute familièrement avec les morts, apprivoise les fantômes. D'un village chinois du XIXe siècle au coeur d'une mégapole américaine, le parcours d'une héroïne qui découvre qu'en rejetant l'héritage du passé elle a renié la moitié d'elle-même.