Reading Notes W15: Joy Luck Club, Part B

An-Mei Hsu Magpies

"'Do you see how shameful my life is?'" she cried.  "Do you see how I have no position?'" He brought home a new wife, low-class girl, dark-skinned, no manners! Bought her for a few dollars from a poor village family that makes mud-brick tiles. And at night when he can no longer use her, he comes to me, smelling of her mud'"(Tan, 229).

She was crying now, rambling like a crazy woman: "'You can see now, a fourth wife is less than a fifth wife. An-Mei, you must not forget. I was a first wife, yi tai, the wife of a scholar.Your mother was not always Fourth Wife, Sz Tai!'"

And I remembered Popo once telling me four is a very unlucky number because if you say it in an angry way, it always comes out wrong(Tan, 229).

The Cold dew came. It became chilly, and Second Wife and Third Wife, their children and servants returned to Tientsin. There was a big commotion when they arrived. Wu Tsing had allowed the new motor car to be sent to the railway station, but of course that was not enough to carry them all back  (Tan, 229).

"'This is Third Wife and her three daughters,'" said my mother. Those three girls were even more shy than I. They crowded around their mother with bowed heads and did not speak. But I continued to stare. They were as plain as their mother, with big teeth, thick lips, and eyebrows as bushy as a caterpillar. Third Wife welcomed me warmly and allowed me to carry one of her packages.

He wore a cap made out of the same dark fur and was winding his little finger around Second Wife's long pearl necklace.

And then Second Wife walked toward me, smiling, her fur coat gleaming with every step...And then with a swift, graceful movement of her small hands, she removed her long pearly strand and put it around my neck(Tan, 230).







 Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Penguin Books, 2014, pp. 197-288.