"In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, gather 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. . . . Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, memories that reveal these women's strength, worries, and determination, which their American-born daughters reject as irrelevant. The daughters, in turn, recall pivotal moments...

Lily is moving into her grandmother's farm in Iowa, and she is sad about all the changes necessary in her life--but on the long drive her grandmother challenges her to find ten beautiful things that they can share together.