The Joy Luck Club contains sixteen interlocking stories about Chinese immigrant mothers and their American born and raised daughters. The book opens with a parable about a woman with a duck that changes itself into a swan, and when she wants to take it with her to America, the immigration officials wouldn’t allow her on the boat with it. She took one feather off of the swan and carried it with her.
This feather is carried with her throughout her life and is given to her daughter in the end. The parable is followed by four sections which reveal a part of a story about a Chinese mother and her Americanized daughter. The women are bound together by their tales of struggles that they have suffered during the time in which they lived in China, their native homeland.