Joy luck club who is baba

Fortunately, this is where a scaffolding of good writing comes in handy. At this point in my life I'm less enamored of books with multiple narrators, and to be perfectly honest I had a little trouble keeping everyone straight, which I don't think was a problem the first time I read this. But the simple, lively writing, the humor, the great characters, the perfect level of detail—not too much or too little—was all just as I remembered, and the ending moved me to tears exactly as I'm sure it did the first time around.

Back when The Joy Luck Club was a publishing sensation, I don't think we could've guessed it would be around forever, but except for one character getting a perm, this novel doesn't seem the least bit dated. If you've never read this before, what are you waiting for? And if you have, feel free to dive in again without reservation. Apr 13, Navessa rated it it was amazing Shelves: fiction. I picked up a pristine first edition of this at a local rummage sale last year and had the foresight to put in on top of my dresser, which serves as a sort of physical TBR reminding me of all the books I should read before going on another one-click binge on Amazon.

So many of my friends are turning to fluffy rom-coms to see them through the pandemic, and I get that. Rom-coms are escapism at its finest. And now, The Joy Luck Club. There IS a lot of joy in this book. This book centers on four Chinese women and their daughters. The mothers are immigrants, the children born in the US. This was released in but is still so relevant today.

I Googled this book after finishing it and was surprised to see there was so much backlash against it. People painted Amy Tan as being racist against her own culture and of denigrating Asian men because they were negatively portrayed in this book. Some of the male Asian characters were incredibly kind, strong, and steadfast.

As a side note, white men were equally shitty, if not more so, and a lot of the women were just as problematic as the men. In short, they read like real people. This book is loosely biographical.

The Joy Luck Club had a huge burden to bear. It was an incredibly popular book about Asian Americans at a time when there was very little representation. The same goes for the movie. Which put the onus of representing an entire people on ONE person.

And more importantly, one woman of color. Even today women of color are expected to go above and beyond and be absolutely perfect in every single way to get a seat at the table. Yes, we are making headway, and yes, a larger percentage of the population understands that WoC are just as fallible and varied and complex and flawed as everyone else, but there is still so.

Is it any wonder that back in Amy Tan was made a pariah? As I write this, Asian and Asian American representation is increasing. In the Young Adult fiction category especially, not to mention blockbuster movies like Crazy Rich Asians. Is this book flawless? Are there some legit criticisms to be made against it? You betcha. The same can be said for all books. I am not in any way shape or form saying that people are not allowed to criticize this.

View all 9 comments. Ok, I admit it, I was obsessed with Amy Tan my first year of college. As a freshmen, at Linfield College, I was astonished that Amy Tan could have possibly walked the same hallowed halls of Melrose, perhaps sat in the same offices in the English department, or read a book in Northrup's astro-turf room. My daydreams were filled with her coming over to my dorm room to have tea and "talk literature. In reality, I spent a lot of time looking her up in the old yearbooks at the library, Oak Leaves circa and I think.

Horribly despicable. I did learn some of her secrets. I learned that she never graduated from Linfield, which pretty much means nothing Lou DeMattei. I was going to call Amy Tan, and speak with her myself. Thankfully, for my sanity, I quit before that happened. Amy began to dissolve as an enigma for me, she was just another celebrity, another writer of a book. The book was beautifully written and for obvious reasons made me homesick. It made me feel closer to my mother than ever, and I knew that, like the women in the book, I would have a special bond with her forever.

The sad thing is, after I finished the book, my love affair a la John Hinckley Jr. I rest my case. We were meant to be with each other. View all 5 comments. I love this book! As a first generation child in this country my parents immigrated from Vietnam , I could really relate to the girls in the story.

I was the girl who played piano, always being forced to practice. Although I loved music and was a talented pianist, I quit because I couldn't deal with the pressure anymore.

It wasn't for my enjoyment, it was to please my parents or at least that's what it seemed like. I think we all have ways of dealing with the pressures of childhood. A differe I love this book! A difference this book made for me was actually reading about Asian [American] people. I like how she incorporates the old and the new. Obviously the girls' stories could not be told without knowing those of the mothers.

I think Amy Tan is fabulous at painting the picture of everything involved in the Asian-Asian American immigrant-first generation experience: differences in culture, assimilating to the new country, passing down the old traditions, the rollercoaster of emotions all family members go through in a different way.

I have read Joy Luck Club many times. I think I want to read it again just after writing this review; it's that good. Jul 22, Duane rated it really liked it Shelves: book-challenge , audio-books , rated-books , reviewed-books. Amy Tan's very successful first novel was a national best-seller, a finalist for the National Book Award, and was made into a movie. The mothers quietly hold on to their past, their culture, and it's traditions, while adapting to their American life.

They try to pass the essence of what is most important about their old culture on to their daughters, who, being born in Am Amy Tan's very successful first novel was a national best-seller, a finalist for the National Book Award, and was made into a movie.

They try to pass the essence of what is most important about their old culture on to their daughters, who, being born in America, are only interrested in American culture and lifestyles. They scoff at their mothers for acting too Chinese. All eight characters, four mothers, four daughters, have a narrative in the story. It's a compelling story of mothers and daughters, the power of maternal love, and youth's struggle to establish independence, to find their own way.

Mothers may be harder on their daughters than on their sons because they have already made the mistakes, and they know the pitfalls that await their daughters. What was most enjoyable for me in the novel was the stories of the mothers, their past lives in China, from little girrls to adulthood, before they came to America.

It's the story of their struggles with their own mothers, and how the impact of culture, traditions, and World War II shaped their lives. I struggled somewhat with the structure of the novel. You have eight different narratives spread over four families, two countries, and a half century.

Tying that all together, along with the secondary characters, was daunting at times. I read the book and listened to the audiobook at the same time. The accents and intonations of the narrator was a big plus. View all 10 comments. Mar 25, Brad rated it it was ok Shelves: beyond-my-ken , asian-american-canadian-lit , popular-culture. I gave The Joy Luck Club two stars, but that ranking is based solely on my personal enjoyment of the novel.

I feel, quite honestly, that I do not have any business judging the quality of Amy Tan 's most famous work. I love dark and violent American literature.

I love speculative fiction. I love Shakespeare. I love Keats and Byron and Blake. I love the Lost Generation. I almost forgot Big Trouble in Little China. There are countless removes between me and those beautiful ladies doing their "tiger-mom" bit between games of Mah-Jong and good eats. I appreciated the window into an experience that I wouldn't otherwise have in my world; I sympathized with their stories and struggles; I pulled for their happiness and that of their daughters; I kept reading dutifully.

But I never really felt myself understanding any of these women despite my desire to do so. My two stars are my failure rather than Tan 's. She did her job well. It just wasn't my pot of green tea. I wish it were. View all 17 comments. Aug 09, Paul E.

The Joy Luck Club is a great book. It tells the stories of four women who were born in China but were forced to leave due to various tragic circumstances, and their four daughters who were all born in America. The novel explores the cultural divide between the two generations of women and explores how national identity influences people's lives. The daughters are all, to some degree, frustrated by their mothers' inability to shake off their anachronistic Chinese superstitious behavior as their d The Joy Luck Club is a great book.

The daughters are all, to some degree, frustrated by their mothers' inability to shake off their anachronistic Chinese superstitious behavior as their daughters think of it and seeming reluctance to embrace the culture of their new home.

The mothers despair at the willingness of their daughters to distance themselves from their heritage. Amy Tan writes all eight characters' viewpoints sympathetically and I never felt like I was being told which viewpoint was the 'correct' one. As with most things in life, it all comes down to the fact that there are pros and cons to any way of life, which is one of the reasons this life can be so hard to navigate.

The structure of this book is very clever, although it might go completely over your head if you're not at least passingly familiar with mahjong. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the game, the structure of mahjong is that four players have to play four hands of tiles each. The novel mimics this by having four larger sections, each divided into four smaller parts. Superficially, the book reads like a collection of interconnected short stories, rather than a cohesive novel, but the author interweaves these stories so adeptly that it all comes together by the end of the book I found this book to be deeply moving and I even had tears in my eyes at one point.

This was my first Amy Tan novel but I will definitely be reading more of her work in future. She switches between different voices and accents fluidly and seemingly effortlessly View 2 comments. Apr 09, Micah Cummins rated it really liked it. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan is the story four Chinese immigrant families living in San Fransisco who start a club playing Mahjong and feasting on their favorite meals.

Throughout these meetings, four mothers, four daughters, and four families stories are interwoven. The mothers and daughters are shown in contrast through most of the plot. The mothers want their daughters to be more Chinese, while the daughters wish their mothers would be more interested in their American lives, and their new wa The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan is the story four Chinese immigrant families living in San Fransisco who start a club playing Mahjong and feasting on their favorite meals.

The mothers want their daughters to be more Chinese, while the daughters wish their mothers would be more interested in their American lives, and their new ways of living, which are often in conflict with the old ways their mothers know.

All in all, I really enjoyed The Joy Luck Club I was moved by many of the stories, and felt attached to many characters by the end. Four stars. Amy Tan's 'The Joy Luck Club' is a monumental novel about the epic love of Mothers and Daughters so everyday common that all societies ignore the miracle and beauty of it. These mothers and daughters are connected by their genes, but they are separated by their culture and life experiences despite living under the same roof for decades - however, all are very very very fortunate with the joy and luck of each one growing up loving each other.

To me, this seems to be almost a Great Book, but wit Amy Tan's 'The Joy Luck Club' is a monumental novel about the epic love of Mothers and Daughters so everyday common that all societies ignore the miracle and beauty of it.

To me, this seems to be almost a Great Book, but with much more relationship and family comedy represented and without the width of life present in Great Books the effects of war were strikingly missing or compressed, as were the more terrible dramas of abuse or starvation.

The narrow view of the story focusing on 'female' aspects of life, as well as, perhaps, the genre styling, declare this is a Woman's Great Book. Thankfully, it was short-listed by many literary organizations. The one thing I did not enjoy myself about this novel was its structure. Four Chinese women immigrate to America after tough lives of proscribed emotions and lack of personal fulfillment.

Three of them marry Chinese-Americans, one marries an American. All of them have American-born children. Each of them has a daughter who never learns the Chinese language beyond a few expressions and nothing of Chinese culture except odd mystifying stories of admonishment and instruction from their mothers.

The Chinese mothers are born and then married to their first husbands in China, for the most part in arranged marriages. But they end up eventually in America with second husbands, except for one mother who has only one marriage. Their daughters are born in America and they grow away from their mothers for a time.

The daughters do not understand very much about their Chinese culture or their mothers, even though they observe and obey to a limited degree what their mothers wanted. However, once the daughters marry, sometimes twice, they grow close to their mothers. What I noticed was the Chinese mothers keep learning, changing and growing, too, along with their daughters, but these changes by the mothers were often completely overlooked by the daughters until much later.

The progression of their relationships actually sounds like a universal one to me! The barriers of generational differences were definitely higher between post-war women from China and late 20th-century American women, especially because of cultural expectations and duties.

Language affects how the brain works as well. Some readers thought Tan treated the mothers disrespectfully because she exposes the syncopated and peculiar, at least to the American mind as well as to these Chinese-American daughters, Chinese wisdom tales and country folk-quotes common to Chinese villages in the past.

I think, to me as an American, these Chinese sayings and stories are very weird and opaque, but I bet one of the fault-lines of perception is built-in due to the differing constructions and pronouncing of words and sentences between English and Chinese whether Mandarin or Cantonese. Besides, it is obvious to me these instances of comical miscommunication and fractured understandings in conversations between mother and daughter are not only based on reality, they are one of the bricks which support the loving relationship of daughters for their mothers.

Many men, and I guess some women, do not understand love can be deepened by a daughter's feeling that her mother is a cute, even if spiky, supportive darling whose cultural oddities will be recalled with deep affection long after the parent is gone.

The concept of 'Face' and its connection to respect of elders is pure idiocy to me, especially when 'respect' is considered more important than affection. I do NOT think respect is more important than affection! I suspect some of the other reader complaints is based on a perceived lack of respect because of the American author's reveal of the American daughters' reactions to seeing cuteness and comedy in the oddities of the mothers teaching moments in translated vernacular.

I saw my hearing cousins have giggly moments with translation peculiarities with their deaf parents; and I also saw their affection and underlying mutual, sometimes belated, recognition of comedic goings on in unintentional operatic emotional gestures of misunderstandings in their flying hands. There is a lot of universal human depths of love and support between mothers and daughters hidden in these pages, although the focus is on Chinese social mores.

However, I could also see that American cultural mores had eroded away parts of the Chinese social prism of the mothers. I did pick up how much more painful it was for a Chinese mother to love a Chinese daughter in China in the past. These mothers had such a harsh life compared to their American daughters, and the girls never knew until almost too late.

This novel, as do many other novels and histories, demonstrates how terrible and torturous to women patriarchy is in the China chapters. Modern America has many problems, but at least it does not any longer culturally encourage mothers to kill off their love for daughters because girls are considered almost worthless commodities only men have the right to dispose of as if their daughters were ugly couches.

I loved this book! So much joy and luck, indeed! View all 3 comments. It amazes me that The Joy Luck Club is almost 25 years old, yet I'm not sure why as it seems as though I've known about it for most of my life. It's just one of those books everyone seems to have heard of. Why I put off reading it for so long I can't say. Though this book didn't quite live up to my expectations, I'm glad I read it. I think the main problem was that the book felt like it needed to be longer. There were eight central characters, four mothers and their four daughters, and with the c It amazes me that The Joy Luck Club is almost 25 years old, yet I'm not sure why as it seems as though I've known about it for most of my life.

There were eight central characters, four mothers and their four daughters, and with the chapters being somewhat short and the book being under pages, there was not a lot of time for Tan to completely develop her characters.

In fact, several of them merged into one uber-tragic-Chinese-female character in my brain, especially the mothers. It was hard to distinguish them and their back stories from each other. I preferred the daughter chapters. The "Americanized" daughters and their Caucasian boyfriends and husbands and ex-husbands and their westernized failures and miseries and competitiveness.

Their messy divorces and careers and therapists. They're not quite American and not quite Chinese. Tan captured the tension and misunderstandings between the mothers and daughters well. Being a daughter of immigrants myself, I found myself smiling and smirking quite often at this in-between world that only us first generationers can truly understand. May 09, Celeste Ng added it. So many books about Chinese culture flaunt their Chineseness, usually at the expense of other things that make a book good, like memorable characters and careful writing.

The book as a whole is a collection of interlinked short stories, and it mostly works. Sure, some of the stories "Two Kinds" have been anthologiz I'm generally very wary of books about The Chinese-American Experience, because--well, names like Spring Lotus and Moon Blossom drive me nuts. Sure, some of the stories "Two Kinds" have been anthologized to death, that's what we associate the book with.

But Tan's writing, especially in the other stories that have been overlooked, is powerful, and the storylines and and characters are complex. As usual, there is no acknowledgement of the book as a feminist work, so I'm going to begin by hailing it as such in all its woman-oriented glory.

Aside from the fact that men are merely accessory to all of the narrative strands, and that the majority of conversations are between women and girls, Tan positively critiques patriarchal trope 4.

Aside from the fact that men are merely accessory to all of the narrative strands, and that the majority of conversations are between women and girls, Tan positively critiques patriarchal tropes throughout by revealing the constrictions on women's lives imposed structurally through their chattel position as wives and mothers, through their socialisation by older women, and through the domineering behaviour of men. Very overt features of gendered hierarchies which tend to hide in plain sight are kept in view, and Tan writes very cleverly to reveal more subtle aspects, making them evident in countless interactions, punctuating these little revelations with pauses for contemplation.

Below the surface swim slow thoughts lightly veiled: Even the old ladies had put on their best clothes to celebrate: Mama's aunt, Baba's mother and her cousin, and Great-uncle's fat wife, who still plucked her forehead bald and always walked as if she were crossing a slippery stream, two tiny steps and a scared look This is surely an intimation, from a child's perspective, that the woman has bound feet.

The treatment of An-Mei's mother, who has become a concubine to a rich man after being widowed, illuminates some of the distinctive features of pre-communist Chinese heteropatriarchy. My favourite mother-as-girl story is Lindo Jong's. Trapped in a marriage that places her in servitude to an exacting and heartless mother-in-law, she nonetheless uses great ingenuity. The moment when she recognises her impressive inner resources is striking; few girls can rely on such self-confidence and awareness, but even so armed, her empowerment is very limited, so the story throws light on the real plight of girls like her.

I was even more fascinated though, by the ways that Chinese cultural values and traditions played out in her scheming. This happened throughout the book; modes of modesty, influencing of feelings and events, showing love, all revealed ways of knowing and being rooted in different soils and waters and fed by different suns from those that have nourished me. Miscommunication, misunderstanding, is inevitable in the meeting of USian directness and the more subtle, artful Chinese manner of expression, heedful of hidden feelings deduced through the fine filaments of perceptive empathy only a combination of shared culture, affinity and thoughtfulness can forge.

Careful reading reveals that supposed 'directness' leaves many things sadly incommunicable. Much humour is made at the mothers' expense: One day, as she struggled to weave a hard-toothed comb through my disobedient hair, I had a sly thought. I asked her 'Ma, what is Chinese torture? A bobby pin was wedged between her lips.

She wetted her palm and smoothed the hair above my ear, then pushed the pin in so that it nicked sharply against my scalp. I shrugged my shoulders and said 'Some boy in my class said Chinese people do Chinese torture. Not lazy like American people. We do torture. Best torture. I had the feeling that I must be careful not to generalise beyond time, place and particularity, to find myself thinking 'I know this about Chinese mothers, because I read it in The Joy Luck Club'.

Another difficulty I had was with disturbing aspects of anti-Blackness and homophobia which I wanted to chase up, but which had to be let drop, presumably for the next generation, the grandaughters, to decolonise. I enjoyed, on the other hand, the wry laughs minted from the thoughtlessness self centredness of ignorant White men.

Degrees of integration vary, but all of the mothers are at some stage shocked by the extent of their daughters' assimilation into USian culture, while the daughters feel to some extent cut off from their Chinese heritage. If I wanted to extract a lesson, it would be: maintain your culture against Whiteness!

Whatever is in you or known to you that is not White, honour it, nourish it, tell it, create with it, share it, weave it into the new stories you live and make. It takes, surely, deep effort and much energy to resist the action of White supremacy, the hollowing out of living cultures into exotified fetishes, consumable and subsumed.

I recommend this book especially to those who like reading about food, as I do. Tan presents a culture relentlessly attentive to good eating, the comforts of the table, and the expression of love through cooking.

The demythologising fortune cookie story, brilliantly conceived, is, to me, this book in a nutshell. View all 8 comments. Aug 14, Vishakha rated it liked it Shelves: women , reviewed , china , historical-fiction , immigrants. Nearly 3 stars This is one of those reads I picked up from my bookshelf because it happened to be ensconced between books which seemed less appealing at the time.

Not that I was completely dissatisfied, I hoped to like it better. So I kept deferring putting together my thoughts in the hope that I might miss the characters or reminisce parts of the story after I bid farewell to the book. Sadly, distance didn't make the heart grow fonder. And this self-imposed separation might have faded the impres Nearly 3 stars This is one of those reads I picked up from my bookshelf because it happened to be ensconced between books which seemed less appealing at the time.

And this self-imposed separation might have faded the impressions that are fresh in the mind just after turning the last page. Characters The story revolves around four mother-daughter pairs and is structured as vignettes narrated in first-person. It sketches the characters through instances from their lives over the years -- the childhood and youth of the mothers in China before they moved to the US in the s, the growing up years of the Chinese-American daughters, and the complicated relationships between the adult daughters and their mothers.

A trip to China The mothers' backgrounds in their home country had some interesting, heartfelt stories of fortitudinous women fighting patriarchy, extricating themselves from dire situations and some rather fantastical parts with overload of intuitive powers and a generous sprinkling of superstition.

The position of women in China was, to put it mildly, not very enviable -- they were sometimes married off in childhood and sometimes had to vie to be the preferred concubine of a rich man to secure their financial position. Themes The most prominent theme is the tender and bittersweet relationship between mothers and daughters which Amy Tan has adeptly captured. The daughters, first-generation Americans, are torn between their dual identities -- an ongoing tussle between their Americanized ways and their Chinese heritage, representative of the quintessential immigrant experience.

There is a realistic exploration of friendship between women who come close in a foreign country and stay tied to each other by bonds of companionship, warmth, love, and a even a bit of jealousy.

On the flip side, I found the stories of the daughters somewhat cliched as the only solutions for their predicaments centered around accepting their mother's advices and tightly embracing their cultural heritage.

Amy Tan writes well. I found the prose rewarding and the historical perspective on Chinese society fascinating, but overall, this book hasn't enticed me to pick up her other works. If nothing else, this New York Times bestseller has made me look forward to reading more authors from China.

Yesterday, I came across this article by the author Manu Joseph where he explores the changing relationships between parents and children. For me, it resonated with what Amy Tan wrote. Here is the link. Jun 23, Jaclyn rated it really liked it. Mothers and daughters. Mothers and daughters and families losing and finding each other across cultural boundaries.

There's enough material there for Amy Tan to write a thousand books. Suyuan Woo has died and left an empty place at the mah-jongg table. There must always be four men and four women in the club, and Jing-Mei's father has chosen her to take his wife's place.

Through her mother's f Mothers and daughters. Through her mother's friends An-Mei, Lindo and Ying-Ying, Jing-Mei comes to learn about her mother's life story and secrets she never told. The three "aunties" who sit at the other corners of the mah-jongg table bemoan the breakdown in communication with their American-raised daughters, who seem to have all misplaced their Chinese identity.

Lena and Rose are lost souls in disintegrating marriages. Waverly does seem to want to reclaim some of her Chinese culture, but can't get over old anger and misunderstandings. Only Jing-mei is ultimately able to transcend the generational and cultural gap between the mothers and daughters. She sheds her American name, June, and becomes Jing-Mei at the beginning of the book when she is first invited to take her mother's place in the Joy Luck Club.

She is something of an ambassador between the younger American-born generation and her mother's friends. Still, she is unable to understand the message An-Mei, Lindo and Ying-Ying are trying to communicate to her, until she finally asks her father to tell her about her mother. When Jing-Mei's father tells her what her Chinese name means, she finally grasps her mother's history and legacy.

I was swept up in the language at times, but I never lost sight of the underlying story - four women struggling to leave their reluctant daughters their "life's importance. I thought I should read one of her books before I start watching the Netflix documentary about her. It's also about their families, especially about their American born daughter.

Despite its Chinese fragrance, there are many aspects that are shared with most immigrant stories. There's the intergenerational conflict, with an added layer of complexity - kids born to immigrant parents, living and absorbing the culture of the country they were born in, while having the influences of their parents' native countries, which for the most part, especially when young, they reject or disdain.

Without a doubt, the mother-daughter relationships were quite fascinating. Tan pinpointed brilliantly how little kids know about their parents and their history. The novel also made me realize how many people who have suffered greatly, somehow manage to keep on living, seemingly ordinary lives. Be careful when you read this book, you'll find yourself feeling peckish, given there's a lot of talk about food, delicious, fragrant complex food. Both protagonists get into perplexity, they lose directions of their lives.

At the end of two stories, Kreb finally realizes the epiphany and he determines to start his new life in a new town while Seymour decides to rescue himself from sorrow by ending his life with a gun. As a matter of fact, returning veterans are fragile, they are alienated from their families and have to bear the isolation.

The Kite Runner not only has an author whose life has travel the same places as the main character but also has events that take place in actual historic time.

This event is pretty major and is still creating problems for the US today. The use of this historical accuracy gives the book more meaning in that it gives a different perspective on the take over by the Taliban. Another relevant concept the text uses is the idea of the American dream. As he has journeyed throughout his life he has overcome many challenges and received and created great successes for himself and his deceased wife.

As of the passing of his late wife, Baba is shown as a person who sees the world in black and white. One secret that Baba has kept from Amir has defined his whole life, made him make decisions that maybe he would have not made if he knew everything. Not knowing that piece of information has shaped Amir into a person that neither he nor his dad are proud of.

In the book we see how a lot of the Characters are at fault. How the bad choices of one can affect another and another. One of the main roles in the book is leadership. Amir moved to America when he was around ten years old due to the conflict that broke out in his home country, Afghanistan. Although he was not born in America, he can still be considered a full fledged first generation American.

Living in Fremont, California with his father, Amir takes advantage of all that America has to offer him. This move to America is a lot difficult for his father since he had lived in Afghanistan his whole life and was widely known and praised throughout his community. Baba and end up in America, and are forced to create new lives for them both. The differences between the two nations is stark.

To begin, it should be quite obvious that their primary languages differ. Afghanistan is populated with Persian and Farsi speakers, while America is dominantly English. Although this adjustment does not seem incredibly difficult for Amir, the same cannot be said for Baba, and in response, prefers to speak his native language, Farsi. In the US, he is able to put the past behind him move on, first by finishing high school and entering college as an English major, and finally, he later becomes a successful writer.

As a whole, America serves a much different role to both Amir and Baba. For Baba, a place to mourn his. Baba did not particularly enjoy America, as he was no longer respected and in many regards, unable to adjust to US customs. However, he puts it behind him, in the hope that he will be able to create a new life for Amir.

Amir, on the other hand is much more successful. He becomes a successful writer, and marries a beautiful and intelligent woman named Soraya.