The Joy Luck Club
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50 free The Joy Luck Club trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club follows four immigrant mothers and their daughters, and two of its stories are often read on their own: "Two Kinds", about a girl pushed toward greatness at the piano, and "A Pair of Tickets", about the journey that closes the novel. This quiz starts with those two stories: the lessons, the recital and the quarrel that follows in "Two Kinds", then the trip to China, the family names and the reunion in "A Pair of Tickets". It goes on to the rest of the novel, from the mothers' early lives in China to the daughters' marriages and careers, with a few questions on the author and the 1993 film. It is written for students revising either story for class, for reading groups working through the novel, and for anyone who wants to see how much of the plot has stayed with them. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, which tile game do the four immigrant mothers meet to play?
Mahjong
Mahjong also shapes the book itself, which is arranged like a game in four parts of four stories each.
Q 02In Amy Tan's "Two Kinds", which child star's films do Jing-mei and her mother study as a model?
Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple is the first template, and Jing-mei is even sent for a hairstyle meant to copy the star's blond curls.
Q 03In Amy Tan's "Two Kinds", which TV program's young Chinese pianist inspires Jing-mei's mother?
The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ed Sullivan Show sets the plan in motion. Within three days of the broadcast, Jing-mei's mother has arranged lessons for her.
Q 04In Amy Tan's "Two Kinds", why does Jing-mei's elderly piano teacher never notice her wrong notes?
He is deaf
He is deaf, and his eyes are too slow to catch the wrong notes she plays. Jing-mei learns she can keep the rhythm and get away with her mistakes.
Q 05In "A Pair of Tickets", which American meal do Jing-mei's relatives in China order at their hotel?
Hamburgers and fries
Hamburgers and fries, with apple pie à la mode, are what the family wants, just as Jing-mei is longing for her first real Chinese feast.
Q 06In Amy Tan's "A Pair of Tickets", which gadget does Jing-mei use to win over her young cousin Lili?
A Polaroid camera
A Polaroid camera charms Lili with instant pictures. It returns in the final scene, when the reunited family watches one last snapshot develop.
Q 07In The Joy Luck Club, at which game is Waverly Jong a national champion by her ninth birthday?
Chess
Chess entered the Jong home by chance. Waverly's brother Vincent was given a set at a Christmas party, and she took to it at once.
Q 08In The Joy Luck Club, what do Lindo Jong and An-mei Hsu make at the factory where they both work?
Fortune cookies
Fortune cookies also help Lindo's courtship: she uses one of the paper slips to plant the idea of marriage in her boyfriend's head.
Q 09Which actress, later the voice of Disney's Mulan, plays Jing-mei in the 1993 film The Joy Luck Club?
Ming-Na Wen
Ming-Na Wen later played another Jing-Mei, Dr. Jing-Mei Chen, on the medical drama ER.
Q 10In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, in which American city do the four immigrant families settle?
San Francisco
San Francisco is where the women first met in 1949, and the film version was shot on location there before the crew moved on to China.
Q 11In Amy Tan's "Two Kinds", what does Jing-mei's mother trade a retired teacher for piano lessons?
Housecleaning
Housecleaning buys her weekly lessons and daily practice on the teacher's own piano. Her parents later save enough for a secondhand one to stand in the living room.
Q 12In Amy Tan's "Two Kinds", at what kind of event does Jing-mei's piano playing fall apart in public?
A talent show
A talent show is the setting for her debut, and all the Joy Luck Club families turn up to watch it go wrong.
Q 13In Amy Tan's "Two Kinds", which piece does the adult Jing-mei find printed beside "Pleading Child"?
Perfectly Contented
Q 21In "A Pair of Tickets", which Chinese city is the first stop, where Jing-mei's relatives greet her?
Guangzhou
Guangzhou comes first, and the grandeur of the hotel there dismays Jing-mei, who had asked her travel agent for something cheap.
Q 22In "A Pair of Tickets", what does Jing-mei's father say her mother's name, Suyuan, can mean?
Long-Cherished Wish
Long-Cherished Wish is one reading. Written with different characters, he adds, the same name means Long-Held Grudge.
Q 23In "A Pair of Tickets", who is tending the sick on the truck where Suyuan wakes after collapsing?
American missionaries
Perfectly Contented sits on the facing page, and Jing-mei realises the two short pieces belong together, which is how she comes to see her own childhood.
Q 14Which publication first printed Amy Tan's "Two Kinds", a month before The Joy Luck Club came out?
The Atlantic
The Atlantic carried the story in its February 1989 issue, so magazine readers met Jing-mei and her piano lessons before the book reached the shops.
Q 15Which section of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club ends with the story "Two Kinds"?
The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates
The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates covers the daughters' childhoods and is named after a Chinese book of dangers that a mother cites in its opening parable.
Q 16In Amy Tan's "Two Kinds", where does Jing-mei's mother find the mental tests she gives her daughter?
In magazines
In magazines such as Good Housekeeping and Reader's Digest she reads about amazing children, then tests Jing-mei on the same feats, with little success.
Q 17In Amy Tan's "Two Kinds", what does Jing-mei's mother believe her daughter can become in America?
A prodigy
A prodigy is the goal, though the field keeps changing: first acting, then mental tests, and finally the piano.
Q 18In Amy Tan's "Two Kinds", who alone cheers with enthusiasm after Jing-mei's disastrous recital?
Old Chong
Old Chong, her teacher, beams and cheers on his own while the audience claps weakly and her mother's face is stricken.
Q 19In Amy Tan's "Two Kinds", which kind of daughter does Jing-mei's mother say may live in her house?
Obedient
Obedient daughters are one of the title's two kinds; the other kind think for themselves, and that is the side Jing-mei picks.
Q 20In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, which English name does Jing-mei Woo commonly go by?
June
June is the name most people use for her, and she is the one asked to take her late mother's seat at the club's table.
American missionaries carry her on to Chungking, where she learns that her first husband is already dead.
Q 24In "A Pair of Tickets", what does Suyuan hide under her baby daughters' shirts before leaving them?
Jewelry and money
Jewelry and money go under the shirts, along with family photographs and a note, in the hope that whoever finds the girls will care for them.
Q 25In "A Pair of Tickets", who finds Suyuan's abandoned babies and raises them as their own?
A peasant couple
A peasant couple take the girls in, seeing a pair of babies as a sign of double good luck, and bring them up as family.
Q 26In "A Pair of Tickets", where does a former schoolmate of Suyuan spot her lost daughters?
A department store
A department store in Shanghai is where the schoolmate recognises the two women by chance, but the sighting comes only after Suyuan has died.
Q 27In The Joy Luck Club, in what kind of place in Chungking does Suyuan meet Jing-mei's father?
A hospital
A hospital is where the two meet, after Suyuan arrives sick and exhausted from the road. They leave for America together in 1949.
Q 28In "A Pair of Tickets", how are Jing-mei and her father travelling when they cross into China?
By train
By train they roll into Shenzhen, and it is at that border crossing that Jing-mei first senses she is becoming Chinese.
Q 29In The Joy Luck Club, in which wartime Chinese city does Suyuan start the very first club?
Kweilin
Kweilin was crowded with refugees when Suyuan gathered three friends for weekly games and small feasts, a way to keep their spirits up.
Q 30In the opening parable of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, which bird does a woman carry toward America?
A swan
A swan bought in a Shanghai market is taken from her by immigration officials, leaving a single feather to pass on to her daughter.