I.B. A-2 English Name:_____________________

The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan

Unit Test—Practice

You will write commentaries on the selections below from The Joy Luck Club.

The questions below are for your consideration:

Ø Can you set the selection into its context in the plot?

Ø Can you tell how the selection describes something important to character development?

Ø Can you tell how the selection illuminates some aspect of theme(s) for the selection?

Ø Can you tell how the selection illuminates some aspect of theme(s) for the entire book?

Ø Can you comment on some aspect(s) of the use of language and literary devices?

Selection A:

I saw my mother on the other side of the room. Quiet and sad. She was cooking a soup, pouring herbs and medicines into the steaming pot. And then I saw her pull up her sleeve and pull out a sharp knife. She put this knife on the softest part of her arm. I tried to close my eyes, but could not.

And then my mother cut a piece of meat from her arm. Tears poured from her face and blood spilled to the floor.

My mother took her flesh and put in in the soup. She cooked magic in the ancient tradition to try to cure her mother this one last time. She opened Popo’s mouth, already too tight from trying to keep her spirit in. She fed this soup, but that night Popo flew away with her illness.

Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.

This is how a daughter honors her mother. It is shou so deep it is in your bones. The pain of the flesh is nothing. The pain you must forget. Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother before her. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh.

Selection B:

By the time he arrived, the late-afternoon fog had already blown in. I had the divorce papers in the pocket of my windbreaker. Ted was shivering in his sports jacket as he surveyed the damage to the garden.

“What a mess,” I heard him mutter to himself, trying to shake his pant leg loose of a blackberry vine that had meandered onto the walkway. And I knew he was calculating how long it would take to get the place back into order.

“I like it this way,” I said, patting the tops of overgrown carrots, their orange heads pushing through the earth as if about to be born. And then I saw the weeds: Some had sprouted in and out of the cracks of the patio. Others had anchored on the side of the house. And even more had found refuge under loose shingles and were on their way to climbing up the roof. No way to pull them out once they’ve buried themselves in the masonry; you’d end up pulling the whole building down.

Ted was picking up plums from the ground and tossing them over the fence into the neighbor’s yard. “Where are the papers?” he finally said.

I handed them to him and he stuffed them in the inside pocket of his jacket. He faced me and I saw his eyes, the look I had once mistaken for kindness and protection. “You don’t have to move out right away,” he said. “I know you’ll want at least a month to find a place.”

“I’ve already found a place,” I said quickly, because right then I knew where I was going to live. His eyebrows raised in surprise and he smiled—for the briefest moment—until I said, “Here.”

Selection C:

I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect from others, and eventually, though neither of us knew it at the time, chess games.

“Bite back your tongue,” scolded my mother when I cried loudly, yanking her hand toward the store that sold bags of salted plums. At home, she said, “Wise guy, he not go against wind. In Chinese we say, Come from South, blow with wind—poom!—North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen.”

The next week I bit back my tongue as we entered the store with the forbidden candies. When my mother finished her shopping, she quietly plucked a small bag of plums from the rack and put it on the counter with the rest of the items.