The Joy Luck Club

The Joy Luck Club was formed by four women in San Francisco: Lindo Jong, Ying-Ying St. Clair, An-Mei Hsu, and Suyuan Woo. The members have mainly played mahjong and told each other stories over the years. They emigrated from China, remarried, and gave birth in America. Suyuan's daughter, June, replaced her when Suyuan died four months before the time the film is set. The mothers have high hopes for their daughters' successes, who struggle through "anxieties, feelings of inadequacy, and failures." They bond through understanding each other and overcoming their conflicts.
The film's present-day setting is June's farewell surprise party in San Francisco for her upcoming reunion with long-lost twin sisters in China. Among the guests are the Joy Luck Club, their daughters, relatives, and friends. The characters narrate their journeys while they reflect on their pasts.

Lindo and Waverly Jong

In China, four-year-old Lindo, born to a lower-class family, is betrothed to Tyan Yu, son of the wealthy Huang family. She moves into their household at age fifteen while her family migrates elsewhere. Her husband is young and immature, and Lindo spends the next four years in a sexless, loveless marriage, earning the ire of her mother-in-law for not bearing a son.
Lindo witnesses a servant being abandoned by her lover after she reveals to him that she is pregnant with his child. Plotting to leave the marriage without dishonor, Lindo feigns a nightmare where Tyan Yu's ancestor expresses displeasure toward the marriage. She claims the ancestor has impregnated the servant with Tyan Yu's child, and that the matchmaker who arranged the marriage intentionally paired Lindo and Tyan Yu for money. Furious, Mrs. Huang orders the matchmakers out, allows the servant to marry Tyan Yu, and gets her desired grandson. Lindo leaves and moves to Shanghai.
Years later in America, Lindo has a new husband, a son, and a daughter, Waverly. At six, Waverly develops an interest in chess and becomes a champion. Annoyed by Lindo constantly boasting about Waverly's accomplishments, Waverly quits chess. Later, she tries to play again, but finds her confidence lost and retires.
Now an adult, Waverly has a daughter from her Chinese ex-husband and is engaged to a white man, Rich, to Lindo's chagrin. Waverly brings Rich to a family dinner in hopes that Lindo will like him, but he improperly uses chopsticks and inadvertently insults Lindo's cooking, humiliating Waverly.
Some time later, Lindo and Waverly go to a hair salon in preparation for Waverly's upcoming wedding. At the salon, Lindo is offended her daughter would be embarrassed by her and becomes reluctant to attend the wedding. She tells her about a time with her own mother. When Waverly asks whether Lindo likes Rich, Lindo admits that she likes Rich very much and gives Waverly and Rich her blessings, leading Waverly and her to reconcile. Back at June's farewell party, Rich almost successfully uses chopsticks (but accidentally drops a piece) and impresses Lindo by trying to respect Chinese table manners.

Ying-Ying and Lena St. Clair

In China, Ying-Ying St. Clair is married to Lin-Xiao, who is handsome and charming but turns out to be abusive and unfaithful. Overwhelmed with depression, Ying-Ying dissociates and drowns their baby son in the bathtub, which haunts her. Years later, she immigrates to America and suffers from bouts of depression from the trauma, while worrying her daughter Lena will also suffer.
After Ying-Ying finally resolves her years of trauma, Lena shows her around the new apartment she shares with her husband Harold, who is also Lena's boss. Ying-Ying learns that Lena is uncomfortable with her financial arrangements with Harold. The couple split the costs of their life evenly with a list of things that they share, but Harold dominates the arrangements and ignores most of Lena's needs.
Seeing Lena's unhappiness with her marriage, Ying-Ying reasserts herself by knocking over a table in the bedroom, causing a vase to fall from the table and break. Hearing the noise, Lena goes to her mother where she admits her unhappiness. Ying-Ying tells her she should leave until Harold gives her what she wants. Shifting to the present, Lena is seen in a fulfilling relationship with a new fiancé.

An-Mei and Rose Hsu

Nine-year-old An-Mei Hsu is raised by her relatives. She is reunited with her mother, who was disowned by her family for becoming the fourth wife of a wealthy man—Wu-Tsing—shortly after her husband's death, and has returned to the household to care for her dying mother. Not wanting to be separated again, An-Mei moves with her mother to Wu-Tsing's house against her relatives' wishes.
Later in America, An-Mei's daughter, Rose, meets her future husband, Ted Jordan, in college. Ted is initially attracted to Rose's assertive, forthright nature. She marries him after he confronts his snobbish mother for making racist comments towards her. Throughout their marriage, Rose and Ted grow apart, mainly because Rose, desperate to fit in with Ted's associates, becomes submissive and demure at the cost of her own identity and interests. To complicate matters, Rose suspects that Ted is cheating, which he asserts is not the reason for their problems.
Some time later, An-Mei visits and relays the story of her own mother's fate to Rose. When An-Mei arrives at Wu-Tsing's house, the second wife gives An-Mei a pearl necklace as a gift. Dismayed that her daughter has been so easily won over, An-Mei's mother breaks the necklace, revealing it to be made of glass.
An-Mei learns the truth about how her mother became a fourth wife: while her mother was at the temple mourning her husband, the second wife befriended her, enticing her to meet Wu-Tsing, who later raped and impregnated her. The relatives did not believe she was raped and kicked her out of the house. Nowhere else to go, she reluctantly agreed to be Wu-Tsing's fourth wife. She gave birth to An-Mei's half brother, whom the second wife since has claimed as her own.
Telling An-Mei the truth about her situation, she commits suicide by eating dumplings laced with opium, choosing the day carefully to threaten Wu-Tsing with the vengeance of her angry ghost. In fear, he vows to honor An-Mei's mother as the first wife and promises to raise An-Mei and her half-brother accordingly. When the second wife tries to pay respects to An-Mei's late mother, An-Mei screams at her and destroys her necklace.
In the present, An-Mei encourages Rose to stand up to Ted. To avoid the fate of her grandmother, Rose reclaims her strength and confronts Ted, telling him to leave the house and her daughter. She tells him she was wrong to consider her love as less worthy than his, compelling Ted to stop taking her for granted. At the party, they are seen together kissing and sharing a slice of cake.

Suyuan and June Woo

During the Japanese invasion of China in World War II, Suyuan Woo escapes with her twin baby daughters, but becomes ill and her cart breaks down. Near death, she leaves them along with all her other possessions, including a photo of herself, as she is worried if she dies next to them it might hurt their chance of being rescued. Suyuan survives, but is haunted by guilt over the loss of her daughters and not knowing their fates.
After remarrying in America, Suyuan has high hopes for her new daughter, June, who falls short of her mother's expectations, in one case blundering a piano performance. A year before Suyuan's passing, June, now an adult, freelances for her rival Waverly. At a dinner party, Waverly rejects June's business proposals for not matching her style. Suyuan, exemplifying the differences between June and Waverly, says that style is something one cannot be taught but must be born with. June infers that her mother believes Waverly has style while she does not and is humiliated, believing her mother sees herself as a failure.
Later that evening, June berates Suyuan for her remarks and laments that Suyuan has always been disappointed in June because of her mediocre academic performance, lack of a serious relationship, and her less-than-successful job. Suyuan gives her a necklace that she has worn since June's birth, telling her it will guide her heart as it has done hers. Suyuan assures June she is the one with unteachable style, admitting while Waverly was better in competition, June had the best heart—the reason Suyuan is so proud to have June as her daughter.
On Easter before her farewell party, June receives news from the club that her twin sisters are alive. She cannot understand the twins' letter written in Chinese; Lindo purposely mistranslates the letter, claiming the twins are aware of Suyuan's death and the existence of their half sister June. In the present, after the party, Lindo confesses she wrote letters under Suyuan's name. June begs Lindo to tell them the truth, but Lindo tells her it is too late as the twin sisters are anticipating their mother, still believing that Suyuan is alive, and that June must be the one to inform them of their mother's death. When she arrives in China to meet them, June reveals the truth. The sisters finally embrace.