In San Francisco, California, a young writer named June has recently lost her mother Suyuan and will soon leave for China to meet her long lost half-sisters. Suyuan’s close friends, Lindo, Ying Ying and An Mei, and their daughters, Waverly, Lena and Rose, gather at a farewell party for her, and the older women invite June into the dining room to take her mother’s place in their mahjong group, the Joy Luck Club. June notices a piano in the corner of the room, sparking a childhood memory. As a nine-year-old, June is not interested in the piano, despite Suyuan’s encouragement. At June’s first recital, her mother watches expectantly with Lindo and Lindo’s daughter Waverly. Each mother brags about her daughter’s talents, but when June begins to play poorly, Suyuan frowns in disappointment. Afterward, June refuses to practice and argues with her mother, saying she wishes she were dead like the children her mother left behind in China. Sometime in the past, a young Suyuan flees to Chongqing during World War II, pushing her two babies in a cart until she reaches exhaustion. Back in San Francisco, shortly after Suyuan’s death, June learns that her mother’s friends have located Suyuan’s abandoned daughters, who are twins, and have arranged for June to meet them in China. As she gives June the news, Lindo remembers her own mother, who arranged Lindo’s marriage when she was only four. At age fourteen, Lindo was married to Tyan Yu and forced to live with his family, including his cruel mother, Huang Tai Tai. Though Tyan Yu is even younger than Lindo, Mrs. Huang is eager for a grandchild and blames Lindo for not getting pregnant immediately. After being repeatedly mistreated by her mother-in-law, Lindo escapes the arranged marriage. In the present, Waverly recalls her own childhood as she and Lindo visit a salon in preparation for Waverly’s second marriage. Sometime in the past, Lindo embarrasses young Waverly as she boasts to everyone in the neighborhood that her daughter is a chess prodigy, prompting Waverly to run away. When she returns home hours later, Waverly announces that she will no longer play chess. Lindo reacts coolly, causing Waverly to lose confidence when she finally resumes the game. Continuing to seek her mother’s approval as an adult, Waverly first marries an Asian American, but after the marriage fails, she begins dating Rich, who is white. At his first dinner with Waverly’s parents, Rich makes several cultural gaffes, and Lindo disapproves of him. Back at the hair salon before Waverly’s wedding to Rich, she and her mother reconcile their differences as Waverly tells Lindo that she only wishes to please her and has never been ashamed of her. Sometime after, at June’s farewell party, Rich still cannot use chopsticks but has been accepted by Waverly’s family nonetheless. Meanwhile, Ying Ying and An Mei discuss Suyuan, and Ying Ying reflects on her own unhappy past. At sixteen years of age, Ying Ying falls in love with a charismatic man, Lin Xiao, and they marry. Lin becomes abusive after the birth of their son and has public affairs with other women. After Lin strikes Ying Ying in front of one of his mistresses, Ying Ying allows their baby to drown in revenge. Years later, after immigrating to San Francisco, Ying Ying suffers from depression and blames herself for her daughter Lena’s lack of spirit. Lena meets and marries Harold, a stingy man who insists on splitting the check on their first date and continues to demand that all expenses are split after marriage. When Ying Ying visits her daughter’s new house, she advises Lena to reevaluate the marriage. At June’s farewell party, Lena has taken her mother’s advice and found a new, more loving partner. As the night goes on, June puts Rose’s daughter, Jennifer, to bed, telling a story Suyuan used to tell about a mother who moves to America with big dreams for her daughter symbolized by a goose feather. An Mei, Rose’s mother and Jennifer’s grandmother, recalls the time her father died and her mother became a concubine to a rich man named Wu Tsing, leaving An Mei to grow up in her grandparents’ home. Back in China, young An Mei watches her mother pay her last respects to An Mei’s dying grandmother and decides to leave with her mother when she returns to Wu Tsing’s house. Again in the present, An Mei worries about her daughter Rose’s marriage to Ted, who comes from a wealthy, upper class family. Rose remembers falling in love with Ted at college, and later meeting his parents who disapprove of her Chinese ethnicity. After Ted fiercely defends Rose, she agrees to marry him and later demonstrates her love by sacrificing professional opportunities to support Ted’s career. Frustrated by Rose’s increasingly passive behavior, Ted becomes unfaithful and the couple decides to divorce. An Mei has a heartfelt discussion with Rose, recounting her own mother’s story to convince Rose to assert herself. Many years ago in China, after moving to her mother’s new home with Wu Tsing, An Mei discovers that, years ago, Wu Tsing’s second wife intially brought An Mei to meet him so that he could rape and impregnate her. An Mei’s grandparents rejected her mother after she became pregnant, which forced her to return to the home of her attacker. Even worse, the second wife claimed the resulting son as her own. An Mei’s mother commits suicide, and at her funeral, An Mei demands better treatment from her stepfamily. In the present-day, the story helps Rose regain confidence and repair her marriage with Ted. At the farewell party, June recalls the last Chinese New Year’s Celebration, when old wounds reopen because June feels inferior to Waverly, who has fired her from a freelance writing project. After Suyuan praises Waverly’s good style, she reassures June in another room that she prefers June’s compassion for others over Waverly’s “style.” As the farewell party ends, June thanks Lindo, Ying Ying, and An Mei for being like second mothers. After the others have gone, Lindo reveals to June that her half-sisters in China do not know their mother is dead and are expecting Suyuan, not June, to meet them. Later, June’s father gives her keepsakes for her sisters, retelling Suyuan’s history and explaining that Suyuan left her babies in China because she was very sick and believed she would die, and thought no one would take her babies and care for them if they were found by her dead body. June’s father gives her a goose feather that Suyuan brought from China, and June realizes that the story her mother told about the feather was true. In Shanghai, June meets her half-sisters and informs them that Suyuan is dead, and the estranged siblings enjoy a tearful reunion.