The Joy Luck Club is split into fours. There are four sections and four chapters in each section, and each set of four represents the four seats at a mahjong table. Just like each seat belongs to each player, each chapter belongs to a specific character. In the first section of the book, June is asked by her father to be the fourth seat at her mother's friends’ mahjong table, replacing her mother who has passed away. Surrounded by these women who knew her mother so well, June is reminded of the stories her mother used to tell her. She retells her mother’s story of how she came to her home in China, and how she had to leave it, and her two daughters, to live a better life in America. Then, pushed back into the present, June learns that her
