The Best We Could Do - Love and Pain Through Generations
One of the most influential books in my life is The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. I’m sure most of you know it, but for those that don’t it’s a multi generational story of Chinese Immigrants and their first generation American children, now grown to adults. It’s told through the perspective of our 4 main characters and their respective mothers weaving from childhood to adulthood and everywhere in-between showing the pain, love, miscommunication, and yearning for connection that can get lost between cultures. I related to it deeply as generations of Black Americans can also vary so widely between years it can feel like the children are from different countries than their parents or grandparents. So much unspoken trauma, death, pain from being marginalized and having a system built against you, but yet not having the tools or words to communicate so you do…The Best You Can. For all the wounds it may leave behind, but also all the love it gives a...
