The protagonist of this story, Jing-mei is a strong-willed Chinese-American woman, capable of opposing the traditional upbringing her parents have planned for her. Jing-mei grew up in an apartment in Chinatown, San Francisco with her Chinese immigrant mother and father surrounded by other Chinese immigrant families both in the Joy Luck mahjong club and in the Baptist Church community. While she did not grow up affluent, her family found ways to give her the tools they believed she would need to succeed.

Narrating from her current perspective in her mid-thirties, Jing-mei has clear memories of her childhood and recalls the emotional tension between herself and her mother from decades past. She believes herself to be ordinary and has become so, in her mind: she did not attend Stanford and was a college drop out. She traces this series of disappointments to an incident as a child that resulted in her refusal to continue studying the piano. When she sits at the piano and is able to easily recall the music, it suggests that Suyuan wasn’t that far off in her confidence concerning her daughter’s abilities.