The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan Summary Study Guide

Lucia starts a pub with her good friend Golden Dove and after that they start a whorehouse. Lucia bones guys from time to time and raises Violet in the whorehouse. When Fairweather tricks her into getting onto a boat to San Francisco without Violet, Lucia goes to the Captain and demands to be let off in a lifeboat. The Captain, seeing how upset Lucia is, agrees to let her go but first offers her some soothing tea. Lucia drinks the soothing tea and then wakes up two days later when they are far at sea, heh heh heh.

Later, Lucia got the false message that Violet had been killed, planted by Fairweather so she would not return to look for Violet. Her good friend Golden Dove participated in this disinformation scheme, for reasons that make no sense.

Back in the present, Violet asks Loyalty Fang for a job. She realizes she is too old to be a whore and asks for a job working on the business side of his company Fang gives her a job and also bones her, because when a whore is free she is never too old. They grow close, fight when Violet gets jealous of the other women he bones, grow close again, fight again, and so on until they eventually get married.

Violet writes a letter to her mother in San Francisco telling her that she is not dead. Her mother is glad to hear it. They become close by writing letters to each other.  Her mother tracks down Flora and moves close to Flora to keep an eye on her for the next decade.

And here's where things make no sense again. For many years Violet knows exactly where Flora is, but makes no attempt to go and claim her, simply reading reports written by Lucia about her. This makes no sense.

Loyalty says that he wants Violet to outlive him so he will always have her around while he is alive. But Violet says this is selfish of him and Loyalty realizes his mistake and instead wishes for Violet to die first, heh heh heh. I think this is the funniest line of the book.

Loyalty has problems urinating. He says his p_nis is constipated. Heh heh heh. This may be the second funniest line of the book.

Loyalty has dick cancer.  While he gets real treatment from a Western doctor, Violet sticks needles into him and rearranges the furniture in his room to cure him using Chinese methods. He gets better so maybe moving the sofa a few inches to the left really helped, heh heh heh.

Eventually, Lucia and Violet reveal themselves to Flora. Flora had found out that Minerva was not her real mother and reached out to find Violet. When they meet Flora tells Violet that she, too, was a messed up slut. Flora got herself impregnated, but she didn't know who the father was because she had boned so many boys.

Her mother gave her pills and an injection for "the nausea", and before long Flora had a bloody half baked baby mess coming out of her twat, heh heh. They gave her an abortion without telling her.

Flora ran away, went crazy, was locked in an insane asylum, and was given mind control pills to make her into a retard. Then she got better.

Finally, three generations of crazy sluttish whores--Lucia, Violet, and Flora, get together for a group hug.

The end.

Literary Criticism:

This book is called "The Valley of Amazement" after a dumb painting that Lu copied from someone else. It has very little meaning to the main story. A more appropriate title might have been "Three Generations of Whores in China", but that doesn't sound as sophisticated as "The Valley of Amazement", and yet it was three generations of whores that the story was about (technically, Flora was not a whore, but she was clearly a leg spreading slut who boned so many guys that she had no idea who the father of her child was.)

There were funny lines and situations in this book I really liked. I liked how Violet thought adjusting the furniture could cure Loyalty's p_nis cancer and how Loyalty thought he had "p_nis constipation". I liked how Magic Gourd hired a homosexual to teach Violet about sex with men, and how she compared sex to riding a pony, and how she was made to masturbate with a metal polishing device as part of her whore-training.

But I didn't enjoy the overall story about child prostitution, and especially how eager the main characters seem to fall into it. While they seemed eager for sex they gave up remarkably quickly when it came to trying to rescue their children (Violet and Flora). They acted stupidly, giving up their money and children in situations where no reasonable person would. They were unsympathetic characters because of their dumbness and their sluttiness.

And the ending was a disappointment. Three generations of sluts finally met and told their stories. Somehow it lacked drama and impact, mostly because there was no conflict. Violet finally met her daughter, and found out she too was a slut. Why is that such a great ending?

Great stories are born in conflict. A story of three generations of women who eagerly spread their legs doesn't have much of it, which is why this was not such a great story.