My sister and I were sitting and waiting. We were finally going to meet our baby sister. What if she did not like us? What if we did not like her?…
The story of “Peanut’s Fortune” is told by Peanut’s sister, who is involved within the plot but remains unnamed throughout her narration. Throughout the short story, Amy Tan writes in first person, allowing Peanut’s sister to personally retell the story to her daughter.…
* Leah and her mother Joan are on a plane to China in search of the origins of a mysterious half a coin that was sent to Joan from her father.…
Amy Tan has a contentious relationship with her mother perceived from her hostile tone. All mother-daughter relationships have troubles. In excerpts from Amy Chua’s memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, and Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club, mother-daughter relationships can be seen through diction, and tone. The annoyed tone in the situation between Amy Chua and her daughter shows a caring relationship while the hostile and hateful tone in Amy Tan’s excerpt shows a poor relationship with a hateful past.…
Her stepmother struck her hard in the face, her father whipped her multiple times, and her siblings blamed her for their mother’s death. Just wonder she felt, Adeline Yen Mah, with her horrid family, separation from her only loved ones; her aunt and single grandfather, and her genius mind that only her beloved Aunt Baba treasured. As it seems, this depressing novel, Chinese Cinderella, by Adeline Yen Mah, the one who lived through it all, was the most unfortunate girl in all of eastern China.…
Each girl eventually recognizes how the older generation played a significant part in shaping their identities causing them to embrace their Chinese heritage. The short stories focus on the first American mothers and their American Chinese daughters.…
taking her to China so quickly after her father's death. However, as the two travel…
Times are changing different cultures; they come and go but are going back to their old cultures. Since the beginning of time humans always have a key feature in their nature that help them evolve, become smatter, and acquire their rights; also, one of the biggest features that is changing throughout time is will. Will is the desire or drive to do something, so a strong willed person is someone with a powerful will. Through time, humans of all races and cultures have used will in a good way. For example, when Martin Luther King was locked in jail after protesting for the treatment of blacks, he still kept his will strong, even after everything he had gone through. When will is used in a good way, it can have a huge impact…
As its complex structure suggests, the book tries to organize the the stories of mother and daughter with the intention of reaching the same destination: the daughter's recovery of her cultural and ethnic identity as Chinese by overcoming the generational gap and the cultural differences between herself and her mother. The mother intend to hand over their "good intentions" and "usable past" in China to their daughter in America. Amy Tan, depicts the relationship between Jing-mei, a young Chinese-American girl, and her mother, a Chinese immigrant, her mother. She does not have something special things. However, her normal life has changed a little because of her mother.…
A young Chinese American woman, Jing-Mei “June” Woo, recalls, after her mother's death, her mother's sadness at having left her twin baby girls in China in 1949. June has used her mother's regret as a weapon in a battle of wills focusing on what her mother wants her to be and what she wants. June wins, leaving her mother, Suyuan, stunned when she says she wishes she were dead like the twins. Although this scene characterizes the common struggle for power between mother and daughter, the story also illustrates…
The point of view focuses on the grandmother. The story begins by talking about her background. It is arranged in chronological order. First, the narrator¡¦s granddaughter is introduced and then her family background. The narrator describes herself as ¡§fierce¡¨. Everyone is afraid of her. Her daughter is somewhat like her mom at least she is also ¡§fierce¡¨ because she is a bank vice president, but her granddaughter is wild, not like her daughter or herself. In the grandmother¡¦s opinion, if her granddaughter Sophie does not act like other Chinese girls, she is wild. In other words, the narrator seems to think people coming from a different culture are weird. After that, the narrator talked about her son-in-law. She thought she did not understand him because he could neither find a job nor look after Sophie. Grandmother said,¡¨Plain boiled food, plain boiled thinking. Even his name is plain boiled: John¡¨ (206). At this point, she somewhat despised her son-in-law, John. He is a white person who can speak English. There is no way he can not find a job. Besides, the grandmother always felt the culture gap. ¡§In China, we talk about whether we have difficulty or no difficulty. We talk about whether life is bitter or not bitter. In America, all day long, people talk about creative¡¨ (208). She did not understand why the ex-babysitter let Sophie get naked and run around. Creativity did not mean anything to her. There was no such a word in Chinese. In addition, she told her daughter ¡§We do…
Furthermore, as she comes to the realization of her connection to Chinese culture. The use of irony “but today I realize what it means to be Chinese. I am 36 years old. My mother is dead and I am on a train… I am going to China” exhibits her attempts to rekindle her ties with her culture. There is a sense of isolation evident as her mother was her last correlation to her heritage and in order…
In Amy Tan's "Two Kinds", there was quite a bit of mother daughter conflict. The mother and daughter had very different views on what the daughter's destiny should be like and that led to many disagreements.…
In the short story "A Pair of Tickets," by judging from the title one might think that this is a simple story more about adventure than anything else. In “A Pair of Tickets” The author Amy Tan uses a symbols to help us understand the theme the story. Family and Culture are the most important topic in this story therefore; it gives us a better understanding of the story. As stated in the context of the story “Jing-mei is on a train to China, traveling with her seventy-two-year-old father, Canning Woo. As the train enters Shenzhen, China, Jing-mei begins to "feel Chinese." Their first stop will be Guangzhou. After her mother's death, a letter arrived from China from her mother's twin daughters from her first marriage. These were the two children whom she was forced to abandon on the side of the road On the hand, the internal conflict that the narrator faced while find her true identity is what helps to present the main theme of this story is ultimately love, the sacrifices that people make for love.…
Suyuan had to make the hard decision to leave her twin babies on the side of the road in hopes some kind stranger would take them in, that way she would not have to see them die. Suyuan searches for her babies all through her life in America, sending multitudes of letters; they finally get in touch with her two months after she has died. Because her mother is not alive to meet her children, Jing Mei takes her place and the trip enables her to finally recognize her Chinese ancestry. The minute she enters China she "feels different" and can realize that she is "becoming Chinese" (306). At fifteen Jing Mei believed she was only as Chinese as her "Caucasian friends" (306). Yet her mother counters thoughts, telling her: "Once you are born Chinese, you cannot help but feel and think Chinese" (306). Once in China Jing Mei decides her mother was right and she "has never really known what it meant to be Chinese" (307). She has never understood her mother or her heritage. This trip is the connecting link to understanding her life. She begins to feel natural in China, thinking to herself on the train: "I am in China It feels right" (312). Jing Mei sees the landscape, the people, the histories, and the families in China and sees where her mother was speaking from all of those years. She knows a "little percent" of her mother know (15). It becomes "obvious" to Jing Mei to see what "part of [her] is Chinese"; it is "in her family, in her blood"…
