The Chinese and American cultures clash in this particular novel. The Chinese culture is represented as a high- context culture. A high-text culture is one in which people can understand without saying or revealing too much information. In such cultures people are expected to behave appropriately and respect others. Also, people in high-context cultures set the bar…
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.…
In The Struggle To Be An All-American Girl, Elizabeth Wong writes about her personal accounts of going to Chinese school to learn the language of her heritage and wanting to become All-American. Wong's purpose for writing this essay was to inform others of how she grew up and now she regrets her discussion. The genre of the essay is a personal essay because narrative and descriptive passages are used as well as first person. This essay's audience is other Chinese-American youth that want to become all-American or other that just want insight of her life. The social context of the essay is that there are others that are required to go to Chinese school and the cultural was the enlightenment regarding that not continuing to learn the language of her heritage. Wong's essay is a simple little passage telling about her life to others in the same situation.…
Amy Tan’s essay “Mother Tongue” Tan grew up in a home with her Chinese mother who spoke English that she considered “broken”. It was difficult for others to understand what her mother was saying. Tan then realized that when she was with her mother that she spoke English differently than she did. She was trying to figure out how her background affected her life, such as her education; but she eventually learned to except her background. At the same time Tan wanted to become a writer and she found that by spending time with her mother who again spoke “broken” English. Even though she was told that writing was her worst skill by her boss, she was determined to make it work.…
The graphic novel American Born Chinese (2006), by Gene Luen Yang, is a very modern and influential piece of work that can be compared to the short indie film Two Lies (1990), directed and written by Pamela Tom, which had preceded the novel by 16 years. These two different forms of work, both utilizing their ability to teach the audience, are used as powerful venues for the topic of identity crisis among the Asian people in a majority European American world. In the film, we have Mei and her family who are all having some trouble adjusting to their lives in Southern California but more specifically we have Mei and her trouble to understand her mother 's cause and intent for having undergone double eye-lid surgery. In ABC, we have our protagonist, Jin, who is having trouble fitting into his new school in San Francisco since he is one of the very few Asian admitted to the school. Another time line in the novel is the story of the monkey king who does anything to get rid of the fact that he is a monkey in order to fit into society. The third is the story of Danny, a European American who has trouble and often becomes embarrassed with his hyperbolic Chinese cousin, Chin-Kee. This character is first introduced by saying "Harro Amellica!" while Jin 's father, carrying giant Chinese take out container says "I 'll put your luggage into your room, Chin-Kee" (48). All three of these time line show our characters having some sort of shame or embarrassment to the fact that their own image or background is different from those around them.…
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.…
In Amy Tan’s novel of conflicting cultures, The Joy Luck Club, the narrators contemplate their inability to relate from one culture to another. The novel is narrated by and follows the connected stories about conflicts between Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-raised daughters. Jing-mei, one of the daughters, has taken her mother’s place in a weekly gathering her mother had organized called the Joy Luck Club, in which four women would gather to gamble together to help each other. Through use of many different perspectives and concise diction, Tan reveals her theme of building bridges between cultures and generations and the revelation that tragedy shapes us. In The Joy Luck Club, Tan’s deceptively simple yet dramatic…
Amy Tan’s A Pair Of Tickets is a story concerning family and roots. June May, like the author herself, was a Chinese born in USA and grew up with an American background culture, whereas her mother grew up in China and then immigrated to America. Looking at the repeated words, we discussed that one there are many words such as mother, sister, father and Aiyi. Most of the characters in this story belong to one family, June May’s family. It suggests to us that the tale is about relations and where we stand in our family. Even Aiyi brings practically her whole family to see her brother and niece. This is also one of the stronger traits of the Chinese cultures where there are many family occasions.…
At first in her passage, she presents us her thoughts about English language. She realizes that when she is with other people her English is lot different than the ways she talks with her mother. Similarly, the way her mother talks to her and she would understand but when her mother talk to someone they wouldn’t understand her “broken” English. She tells us the different circumstances and struggles when her mother had been ignored for her English. One scenario, she recalls speaking on the phone, pretending to be her mother so that the stock broker would be understand what the problem was and the demanded for the overdue money. This demonstrates one person living of broken English requires another person speaking to peruse into fixing the situation.…
When Amy Tan falls in love with the minister’s son at the young age of fourteen, she takes for granted what her mother was trying to show her about life. Young Amy’s trying to impress her boyfriend by appearing as a traditional American girl not wanting to appear in any way Chinese American. Tan, still not experiencing life yet, had not grasped that being different is what makes someone who they are. It wasn’t until many years later that she came to realize that all her mother was trying to express to her was that she should be proud of her Chinese heritage. “But inside you must always be Chinese. You must be proud you are different. Your only shame is to have shame.” (117) She was not appreciating the diversity of different cultures and how both cultures have their own richness and value. Tan was embarrassed the whole time at Christmas dinner when she was trying to impress her young love Robert not realizing that her mother was making the meal for her. “For Christmas Eve that year, she had chosen all my favorite foods.” (117)…
Asian Americans suffered the most while living in the America as immigrants, illegal or not. Because of this, the Asian Americans families faced many difficulties such as grief and acceptance. The families sacrificed a lot to be in America and all they received are troubles. Both the novels, Bone by Fae Myenne Ng and When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka, shared the same difficulties as the families struggled to overcome the differences to achieve the American Dream that are hard for Asian Americans.…
There are thousands of languages in the world, such as Spanish, French, Chinese, English…However, No one can do better job in the second language than their mother language. In the article Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan emphasized her idea that we speak different languages unconsciously and we are categorized by the way we talk. The author talked about her mother who is a Chinese emigrant wanted to provide her daughter a better environment to grow up and spoke “broken” and “limited” English, but anyway, Amy can still communicate with her mother without obstacles. Throughout the story Amy Tan uses pathos and ethos to tell us that how hard to gap the Asian American culture and still is for Asian Americans to work through the difficulties of the English languages. As a Chinese people having English for the second language, Amy Tan was difficult at times, but still. She overcome all the barriers and succeeds when no one thought she could.…
Tan’s story takes place in California during the 1960’s. She feels embarrassed about her Chinese culture when she is faced with having a boy she likes and his family over for Christmas dinner. Tan describes in vivid detail her differences and embarrassment that she feels about being different from the Anglo culture. Tan more effectively describes her own isolation from social norms than Angelou. She describes her feeling and reactions to everything leading up to, during and after the Christmas dinner.…
Because Tan's mother expresses her thoughts in "broken" English, her thoughts become imperfect. Through examples of the ignorant stockholders and doctor, Amy Tan illustrates that it is the language we use in family that influences our public perception. Despite Tan's poor English writing skills, she chooses English as her major and becomes a writer who writes for people with "broken" English like her mom. Tan's works show that her identity is correlated and connected with her mother's use of language. Also, Tan emphasizes that the way we speak, influence by our family, sometimes cannot illustrate all of our thoughts and feelings.…
Nevertheless, it is acceptable to assume that Amy was prepared for the coming thrill, since she had asked her father to tell the story in Chinese—the deepest and profoundest language that may be tightly bound with his grief. Furthermore, I consider the instant that Amy brought up the request is a strong point, and at this moment, she had truly become a Chinese.…