Amy Tan Identity Analysis
In the 1970s and 80s, there was a struggle worldwide for power and finding identity. These problems range from a personal level to the government and to the social status of different people groups, like African Americans and women. During this time, the amount of immigration increased exponentially. Many people escaped here to the United States in hopes of finding a better job or just a better lifestyle overall. Amy Tan, born in 1952 in Oakland, California is famous for her novel The Joy Luck Club (1989). In this book, it explores the relationship between four traditional Chinese mothers and their four Chinese-American daughters. With focusing more on the mother and daughter from the section of Two Kinds, this mother and daughter duo had the
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stereotypical fight of the mother fighting that the daughter do what she is told to do and the daughter wants to create her own person. This mother required that her daughter take piano lessons in hopes that she would become a prodigy and make a name for herself. One could easily argue that her mother pushed her so hard to make herself out of something because she knew how hard the world could be on women, especially a young girl. Her mother could also be forcing piano lessons onto her daughter in the hope of raising their status symbol to something more elite than what they currently are. But from the perspective of the young girl of the story, the mother is controlling her and making her into someone that she does not want to become. “‘You want me to be someone that I’m not!’ I sobbed. ‘I’ll never be the kind of daughter you want me to be!’… So maybe I never really gave myself a fair chance. I did pick up the basics pretty quickly, and I might have become a good pianist at that young age. But I was so determined not to try not to be anybody different…” (Tan, 1128, 1125). The daughter wanted to create the person she wants to become and not have her mother tell her who she needs to be. The daughter is constantly fighting the mother for her identity while the mother is just trying to hand her a premade identity. One might argue that the daughter was full of foolish pride by refusing to obey her mother who would know best, but the daughter did not want to be controlled by values that she did not consider her own. While the mother was more the traditional Chinese woman, her daughter was being raised in American culture where the children had more power than she did in her household. The daughter was attempting to undo what the mother was trying to create. The daughter struggled with two different identities, one being Chinese and the other being American, and was unsure of which to choose from or how to create them into one. “It was not the only disappointment my mother felt in me. In the years that followed, I failed her so many times, each time asserting my own will my right to fall short of expectations…For unlike my mother, I did not believe that I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me” (Tan, 1129). By the end of the story, the daughter, who never played the piano again after the major fight that was last by that piano, realized that two songs, “Pleading Child” and “Perfectly Contented” were the exact same song, but just at different tempos. “‘Pleading Child’ was shorter but slower; ‘Perfectly Contented’ was longer, but faster. And after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song” (Tan, 1130). Here, the daughter is seeing what her mother valued and how it is compatible with what she wanted as a daughter. Here, two parts of the daughter’s identity is coming together. Ursula K. Le Guin, born in 1929, is an American author of novels, children’s books, and short stories mainly in the genre of fantasy and science fiction. Her themes mostly include sociology, anthropology, psychology, environmentalism, anarchism, and Taoism. “Le Guin distinguishes herself by demonstrating a sincere interest in exploring the legitimacy of other styles of existence – not just what they are but how they work” (Baym, 588).
In her work She Unnames Them (1982), one sees a new perspective of the story of Adam and Eve naming the creatures given to them by God. In this story, Adam is going through the garden naming the creatures while Eve follows behind him and removing the name that was given to them.
“Cattle, sheep, swine, asses, mules, and goats, along with chickens, geese, and turkeys, all agreed enthusiastically to give their names back to the people whom – as they put it – they belonged…These verbally talented individuals insisted that their names were important to them, and flatly refused to part with them. But as soon as they understood that the issue was precisely one of individual choice, and that anybody who wanted to be called Rover, or Froufrou, or Polly, or even Birdie in the personal sense…” (Le Guin, 594 – 595).
Here, readers call into question the power and problem of naming things. The immediate connection a reader might make is that sexually promiscuous women are given names though the men are not. Men, stereotypically speaking, will go around naming all of these women of arguably questionable character but yet will receive no names in return. There are more names for women then there are for men. Adam named the creatures, but Eve then unnamed them giving them back their identity. Being named, especially by a name you do not wished to be called, can take away from your identity and makes you something that you are not. Adrienne Rich, born in 1929 and recently dying on March 27 of 2012, was an American poet, essayist, and feminist.
“Rich’s poems aim at self-definition, at establishing boundaries of the self, but they also fight the notion that insights remain solitary and unshared…[Rich was] involved in radical politics, especially in the opposition of the Vietnam War…In the 1970s Rich dedicated herself increasingly to feminism [and addressed] issues of women’s education and their literary traditions, Jewish identity, the relations between poetry and politics, and what she has called ‘the erasure of lesbian existence’” (Baym, 567 – 568).
With two successful parents, there was a lot of pressure for Rich while growing up on being able to make a name for herself and fulfilling their expectations. Many argue that these parental expectations helped motivate her career as an author. In adulthood, she became involved in the political movement of the New Left. This group of individuals and educators fought for the rights of gays, abortion, gender roles, and drugs. One defining characteristic about Adrienne Rich that was an influence in her writing was that she was a lesbian. Her husband tragically died to a gunshot wound to the head in 1970 and she came out as a lesbian in 1976. Before the death of her husband, they began to grow apart because of her erotic love of women. Following her coming out, she published poems that displayed this love for women.
In her work Diving into the Wreck (1973), Rich depicts a sunken ship which many scholars argue that the Titanic was the influence of the ship’s description. Though the poem may be discussing the ship, it is implied that the ship symbolizes more than just the average ship. In the seventh stanza Rich writes, “I came to explore the wreck. / The words are purposes. / The words are maps. / I came to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail. / I stroke the beam of my lamp / slowly along the flank / of something more permanent / than fish or weed” (575). Here, Rich symbolizes human suffering. This wreck symbolizes how one may feel after a painful life event that we can continue to come back to. In lines 68 – 70, Rich humanizes the wreck by writing “the ribs of the disaster / curving their assertion / among the tentative haunters” (575). When Rich speaks of the ribs of the ship, she is addressing the support beams that hold the ship together. This makes the reader then think of all of the bodies that this wrecked ship once held and that are now somewhere near the bottom of the ocean. The ribs of the ship reflect the human tragedy that also occurred. The poem ends with how women’s names have been erased from history in the ninth and also the last stanza and really gives a good look at the woman experience:
“I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair / streams black, the merman in his armored body / We circle silently / about the wreck / we dive into the hold.
/ I am she: I am he / …We are, I am, you are / by cowardice or courage / the one who finds our way / back to this scene / carrying a knife, a camera / a book of myths / in which / our names do not appear” (Rich, 575).
From the feminist perspective, the modern day culture is a wreck. Rich believes that our culture is “split at the root” and art is separated from politics, and the poet’s identity as a woman is separated from her art” (Baym, 566). Tan, Le Guin, and Rich, all show different perspectives of life that women face. Women struggle with unreasonable expectations that are placed on them at a young age and feel like they can never fulfill. Women are also the butt of most jokes and are publicly mocked and it is seen as something that really “is not a big deal” and should “learn how to take a compliment”. Women also struggle with having their names and their accomplishments be completely insignificant when compared to men. In reality, women are almost seen as nothing and these three women authors showed everyone that there is so much more that they can
offer.
stereotypical fight of the mother fighting that the daughter do what she is told to do and the daughter wants to create her own person. This mother required that her daughter take piano lessons in hopes that she would become a prodigy and make a name for herself. One could easily argue that her mother pushed her so hard to make herself out of something because she knew how hard the world could be on women, especially a young girl. Her mother could also be forcing piano lessons onto her daughter in the hope of raising their status symbol to something more elite than what they currently are. But from the perspective of the young girl of the story, the mother is controlling her and making her into someone that she does not want to become. “‘You want me to be someone that I’m not!’ I sobbed. ‘I’ll never be the kind of daughter you want me to be!’… So maybe I never really gave myself a fair chance. I did pick up the basics pretty quickly, and I might have become a good pianist at that young age. But I was so determined not to try not to be anybody different…” (Tan, 1128, 1125). The daughter wanted to create the person she wants to become and not have her mother tell her who she needs to be. The daughter is constantly fighting the mother for her identity while the mother is just trying to hand her a premade identity. One might argue that the daughter was full of foolish pride by refusing to obey her mother who would know best, but the daughter did not want to be controlled by values that she did not consider her own. While the mother was more the traditional Chinese woman, her daughter was being raised in American culture where the children had more power than she did in her household. The daughter was attempting to undo what the mother was trying to create. The daughter struggled with two different identities, one being Chinese and the other being American, and was unsure of which to choose from or how to create them into one. “It was not the only disappointment my mother felt in me. In the years that followed, I failed her so many times, each time asserting my own will my right to fall short of expectations…For unlike my mother, I did not believe that I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me” (Tan, 1129). By the end of the story, the daughter, who never played the piano again after the major fight that was last by that piano, realized that two songs, “Pleading Child” and “Perfectly Contented” were the exact same song, but just at different tempos. “‘Pleading Child’ was shorter but slower; ‘Perfectly Contented’ was longer, but faster. And after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song” (Tan, 1130). Here, the daughter is seeing what her mother valued and how it is compatible with what she wanted as a daughter. Here, two parts of the daughter’s identity is coming together. Ursula K. Le Guin, born in 1929, is an American author of novels, children’s books, and short stories mainly in the genre of fantasy and science fiction. Her themes mostly include sociology, anthropology, psychology, environmentalism, anarchism, and Taoism. “Le Guin distinguishes herself by demonstrating a sincere interest in exploring the legitimacy of other styles of existence – not just what they are but how they work” (Baym, 588).
In her work She Unnames Them (1982), one sees a new perspective of the story of Adam and Eve naming the creatures given to them by God. In this story, Adam is going through the garden naming the creatures while Eve follows behind him and removing the name that was given to them.
“Cattle, sheep, swine, asses, mules, and goats, along with chickens, geese, and turkeys, all agreed enthusiastically to give their names back to the people whom – as they put it – they belonged…These verbally talented individuals insisted that their names were important to them, and flatly refused to part with them. But as soon as they understood that the issue was precisely one of individual choice, and that anybody who wanted to be called Rover, or Froufrou, or Polly, or even Birdie in the personal sense…” (Le Guin, 594 – 595).
Here, readers call into question the power and problem of naming things. The immediate connection a reader might make is that sexually promiscuous women are given names though the men are not. Men, stereotypically speaking, will go around naming all of these women of arguably questionable character but yet will receive no names in return. There are more names for women then there are for men. Adam named the creatures, but Eve then unnamed them giving them back their identity. Being named, especially by a name you do not wished to be called, can take away from your identity and makes you something that you are not. Adrienne Rich, born in 1929 and recently dying on March 27 of 2012, was an American poet, essayist, and feminist.
“Rich’s poems aim at self-definition, at establishing boundaries of the self, but they also fight the notion that insights remain solitary and unshared…[Rich was] involved in radical politics, especially in the opposition of the Vietnam War…In the 1970s Rich dedicated herself increasingly to feminism [and addressed] issues of women’s education and their literary traditions, Jewish identity, the relations between poetry and politics, and what she has called ‘the erasure of lesbian existence’” (Baym, 567 – 568).
With two successful parents, there was a lot of pressure for Rich while growing up on being able to make a name for herself and fulfilling their expectations. Many argue that these parental expectations helped motivate her career as an author. In adulthood, she became involved in the political movement of the New Left. This group of individuals and educators fought for the rights of gays, abortion, gender roles, and drugs. One defining characteristic about Adrienne Rich that was an influence in her writing was that she was a lesbian. Her husband tragically died to a gunshot wound to the head in 1970 and she came out as a lesbian in 1976. Before the death of her husband, they began to grow apart because of her erotic love of women. Following her coming out, she published poems that displayed this love for women.
In her work Diving into the Wreck (1973), Rich depicts a sunken ship which many scholars argue that the Titanic was the influence of the ship’s description. Though the poem may be discussing the ship, it is implied that the ship symbolizes more than just the average ship. In the seventh stanza Rich writes, “I came to explore the wreck. / The words are purposes. / The words are maps. / I came to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail. / I stroke the beam of my lamp / slowly along the flank / of something more permanent / than fish or weed” (575). Here, Rich symbolizes human suffering. This wreck symbolizes how one may feel after a painful life event that we can continue to come back to. In lines 68 – 70, Rich humanizes the wreck by writing “the ribs of the disaster / curving their assertion / among the tentative haunters” (575). When Rich speaks of the ribs of the ship, she is addressing the support beams that hold the ship together. This makes the reader then think of all of the bodies that this wrecked ship once held and that are now somewhere near the bottom of the ocean. The ribs of the ship reflect the human tragedy that also occurred. The poem ends with how women’s names have been erased from history in the ninth and also the last stanza and really gives a good look at the woman experience:
“I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair / streams black, the merman in his armored body / We circle silently / about the wreck / we dive into the hold.
/ I am she: I am he / …We are, I am, you are / by cowardice or courage / the one who finds our way / back to this scene / carrying a knife, a camera / a book of myths / in which / our names do not appear” (Rich, 575).
From the feminist perspective, the modern day culture is a wreck. Rich believes that our culture is “split at the root” and art is separated from politics, and the poet’s identity as a woman is separated from her art” (Baym, 566). Tan, Le Guin, and Rich, all show different perspectives of life that women face. Women struggle with unreasonable expectations that are placed on them at a young age and feel like they can never fulfill. Women are also the butt of most jokes and are publicly mocked and it is seen as something that really “is not a big deal” and should “learn how to take a compliment”. Women also struggle with having their names and their accomplishments be completely insignificant when compared to men. In reality, women are almost seen as nothing and these three women authors showed everyone that there is so much more that they can
offer.