Amy Tan's A Pair Of Tickets

The Culture Snatcher:
The Extensive Lengths to Which Ethnic Americans Go to Avoid Being “The Other” In “A Pair of Tickets,” author Amy Tan exposes the disastrous effects of Americanization on a foreign culture. Tan’s exposition lies in the protagonist, Jing-Mei, a young Chinese woman raised in America, refusing to adopt her Chinese Heritage. Tan uses the prevalence of stereotypes and internal conflict to present her theme effectively. As the protagonist and narrator, Jing-Mei and her father begin their train ride through China, the author establishes both the physical and symbolic setting of the story. Much of what influenced Jing-Mei’s self-identity was her environment, and comfort, since Jing-Mei was exposed to the American life-style more thoroughly than her Chinese ancestry. Amy
Tan conveys this through her use of imagery, encapsulating the dynamic and dramatic shift within Jing-Mei as she travels through her mother’s land.
Amy Tan peppers her story with the words “gray”, “drab”, and “forlorn” which convey Jing-Mei’s feelings regarding life after her mother’s death. Gray and drab imply a lack of warmth and an underlying sadness that seem to permeate the story. Jing-Mei holds conflicting emotions about her late mother, her ‘Chinese’ self, explaining the overall grayness of the story.
Jing-Mei felt that she was not Chinese below her skin and had trouble relating to her mother when she was alive. She did not even think the Chinese would recognize her as Chinese, when Jing-Mei states “even without makeup, I could never pass for true Chinese. I stand five-foot-six, and my head pokes above the crowd so that I am eye-level only with other tourists.” With language and physical barriers between Jing-Mei and China, she mentally distances herself from her Chinese heritage. As the story progresses, she develops deeply emotional connections and changes her overall attitude about her Chinese culture. Jing-Mei peels off her American-persona piece by piece and discovers the Chinese that lurked within her genes. During her time, Jing-Mei hears stories of her mother’s life. She found that her sister’s names meant Spring Rain and Spring Flower, her own meant “pure essence of a younger sister” and her mother’s name meant “long cherished wish”. The combination of all four meaning, the mother’s long cherished wish for a new beginning for her daughters or a fresh new Spring season in their lives. This use of imagery gives off the idea of a dismal winter being followed by a beautiful spring. In its final moments, color bursts forth through the story just like “the gray-green surface” of the Polaroid pictures transforms into “bright and colorful images,” as Jing-Mei meets her sisters for the first time, the clouds in her mind part and sunshine shines through and illuminates what it really means to be Chinese. Jing-Mei had trouble relating to her mother but after spending time getting to know the truth behind Chinese Culture and the beauty of her native heritage, Jing-Mei reached the overall theme of the story: change. The symbolism concerning this theme lies in the passages about the development of Polaroid photographs, the changes in the different street and town names, and even in the scenery as the train races from one town to the next. The more rooted in the culture Jing Mei got and the more she learned about its beauty the more she felt Chinese.
The issue with Jing-Mei was not that she accepted the American lifestyle, but that in doing so tried to lose her ancestry and culture of being a Chinese-American woman.
This abandonment of one’s heritage begs the argument over what aspect of American culture appeals to someone over their own native culture. Perhaps it is the extravagant rich lives, the sunny beaches, the overworked promise of fame and freedom, no matter, for Jing-Mei, it was the familiarity with all things American. Even as her parents were raising Mei in a traditional Chinese household, she refused to believe that she “had any Chinese whatsoever below (her) skin” (1). This stemmed from Jing-Mei’s major environment, outside of her parent’s grasp. Having predominately Caucasian friends and authority figures cause Jing-Mei to become comfortable with what she believed was right based on normative social influences, or influences resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval. Amy Tan is writing Jing-Mei’s story to expose the death of native culture to the popularized America and the effects of that, for many including our protagonist, is utter confusion as to where one’s true identity
lies.
American culture is too often beautified and idolized as being the epitome of perfection. So often are individuals and objects Americanized or “white-washed,” and the effect of this is a lack of identity within one’s native culture. An American is an individual inhabiting the United States of America, all 318.9 million of them, all from different backgrounds, races, and ideologies, so why do many Americans feel the need to establish the one and only “American Culture.”
Last year CBS News reported a study on the findings of a “White washed America,” a primarily Caucasian Hollywood, explaining the effects were a complete misrepresentation of what America supposedly is: a melting pot of many different cultures. The result of this “washing” is many individuals of foreign cultures who find it difficult to assimilate in a country where their people are not represented fully and respectfully. When I was little the most ethnic Television shows I saw were never the family sitcom true to experience life television shows. That is why I so fully idolized images of people who looked like me, from Family Matters to Good Times, but I didn’t ever see someone looking like me and going through those struggles, those same tribulations and I wanted to know why that was.