Kingston’s story “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe” employs numerous fantasy elements in depicting her separation from the restrictiveness of China and further, her discovery of harmony between her ancient family’s culture and her new American one. Navigating through confusion and anger, Kingston is ultimately able to remove herself her Chinese bindings and find a sense of accord between her past and her future. Kingston’s rhetoric conveys her struggle with the complexities of her Chinese culture and her inability to come to a core truth. Furthermore, she gravitates toward American culture for its simplicity. Kingston is having difficulties sorting fact from fiction in her mother’s story about Moon Orchid’s encounter with her husband.
The stories focus on the relationships between four, Chinese mothers who migrate to the United States and their Chinese-American daughters. The daughters find it to be a struggle to try to hold on to their traditional Chinese roots that their parents are trying to preserve, as they seek to fit into the over-bearing American culture. The stories explore issues of tradition, immigration, ethnicity, language, and identity. The Joy Luck Club displays the cultural divide that exists between Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans born and raised in the United States. Even though it is within the same culture, the film shows how Chinese immigrants are forced to “adjust” and give up much of their identity in order to thrive in America.
The poem begins with the perspective of the sister in China as she describes the tradition of her people and the adaptations they have made. After some brief background into the Chinese culture, Song moves to focus on the relationship between the speaker and her sister. “And the daughters were grateful: They never left home. To move freely was a luxury stolen from them at birth” (Song); Song uses these lines to describe the realities that come with living in China and the idea that one may never actually leave to discover America. In the first part of the poem Song conveys that the life lived in China is not a glorious one.
Her mother became a polygamist in China and therefore disgraced herself. She never knew her mother well except from the few times she saw her and the stories her grandma told of her. In this An-mei learns about sacrifice from her mother. This story is like the parable because her mother transforms herself into something totally different. The Red Candle is about a Chinese girl named Lindo whose parents chose a husband for her when she was only two years old.
It tells the story of a sad young girl. She learns to cope with life by learning martial-arts. This skill helps her to cope and enjoy new exciting and dangerous adventures. This book is brilliant and gives a clear picture of life in the 1940’s. In Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society,In the 1940s SHANGHAI During the Japanese invasion in china concerns the story of Chinese Cinderella, a young girl Chinese Cinderella or CC named by her close Aunt Baba who had a cruel stepmother(Niang) and father.
Shirley Temple Wong is a young girl, a girl whom never loses her connection of her birth. When she had to move she missed her cousins, aunt, uncle and grandparents. Some how Shirley managed to tie together her love of her past life in China and the present life Shirley is now living in Brooklyn. Shirley had to go to school in Brooklyn; Shirley also tried to fir in with the other girls in her class room. Shirley was feeling very lonely, because Shirley thought she wasn’t going to have anyone to talk to.
In "Two Kinds," by Amy Tan, the narrator’s mother is from China, which affects the way she looks at the world. To her, America is the land of opportunity: “My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America.” She has an unrealisic expectation that her daughter can be a musical prodigy. Because of this, she pushes and forces her daughter into piano lessons. The girl’s first act of rebellion is when she purposefully fails at piano. It is her way to reject her mother and her mother's strict Chinese rules.
Alena You Woman Warrior Communication is a very important aspect of identity and to being able to project oneself shows that one has a strong sense of nationality. The audacity of one’s voice shows the fearlessness, presumption, and assuredness of one’s character. Maxine Hong Kingston’s memoir The Woman Warrior shows the story of a Chinese-American, struggling to decide her position between an American society and her comfort zone of being Chinese. Through her mother’s brave adventures, her inability to speak up, and Fa Mu Lan’s mythical experiences, Kingston’s experiences from home and school, represents her inferiority to society in America and destroys her potential role as a strong, cunning individual. Her mother’s fearless experience of fighting a ghost exemplifies Kingston’s potential abilities to use her genetically strong backbone.
She had invested the time trying to make Jing-mei a prodigy because she was her last hope. Jing-mei’s mother had lost two children while in China. Jing-mei’s mother also expected her to be a prodigy because she was a Chinese immigrant; she felt immigrants had to prove that they were as talented as or more talented than Americans were. <br> <br>Jing-mei’s mother didn’t know what she wanted her to do, so she experimented. First came the dancing and singing trails, “ at first my mother wanted me to be a Chinese Shirley Temple†(Tan 450).
Power In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan writes about a character, Lindo Jong, a young woman growing up in China while enduring an arranged marriage. She is not extremely happy about the situation but wants to satisfy her parents’ wishes. Lindo learns about the powers of invisible strength and uses them to her advantage. Lindo’s invisible strength helps her through her struggle to retain her Chinese identity. Lindo Jong learns from an early age the powers of invisible strength, which is hiding one’s thoughts until the time is right to reveal them, and believing in one’s inner self even when one finds oneself in trouble.