A Pair of Tickets Summary Amy Tan's story "A Pair of Tickets" is about a Chinese-American woman's philosophical struggle to accept her true identity. The protagonist Jing-mei grew up with American influences and struggles with her Chinese heritage. She is finally able to resolve this struggle after going overseas with her father and meeting her twin sisters for the first time in over thirty years. Character 1. Jing-mei (June) Woo - Jing-mei Woo is the newest member of the Joy Luck Club, having taken her mother Suyuan’s place after her death.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Much of the Chinese values moved with them to America. In the movie Mulan, all the parents want for their daughter, Mulan, is to bring honor to the family. But Mulan is not your typical Chinese girl; she has her own opinions, and can’t hide who she really is. (Mulan) In the story “Two Kinds”, Jing-mei’s mother and father want her to be a prodigy in order to make a life for herself. At first Jing-mei liked the idea, but after all of her attempts and fails she wanted to live a normal American life.
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.
Beautiful Return In the essay entitled “Homeward Bound,” Janet Wu writes of her long lost grandmother. Her grandmother was unknown to her and her family until a letter was received with the news of her father’s family’s survival during the Japanese invasion and the Communist revolution. To her father’s surprise, his brother and mother were alive living in China. Wu and her grandmother lived diverse lives and were worlds apart including the tradition of feet binding and the language differences. The first difference between Wu and her grandmother is the feet binding.
Mother-daughter conflicts At some point of their lives, most people have to migrate to different countries because there is a need for a better life. In Amy Tan’s short story Two Kinds, written in 1989, and in Gish Jen’s short story Who’s Irish?, written in 1999, the reader learns about the conflicts that arise as a person migrates and tries to assimilate to a different culture. Amy Tan is known for incorporating the mother-daughter dyad in her short stories. Both short stories, Who’s Irish? and Two Kinds, are about mother-daughter conflicts and the cultural barrier, due to Chinese immigrant mothers and American born daughters, that stands between them.