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.
Being born in China but living in America, she seems ashamed of her roots and that is why she is embarrassed when her mother speaks broken English (Tan 142-146). But, although she tries hard to be American speaking and writing good English, she realizes that she has deviated from her true self. She finally makes peace with her mother and she starts appreciating her “Mother Tongue”, which consequently affects her writing positively. This shows just how peoples’ native languages are important in their lives. Our “Mother Tongue” is what gives us identity; it defines who we are, and therefore, people should value their native languages.
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.
To make her point clear she uses a lot of pathos and a lot of examples from experiences with herself and her two daughters, Louisa and Sofia. At the beginning when she tells the stories about her daughters trying to fight back you think ’what a terrible mother’, but she uses this feeling to support the view the readers have on the Chinese mothers as being mean to their kids so that afterwards she can tell how it turned out good and therefor the way she raises her kids is the best. Amy Chua has a high ethos because she is a professor at Yale which is a very respected job, and as a parent it makes her more reliable because she tells the reader that her parents treated her the same way that she treats her daughters, and as we can see she has been very successful. Also she uses loghos: ”In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70 % of the Western mothers said either that ”stressing academic success is not good for children” or that ”parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun”. By contrast,
However, the tone quickly changes as Song begins to miss and need China. After describing an unfriendly run in with a landlord Song says “You find you need China: your one fragile identification, a jade link handcuffed to your wrist” (Song). Here we see Song relating to the sister across seas and knowing that she needs to be back with her family and the people that love her, like her mother. These two contrasting section of the poem are used to show that even though life may be tough and strenuous in China, the life lived in America can also be not as forgiving. Family and culture seem to always win the battle against rebellion to a new land, resulting in the speaker’s sister’s
She sides with her mother so that they have a positive relationship. Her mother replies to Waverly’s remarks stating. “This is not so good, it is just leftover strips. And the fur is too short, no long hairs” (p169). This is an example of the disapproving behavior that Waverly’s mother shows her.
written by Gish Jen demonstrated a double consciousness. Through her racial lens she detects the differences between the Chinese, the Irish, and the White Americans; she is always racially conscious and suspicious. When her Shea in-laws continuously comment on her granddaughter Sophie’s skin color she makes a remark implying more racial breeding thus ceasing conversation and invoking an apology. Further in the text Chinese grandmother says, “Nothing the matter with Sophie’s outside, that’s the truth. It is inside that she is like not any Chinese girl I ever see.” Her statement gives insight on how the granddaughter may pass through the veil with her exterior as Chinese but her interior passes for American, a dual identities within one person.
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.
His sisters, First Corinthians and Lena, whom author Toni Morrison keeps in the background of the novel’s main events, are suddenly transformed into deep, complex characters. The two sisters, who have spent their lives in Dr. Foster’s parlor making fake roses, refuse to be aristocratic sweatshop workers any longer. The fact Corinthians works as a maid even though she has acquired a college degree does not make her feel inferior but rather it liberates her socially. Furthermore, the fact that she finds true love outside of her upper class social status shows that Morrison is making an attack on class consciousness. Lena’s revolt comes out during her confrontation with Milkman.
Lieberman’s point is that fairy tales make beauty the basis for which reward is given, not intelligence, work ethic, or anything else a radical feminist would see as an asset. Lieberman also stresses that in popular fairy tales, beauty is associated with being kind and well-tempered whereas ugliness is associated with being ill-tempered and often jealous. This can be easily shown in one of the most popular fairy tales of all—Cinderella. In this, Lieberman argues, Cinderella is oppressed by her cruel, ugly stepsisters and stepmother who force the kind, beautiful girl to do all the chores in the house. Cinderella ends up getting the prize (marriage to the prince) based on looks alone.