She believes that her mother’s constant criticism bespeaks a lack of affection, when in fact her mother’s severity and high expectations are expressions of love and faith in her daughter. All of the other mother-daughter pairs experience the same misunderstanding, which in some ways may be seen to stem from cultural differences. What Tan portrays as the traditional Chinese values of filial obedience, criticism-enveloped expressions of love, and the concealment of excessive emotions all clash with the daughters’ “American” ideas about autonomy, free and open speech,
Far from knowing Chinese culture and without the awareness to know, the mother generation is alien and ridiculous to them. June considers her mother and Auntie Am-mei’s dress as “too fancy for real Chinese people and too strange for American parties”, and she even imagined Joy Luck “was a shameful Chinese custom, like the secret gathering of the Ku Klux Kan or the tom-tom dancers of TV Indians preparing for war. (Tan 28)” The daughter is not only ignorant to Chinese culture, but also initiatively wants to get rid
As she attempts to interpret and understand the cultural codes that have shaped her life, Kingston introduces the reader to the fate of transgressive women in traditional China, elucidates women’s situation in her extended family, and epitomizes the contradictions in the cultural messages with which a young Chinese American woman must grapple. Storytelling becomes the means through which mother passes on to her daughter all the complexities and uncertainties of mother’s and daughter’s identity as women in a patriarchal culture. Remembering her mother’s interpretations as they resonate with the memories of her past, the daughter, as she too passes them on to posterity, ponders around these memories, critiques them, making them her own. The role of memory in The Woman Warrior surfaces from the very first sentence of the
This book had me intrigued, no enthralled, in Kingston’s ability to capture the viewpoint of not just any person’s life, but her own. Kingston gives new meaning to the saying, “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.” The five stories that make up this masterpiece touch different parts and lives of the Chinese culture. The first being the untold story of the “No Name Woman.” Kingston learns of her aunt, who may as well never existed, who betrayed her family and brought dishonor to their name. Accused of adultery, she is driven out of the village and commits suicide because of the disgrace she has brought. Brave Orchid, Kingston’s mother, sets this as an example of what not to be in life.
The daughters disagree and believe divorce is ok. The Mothers belief stems from old Chinese culture while the daughters belief stems from American culture where divorces are very common. Another chinese belief the mothers believe that every women should be married. That conflicts with the american belief that a woman is not required to get married, this creates conflict among the daughters. The daughters of the members of the joy luck club grow up struggling to balance
Katie Tava July 25, 2012 “The Struggle to Be an All-American” Part 1: Summary In “The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl,” Elizabeth Wong writes about her transformation from being a Chinese girl in to an American girl, as she moved to the U.S. Wong went to a Chinese school at the same time she attended American school because Wong’s mother wanted her and her brother to maintain the Chinese language as part of their heritage. Wong became embarrassed by her Chinese culture while studying in America. She said Chinese was, “ quick, it was loud, it was unbeautiful…. Chinese sounded pedestrian” (98). The desire to become American had become her dream.
Amy Chua gives a great example of the contrast between the cultures, she tell her readers how Chinese parents and western parents would react if their kid came home with an A minus “ the Chinese parent would gasp in horror and ask what went wrong” (p. 3 l 2) “A western parent would support and praise the child.” Later in the article Amy Chua comes with one of her statements, again“if a Chinese child gets a B – which would never happen” (p 3, l 21). When she point that out, Amy Chua make her readers believe that, if you raise your child like Amy your children would never get B. “What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fin until you’re good at it” (p. 2 l 15). This is the third time in her article, she mention her statement, and she make it sound
In her article Ms.Wong clearly show her dislike for her heritage through chinese language. The reason Elizabeth Wong doesn’t like her own heritage is her dislike toward her chinese language. She interpreted the language as been chaotic. Since the language was quick, rhythmless, patternless, and unbeautiful,Ms. Wong doesn’t want people to think that she thought of as mad, as talking gibberish.
Velez2 Jennifer Velez Comp107 Miss Atzeni 3/22/2012 The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl By Elizabeth Wong In Elizabeth Wong’s writing on how she struggled to be an “All-American” girl, she expresses the strict religion and culture brought on by her single-parent raising mother, when all she only wanted was to fit in with American culture. While Elizabeth and her brother wanted to play childhood games, such as ghost hunt, with their friends their mother was stern on the importance of learning the language of their heritage. She would walk them seven long blocks to Chinese school, no matter how often they pleaded with her to not attend. Elizabeth wasn’t fond of the smell of the school or that the learning was restricted. She felt that American school would be a better fit for her.
Amy Chua is a professor of Law at Yale, an author of “World on Fire”, and a Chinese mother. In Chua’s “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” (an excerpt from Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother), Chua takes a serious approach demonstrating the Chinese parenting method, and how it is effective in her life. Her main claim from this article is to state the differences between Western; Chinese parents, and how great Chinese parenting method is. The text is also connected to the identity theme; it conveys different aspects of figuring out one’s self , and how the parenting method is a big part of that. Chua’s text is very harsh toned, yet effective due to the use of all three appeals: Ethos, Logos, and Pathos.