A Pair Of Tickets

The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, exposes the paradoxical relationships between Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-raised daughters. Although both sides experience their own strife in life, the mothers are probably most notable for their struggle in assimilating to society. Given that they are the first generations to have contact with the unfamiliar culture, they must set foot onto the foreign land and sustain a stable life in order to provide for her children and give them a prosperous life. The mothers are required to adapt to the language, environment, social roles, and etc. Flexibility and adaptability varies from person to person. Before the novel begins, Tan introduces the story with a brief prologue about a Shanghai women and her swan. Her prior expectations before coming to America was crushed entirely by the reality she later encounters. The woman sworn to give her American-raised daughter the swan feather and “tell her [the story] in perfect American English” (pg. 3) one day. This is an example of “culture shock” which is common for many people who move to another country. “Culture shock”, as the Oxford Dictionary defines it, is a disorientation experienced when [one is] suddenly subjected to an unfamiliar culture. My experience as an American-raised Chinese is somewhat similar to the novel. I lacked an English background, but I did not experience much

What I found to be the most interesting through my readings, and interview, is the amount of loyalty to family that Chinese Americans have. During the interview MiMi talked about her family, and the relationship she has with her family in China, and her family in America. She described her father’s dedication to family as the upmost important thing in the world. Many Chinese American families, no matter what their economic status, has a strong value on keeping the family intact, and close (Wang, N.D). I was unfamiliar with the family bond that Chinese Americans have. I could see the pride that MiMi’s grandmother had when talking about her children’s accomplishments, as well has her granddaughters. They showed me tons of pictures, and

Tan shows that she is embarrassed in her family for their lacking of proper American manners. Although at the time she felt ashamed, the words spoken by her mother, “Inside you must always be Chinese. You must be proud you are different. Your only shame is to have shame” became better understood later in life. In Amy Tan's work, the strong use of description of both the event that are occurring and Amy’s feelings about them, draws the reader in and makes them feel as if they are part of the action. Tan's Chinese-American culture and life stories are imprinted in her writing which gives the reader an opportunity to gain knowledge about the way of life in her family, friends, and even the Chinese culture. Tan's main purpose of writing is to inform and educate people about growing up as a minority in the American society.

Amy Tan’s A Pair Of Tickets is a story concerning family and roots. June May, like the author herself, was a Chinese born in USA and grew up with an American background culture, whereas her mother grew up in China and then immigrated to America. Looking at the repeated words, we discussed that one there are many words such as mother, sister, father and Aiyi. Most of the characters in this story belong to one family, June May’s family. It suggests to us that the tale is about relations and where we stand in our family. Even Aiyi brings practically her whole family to see her brother and niece. This is also one of the stronger traits of the Chinese cultures where there are many family occasions.

Language barriers are the biggest problems the mothers and daughters go through because they are not able to talk to each other correctly. The daughters speak mostly only English and the mothers speak mostly only Chinese, so the daughters and mother only know very little of each other language it’s difficult to talk about how each others feel. In the book cultural concepts like the Chinese heritage is hard to translate just like “ Joy Luck”. Chinese heritage is hard to translate because the biggest thing in Chinese heritage is knowing the Chinese language. The daughters in the book already don’t know a lot of Chinese their Chinese heritage was lost because of that. This language barrier is seen throughout the book, because the mothers could not speak english they tell stories instead to

One of the most complex relationships is that of a mother and daughter. Amy Tan is an author who writes about her life growing up as an Asian-American in Chinatown. Her novel The Joy Luck Club is a series of short stories about Chinese mothers and their assimilated daughters. One of these stories is “Two Kinds,” which looks into the life of Jing-Mei Woo and her struggle to gain a sense of self. Some key themes in The Joy Luck Club are the generational and intercultural differences among Chinese-American families, the complex mother-daughter relationship, and the journey of self-discovery. The title “Two Kinds” can take various meanings in relation to the context of the story, and Amy Tan skillfully uses characterization, linguistics, and

Have you ever sat down and asked your parents the story of their life? Perhaps, you asked them about their childhood, hopes, or dreams. Regardless, it doesn't matter if your ancestors were born here or took a long ride to get here, everyone has a important and meaningful story to share. The Joy Luck Club is a compilation of stories from four pairs of mothers and daughters. The reader is shown the complexity of relationships spanning from China all the way to America plus the difficulty of being in between.

Culture is often a large part of someone’s life and character, which leads to it being a large part of a person’s identity. Amy Tan makes this change explicit through her use of perspective with her characters. One such example is Waverly’s change in identity through culture. As a young child, she starts off ambitious and has a great desire to play and improve at chess. This intense ambition heavily reflects Chinese culture, as ambition and the desire to be the best is stressed in China. Her mother even goes as far as to say “Chinese people do business, do medicine, do painting. Not lazy like American people” (91 Tan). Since Lindo grew up in China, her culture is almost entirely Chinese, and it shows her ambition to be greater than the competition. Waverly grew up with this ambition, because of her Chinese roots and heritage. Her ambition drove her to give up everything for chess, and she only “went to school, then directly home to learn new chess secrets, cleverly sealed advantages, more escape routes” (98 Tan). Waverly constructs her daily life around perfecting her craft, and her devotion to the game of chess. Her extreme ambition mirrors that of typical Chinese culture. Her ambition fades though, as she loses connection to her Chinese culture. They often lose most of their original culture, although “They are allowed to retain certain particularistic traits from the old culture. Such traits are, however, themselves modified in their transplantation to American society” (197 Source 1). The very few, modified traits that they keep pale in comparison to the amount of new cultural influence they face. The result is that of Waverly: a loss of traits that are connected to the original culture. Losing these traits while at the same time gaining new ones change an individual's identity, which is a direct effect of immigration as a

Amy Tan’s “The Joy Luck Club” is a novel written in various short stories between four immigrant Chinese mothers and their four Chinese-American born daughters. The mother’s represent their heritage, tradition, culture, and native tongue. Their daughters; however embody America and its culture, along with language. Each mother and daughter share the emotional feeling of cultural separation between themselves and their relationship with each other. With their cross-cultural relationship, the daughters are at a stance with their mother, her upbringing, and wisdom. Through the mother’s stories, Amy Tan convey’s cross-cultural relationships amongst the mothers’ and daughters through symbolism and anecdotes. By facing disadvantages each mother learns to become strong through their own struggle and have become protective of their daughters from pain that they had endured in China. Although, with the daughters being brought up in a cross-cultural environment, primarily American culture, they ironically mistake their mother 's’ guidance and love as judgement. They feel pressured and criticized by their mothers and correlate it as an inability to understand the American Culture.

In “A Pair of Tickets” the author Amy Tan discusses about the life of her family. The author then discovers she has long lost twin sister who are back home in China, but what they didn’t know was the death of their mother had occured not long after she had given them up. In the text the author mentions “But today i realize i’ve never really known what it means to be Chinese” (120). The text suggest that she hardly knows her culture of where she came from and the traditions she was born into. As the book progresses the author approaches a difficult situation where she is meeting her twin sister for the first time and they expect to see their mom, but they had no idea that she had passed away (121). Tan is stuck in a situation where se is at

To the West she has come, because “in America, / There are many roads / and women can stride along with men” (34-36). This is a vast change from the bindings of her name in China where she was “learning to walk in shoes / the size of teacups” (15-16). There is choice and freedom for this girl in America while she would never have had access to it in China. It comes to the reader’s attention, however, that this may not be what the girl desires. The narrator illustrates “in another wilderness, / the possibilities, / the loneliness, / can strangulate like jungle vines” (37-40). This imagery of such a restrictive environment closely mimics that of China, such that it seems there is no difference between that and America. A lustful response is prompted as the narrator speaks of “the meager provisions and sentiments / of once belonging” (41-42). While the girl thought she would find her dream in the West, she is left still disappointed and unhappy unfortunately not gaining what she had hoped from America.

Many of us throughout our whole life’s growing up as a kid and even when we are old our mom has been our best friend. The person we go to when we need something, been there for us when we are down and lifted us up and they are a part of us in so many ways. In ‘’Two Kinds’’ by Amy Tan, Ni Kan and her mother had a relationship like no other and will be explained in this essay. In the beginning of this short story it gives an explanation of what her mom believes the American dream is. She has lost all her family in china and now in America she wants to help her daughter achieve the American dream but her daughter is completely against what her mom wants. In the beginning of the story Ni Kan is excited to become a prodigy and she believes that

familiarity of her live in China for an uncertain future in America. By going to America, she

when Janet Wu was a little girl she didn't know she had family from his father's side. Her father move from china young so she grew up with a out a paternal family but when her father sent a letter to his family they find out that even though Janet grandfather died, her grandmother was still alive. Then she learn the bast different not only in language but in culture between her grandmother and her. Even if family is family that doesn’t mean that things can work out a person have to work to develop a bond.

In this cultural context, Amy Tan follows the historical trend and shows how different Chinese and American cultures are, taking mother-daughter bond, husband-wife dyad and sisterhood as vehicles to present the cultural conflicts, concerting these problematic relationship at the end and telling us how possible it is to reunite these two cultures. However, the cultural reconciliation in the real sense is not as simple as the human relationship. It is at most the writer’ and the readers’ beautiful wish. Or we can say there is still a long way to go before achieving the goal. The cross cultural schemata radicals the end result of the cultural diversities within the current society which of heredity will be connected with the conclusion of the study which empowers between two diverged societies correlative with own blood difficulties of mother –daughter relationship.