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Amy Tan A Pair Of Tickets Summary

Decent Essays

For this week’s discussion, I choose to write on “A Pair of Tickets” by Amy Tan, because I felt connected and drawn to the emotion’s expressed throughout. I was sad to learn of the tragic story of Tan’s mother and older twin sisters. I was relieved to know of the reunion they had, and how this trip helped Tan embrace her ethnicity by accepting her Chinese identity. On her journey to meet her lost older sisters, the setting changes throughout the story aiding in the transformation of June May to Jing-mei. A glimpse of the early signs signifying this transformation, is when Tan tells us her experience when going through customs. She describes how different she currently looked and compared herself to the photo of her in the passport. In the story, …show more content…

By comparing her American self to her now becoming Chinese self, is the first indicators she shares of the changes happening to her. Another sign of the change Tan goes through is mentally, and shows her acceptance of who she is. When hearing her father and Aiyi talking about her mother and the tail of her lost siblings, she becomes curious and joins them; wanting to know who were her sisters. She asks various questions hoping to answer newly formed notion regarding them, this included wanting to know their real names; in hopes to form a bond. Tan then goes on to state, “What does ‘Jing-mei’ mean?” (289). This is the turning point of the story, finally Tan shows interest not only in her culture, but also about her family, and how she is longing to belong to both. As we continued to read, subtle but meaningful changes begin. An example of this would be when asking her father to tell the story in their native language. This and other instances prove how the setting helped the transformation of June May to Jing-mei.
The comparisons made in “A Pair of Tickets”, between the Chinese and the American culture show how similar they are, and how dissimilar they are too. The point of showing us the similarities, was to express it was not just being in a different

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