societies. Cultural encounter is also defined as the cultural identities and symbolic figurative and interpretational forms through an international and global perception. The concept of cultural encounters is explained and illustrated in the literature as the dynamic perception of culture. Cultural encounter concept is planned to deal with all the varieties of this cultural phenomenon including the communication between cultures in place and time, the interactions between people, the dialogue and conversations between them, the conflict between the people of one culture in another culture. This essay will analyses and demonstrate how the concept of cultural encounter treated in fiction in general and in the short story ‘In Cuba I was a German …show more content…
She focuses the novel around four Chinese immigrant families who have made the move to San Francisco.
The Joy Luck Club is a novel written by Amy Tan that focuses on four Chinese immigrant families starting a new life in San Francisco. The four families charter a club known as the Joy Luck Club and begin playing the Chinese native game of Mahjong. The author, Amy Tan, attempts to highlight the tender connection between mothers and daughters. Tan structures the book into four sections, like a mahjong game, and the story unfolds as the ladies share their stories in vignettes. The author does an outstanding job of discussing and illustrating the cultural diaspora and conflicts in this outstanding novel.
• The four Chinese mothers who immigrate to America are in search of a better life. They are in search of a better life, not only for themselves, but for their children as well. The book is centered on San Francisco in the 1970s. The four women who form the Joy Club Club are Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair. Each week they raise money and eat special ethnic Chinese foods that they hope will bring them good
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The second type is represented in the values encountering between one culture and another. In fact, there are various racial, regional, and national sub-cultures which share characteristics with other subcultures but are defined by their own behaviors. The short story ‘In Cuba I was a German Shepherd’ demonstrates the cultural encounter theme in an effect way as it narrates that four elderly men, two Cuban and two Dominican, meet in a Miami park to play dominoes. The short story explained to the readers that how the cultures are encountered and involved. Ann Menendez explains in her short story ‘In Cuba I was a German Shepherd’ the status of a Cuban in exile with humor and with lovely descriptions of a summer storm in Havana, of a baseball game on a scalding hot day and illustrates how the immigrants lost their dreams whereas they have lived a very bad life. Such feeling makes the Cuban immigrants feel exasperated. The conflicting values are very clear in the short story as encounter in which the cultural and racial supremacy is customized. Such racial supremacy is clear in the short story from the discrimination. This discrimination is demonstrated clearly by the characters of the story as they feel worried and they feel as if they are
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
Adaptation is the adjustment to one's surrounding conditions. Many animals experience this through physical and behavioral changes based on new obstacles they may face in their environments. They could be surrounded by new species of predatory animals or sources of food that require a new set of skills. Similarly, this can be experienced by humans as well. When a person finds themself in a new place they may need to change in order to survive. In Amy Tan’s fiction novel, The Joy Luck Club, immigrant Chinese mothers share their life stories from back in China, their journies to the states, and the relationships with their American born daughters. They learn a new language, society and overall way of life. However, assimilation into the American culture dramatically separates the connection between the mother’s and their daughters. The mother’s lost themselves on their way to the United States and must deal with the negative realities of their American born children, and see their daughters drifting further away from their culture.
Amy Tan’s short story “A Pair of Tickets,” has June May crossing an ocean to visit her family that she has never met, where she connects with her Chinese heritage in a way she was never able to before. On her trip, she discovers the depth and importance of her culture through her family members. The main character, June May, is a woman of Chinese heritage, from San Francisco, California. Growing up in the United States, in a very American environment, June May feels as though she never truly understood what it meant to be Chinese. As she soon learns, however, June May realizes that through her own family she can connect with the heritage that bonds them all together.
Four Chinese mothers have migrated to America. Each hope for their daughter’s success and pray that they will not experience the hardships faced in China. One mother, Suyuan, imparts her knowledge on her daughter through stories. The American culture influences her daughter, Jing Mei, to such a degree that it is hard for Jing Mei to understand her mother's culture and life lessons. Yet it is not until Jing Mei realizes that the key to understanding who her
Traditions, heritage and culture are three of the most important aspects of Chinese culture. Passed down from mother to daughter, these traditions are expected to carry on for years to come. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, daughters Waverly, Lena, Rose and June thoughts about their culture are congested by Americanization while on their quests towards self-actualization. Each daughter struggles to find balance between Chinese heritage and American values through marriage and professional careers.
In the Joy Luck Club, the author Amy Tan, focuses on mother-daughter relationships. She examines the lives of four women who emigrated from China, and the lives of four of their American-born daughters. The mothers: Suyuan Woo, An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-Ying St. Clair had all experienced some life-changing horror before coming to America, and this has forever tainted their perspective on how they want their children raised. The four daughters: Waverly, Lena, Rose, and Jing-Mei are all Americans. Even though they absorb some of the traditions of Chinese culture they are raised in America and American ideals and values. This inability to communicate and the clash
In The Joy Luck Club, the chapter "Waiting Between the Trees" illustrates major concerns facing Chinese-American women. Chinese culture is a male dominated culture that leaves women little freedom. Their only job is to make their male spouses content. Living with their traditional culture in American society, Chinese-American
Over there nobody will look down on her, because I will make her speak only perfect American English. And over there she will always be too full to swallow any sorrow! She will know my meaning because I will give her this swan- a creature that became more than what was hoped for.” (Tan 1) The culture in China the mothers of Joy Luck dealt with was unlike anything their daughters could ever imagine or appreciate. Between the mothers Lindo, Suyuan, An-mei and Ying-ying, the Chinese culture forced them into being married by a matchmaker, giving up babies, witness desperate attempts to save loved ones, and having an abortion. In many ways the Chinese culture scared each woman, although they were proud of their heritage, their daughters deserved better. These four mothers had very high hopes for the better lives that they wanted to give their daughters by raising them in America. They didn’t like or want to have their daughters looked down upon, just because they were Chinese women. From each of their own experiences, they learned that they wanted to improve the lives of their following generation.
Sui Sin Far’s short story, “In the Land of the Free” touches on the reality of being a Chinese immigrant in late-19th century America. The story revolves around a Chinese couple. The husband is ready for his wife, Lae Choo, to arrive from China with their new son, later named Kim. However, due to policies on immigration, the American government was forced to take possession of the child due to a lack of paperwork. However, Far’s short-story has a deeper meaning than just focusing on unfair immigration policies. She takes advantage of the story’s ending to symbolize a rejection of immigrant culture, most especially Chinese immigrant culture, by taking advantage of Kim’s change in behaviors, appearance, and dialect.
The Joy Luck Club contain stories about conflicts between Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-raised daughters. The book mainly talked About Jing-mei's trip to China to meet her half-sisters, Chwun Yu and Chwun Hwa. Jing-mei's mother, Suyuan, was forced to leave her twin babies on the roadside during her flee from the Japanese invasion of Kweilin. Suyuan intended to recover her children, but she failed to find them before her death. Finally, a after her mother's life long search her mother received a letter from the two "lost" daughters. After Suyuan's death, her mothers' three friends in the Joy Luck Club, a weekly mahjong party that Suyuan started in China and later revived in San Francisco, urge Jing-mei to travel to China and tell her sisters about their mother's life. But Jing-mei wonders whether she is capable of telling her mother's story. Lindo, Ying-ying, and
The story shows the reader that June May had a misconstrued meaning of being a Chinese descendant because her mentality of a perfect American society and normal social structure which is full of prejudice and stereotypical environment has beclouded her thinking that Chinese culture is good. After learning of her mother’s past that made her realize the sufferings caused by war between japan and China and what led to her mother abandoning her half-sisters, she gears more to meeting with them and other family members in order to clear the many questions echoing in her head. Being a Chinese to her after seeing all her past judgment made her realize that China is her country that possess her family and her clan, it is obvious that being an American, a Chinese or Spanish does not change one’s personality or orientation but understanding the culture and identifying with it will instill a
First of all, the setting of this novel contributes to the Rivera family’s overall perception of what it means to be an American. To start this off, the author chooses a small American city where groups of Latino immigrants with their own language and traditions, lived together in the same apartment building. All these immigrants experienced similar problems since they moved from their countries. For example, in the novel after every other chapter the author
Amy Tan's immensely popular novel, The Joy Luck Club explores the issues faced by first and second generation Chinese immigrants, particularly mothers and daughters. Although Tan's book is a work of fiction, many of the struggles it describes are echoed in Maxine Hong Kingston's autobiographical work, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. The pairs of mothers and daughters in both of these books find themselves separated along both cultural and generational lines. Among the barriers that must be overcome are those of language, beliefs and customs, and geographic loyalty. The gulf between these women is sadly acknowledged by Ying-ying St. Clair when she says of
In the mid 19th century, America was viewed as a hotspot for freedom and wealth. When the noise of the gold rush flooded the world, immigrants started to see America more appetizing than ever. The Chinese saw America as a place to have a fresh start and as a place of refuge because of it’s generosity, so they immigrated to the west in great numbers. There was a large Chinese population in Virginia and all along the Pacific coast. Writers Mark Twain and Maxine Hong Kingston both wrote in great detail about the Chinese Immigrants. They went into detail about the immigrants and how they came over and why. Although Twain and Kingston both wrote about the immigrants in a positive light, Twain was sympathetic of the immigrants and Kingston focused more on their image and her ancestors.
The theme of cultural encounter is highly expressed in her short story “In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd.” In this essay I will try to explore this theme in this short story by referring to the way the author presents the theme of cultural encounters, the role of narration in conveying this theme, the role of the setting of the story in creating the context of the theme, and how memories play an