Vignette Number 1 Analysis

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

Lena Younger, the head of the family, and the mother of both Walter Lee and Beneatha encounters many struggles while attempting to achieve her American Dream of living an improved lifestyle with her family. Lena wants to own a house with a garden. She says; “I always wanted me a garden like I used to see sometimes at the back of the houses down home.” (I.i.53) The Younger family lives in an apartment where Lena is unable to have a garden of her own since she does not have a front or back yard. The Younger family is in financial turmoil, and they cannot afford to invest in a house. While talking to Travis, Lena says; "you know that money we got in the mail this morning...Well—what you think your grandmamma gone and done with that money...she went out and

Furthermore, the author explores the tone of the novel by providing specific details. In An-mei's childhood story, the author chooses to describe the pain An-mei feels as the soup pours over her by providing details of the twinge. She describes it as "the kind of pain [specially] terrible that a little child should never remember it" and how it still remains "in [An-mei's] skin's memory" (Tan 39). By depicting these details of the pain, Tan expresses the feeling of misery An-mei feels, which appends to the melancholy tone. Additionally, in the story of Ying-ying's first marriage, the author presents explicit details of the emptiness Ying-ying feels by portraying details of her as "a tiger that neither pounce[s] nor lay[s] waiting between the trees" and "an unseen spirit" (Tan 285). This emptiness Ying-ying feels seems to indicate the melancholy tone that appears noticeable in the novel. Clearly, the details Amy Tan chooses to describe in the novel seem to specify the somber tone.

The result of this education was a disaster due to the differences in values between the two cultures. Ying-Ying realized that her marriage was a mistake when her husband left her for another woman. Her love for him turned to hate and she killed her unborn baby. She felt great remorse for this and considered herself a murderer. She later remarried a gentleman by the name of St. Clair. With St. Clair she had a daughter. After her second son, which was her third child, died at birth, Ying-Ying had a mental breakdown. She saw his death as a punishment for the murdering her first son.

In the short story, "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan, a Chinese mother and daughter are at odds with each other. The mother pushes her daughter to become a prodigy, while the daughter (like most children with immigrant parents) seeks to find herself in a world that demands her Americanization. This is the theme of the story, conflicting values. In a society that values individuality, the daughter sought to be an individual, while her mother demanded she do what was suggested. This is a conflict within itself. The daughter must deal with an internal and external conflict. Internally, she struggles to find herself. Externally, she struggles with the burden of failing to meet her mother’s expectations. Being a first-generation Asian American,

In contrast, during the era of The Story Yingying, the cultural norm for a woman was to be submissive, patient, and passive. Yingying upheld all of these cultural standards. After meeting Zhang for the first time Yingying showed no interest in him at all but overtime Yingying finally gave into Zhang and fell in love and they became engaged. Unfortunately, Zhang had to leave for a year to go take a civil service examination, but he promised her he would come back to her. She waited patiently and after a year, her fiancé returned but shortly after had to leave again to retake the examination. Again she waited patiently for his return, but he never came back. After waiting for years for her fiancé to return, she became eager to

Lena revisits her ancestry after a terrorist attack in Jordan. When a voice beckons her for “the time to return home” she obeys. She had been called back “to the land of [her] ancestors” who “had tracked [her] down and [were] speaking” to her (Howe, 20). Lena’s mother had died in childbirth, leaving Lena an orphan. Ezol guides her to reconstruct the history of the Miko Kings: to “unwrap the team’s stories as one might open birthday gifts. Out of order, but with a gift for celebration” (Howe, 22). Ezol’s nightly stories allow Lena to reconstruct lost history, in which “time opens like a coffin”(Howe, 33).

In the chapter “Waiting Between the Trees” Ying-ying’s past in China that she has kept from her daughter is revealed. When she was young she believed that she was too good for any man, however eventually she realized she had to settle and married an indecent man, despite her being extremely vain. She had given up herself for this man, only for him to

Chapter one titled, “No Name Woman”, is an example of the narrator referring to her mother’s talk-stories and a prominent illustration of incorporating the past into the present. This talk- story is culturally based to express information about the past. In “No Name Women”, the narrator explains that her mother, Brave Orchid, would use the stories to give lessons on life that would stick with her children. She represents a bridge figure with one foot in the past, her Chinese culture that she relays on to the family and one foot in the present, her assimilation to American life. The bridge that Brave Orchid acts as brings together the two cultures and allows her to incorporate the family’s Chinese history into their present

In this time in China, the role that women and men had were very different from each other. Women were expected to be quite, obedient, and respectful. While men were the provider, the intellectual and the decision maker in the family. In Shen Fu and his wife, Yun marriage it started out like the typical relationship in eightieth century China, each one fulfilling the roles that society had in place for them. But as they became to know each other more, Shen Fu saw Yun real personality and wanted someone to experience life, so he started to encourage her to be herself and told her she didn’t have to live up to this gender stereotypes for women. They both were always

The biographical connection that the author “Amy Tan” draws in her short story “Two Kinds” with her main character Jing-mei, crosses in more than one side. First of all, they both are Chinese American whose struggle in their identities with their Chinese immigrant mothers. “Due to a cultural conflict and lack of proper understanding of each other’s perceptions” (Priya 1), and as a big gap developed between the two daughters and their two mothers, in which resulted a complex relationship between them.

As she recalls back on this time by telling her daughter what she calls her Kweilin story, Suyuan describes her feeling during this horrible time as “And inside I was no longer hungry for the cabbage or the turnips of the hanging rock garden. I could only see the dripping bowels of an ancient hill that might collapse on top of me. Can you imagine how it is, to want to be neither inside nor outside, to want to be nowhere and disappear?” (22) At this point in her life Suyuan was separated from her husband who is in the military and eventually is forced to abandon her two young daughters. This aspect of Suyuan’s life parallels the life of Amy Tan’s mother. Daisy tan was also married to a military man during the Chinese Civil War and like Suyuan was forced to abandon her two daughters in Shanghai. This was an experience that would affect her mother for the rest of her life and a story she would continue to tell and never forget. The life of Amy Tan is also a parallel to the life of Jing-Mei Woo of “June”. As a young girl June was forced to play the piano and practice constantly to become the best like Amy Tan was as a child. Along with playing the piano Suyuan also had high expectations for June as far as her future. She wanted her daughter to be the best in her class and go off to medical school to become a well educated doctor, the same expectation’s Amy Tan’s mother had for her. Both daughters decided to follow their dreams and

Throughout the story Jing-Mei tries to work up the courage to tell her mother how she really feels, but when that moment happens her mother was sad and closed the piano and didn't make Jing-Mei play again. In the end of the story Jing-Mei cleans her house after her mother dies and finally made peace with the piano, something that made her childhood horrible. The relationship with Jing-Mei and her mother was not good because she had a forceful mother that made her do stuff she didn't want to do, and Jing-Mei wanted to be her own person. in the second story "Catch the Moon" was also about the relationship between a kid who got into trouble and his dad. Luis had a rough life, his mother died a few years back and

"'Why do you have to use me to show off?'" (101). Waverly's bitterness increases the separation between mother and child. Jing-Mei doesn't believe her mother because her stories always change but she doesn't understand as Suyuan does that the details are unimportant. What's important in Chinese storytelling is the message. "I never thought my mother's Kweilin story was anything but a Chinese fairy tale. The endings always changed. Sometimes she said she used that worthless thousand-yuan not to buy a half-cup of rice" (12).

In the story the hardships Lena face such as being lonely in the city and having difficulty living as a native person in the city and the line “Nobody wanted them there” shows us that and these challenging experiences helped Lena realise that what she thought of her sense of self as living in the city was completely incorrect and she started to come to terms with that when she came back to the reserve and remising about her life at the reserve. People go through many changes in their life making them change their sense of