The opening line of “The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu introduces a looming sense of sadness and trauma: “One of my earliest memories starts with me sobbing” (Liu 178). Liu presents a narrative in which trauma is passed on from generation to generation, asserting its existence as an intentional inheritance. Through the loss of Chinese culture and the culture’s inevitability, Jack and his family fall victim to the cyclical suffering that can only be lessened through a balancing act of backgrounds. In the moments leading up to, during and after Jack reads his mother’s bleak letter, Liu constructs a paper chain of trauma, urging his characters to marry opposing ethnicities. Liu establishes a biological depth and innateness to Jack and his mother’s …show more content…
Her ability to balance her Chinese-American identity is completely dependent on his participation in the two spheres and through Jack’s rejection of his mother and Chinese identity, he ensures the suffering of them both. Just as Jack’s father becomes a physical manifestation of American culture for his mother, his mother becomes the embodiment of their shared Chinese-ness that is demonstrated in her letter’s line: “Why won’t you talk to me, son? The pain makes it hard to write” (192). He does not talk to his mother because he wants nothing to do with his Chinese self, preventing the balance of two heritages in both their lives and perpetuating the cyclical trauma present in their lineage. With his mother gone, the representation of his Chinese heritage shifts onto the woman who reads the letter to him, resulting in the shame he feels after the letter’s reading finishes: “The young woman handed the paper back to me. I could not bear to look into her face” (192). “The Paper Menagerie” functions as Ken Liu’s cautionary tale. Trauma ebbs and flows through the lives of the short story’s characters, with as much ease as a poisonous snake to its unsuspecting prey. The misfortune endured by Jack and his family is heavy and bordering on sentimentalist, saved only by Liu’s evident meaning behind the extremism. Through intense and generational trauma, Liu invokes an inescapable quality to one’s own heritage.
Thru-out the centuries, regardless of race or age, there has been dilemmas that identify a family’s thru union. In “Hangzhou” (1925), author Lang Samantha Chang illustrates the story of a Japanese family whose mother is trapped in her believes. While Alice Walker in her story of “Everyday Use” (1944) presents the readers with an African American family whose dilemma is mainly rotating around Dee’s ego, the narrator’s daughter. Although differing ethnicity, both families commonly share the attachment of a legacy, a tradition and the adaptation to a new generation. In desperation of surviving as a united family there are changes that they must submit to.
A Pair of Tickets”, by Amy Tan, is a brief narrative about the conscience and reminiscence of a young Chinese American woman, Jing-Mei, who is on a trip to China to meet her two half-sisters for the first time in her life. Amy Tan is an author who uses the theme of Chinese-American life, converging primarily on mother-daughter relationships, where the mother is an emigrant from China and the daughter is fully Americanized --yellow on the surface and white underneath. In this story, the mother tries to communicate rich Chinese history and legacy to her daughter, but she is completely ignorant of their heritage. At the opening of the story "A Pair of Tickets" Jandale Woo and her father are on a train, the are destined for China. Their first stop will be Guangzhou, China where father will reunite with his long lost aunt. After visiting with her for a day they plan to take a plane to Shanghai, China where Jandale meets her two half-sisters for the first time. It is both a joyful time and yet a time of contrition, Jandale has come to China to find her Chinese roots that her mother told ...
China Men - The Brother in Vietnam & nbsp; In her tale, "The Brother in Vietnam," author Maxine Hong Kingston relates the drastic misinterpretation of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" on the part of the "brother's" students. It is clear to the reader that their disillusioned thoughts and ideas of the world were instilled in their vulnerable minds by their own parents at young ages, an occurrence that still takes place in our society today. In his account of the situation, the brother first clearly makes a note that these confused and suspicious students comprise not one of his elementary classes, but rather his only non-remedial class. From this he is evidently implying that one would expect a heightened ability to understand and more accurately analyze the power and beauty of great literature on the part of the students. Thus from the beginning, the reader is alerted to the fact that their confusion the students perceive this Shakespearean tragedy as a horror story, the mere thought of it shadowed in their minds by fear. They see the Montagues and Capulets as families driven mad; Verona as a plague-infested country where killing and marriage take place in dark regions alike. They infer from it that young love is dangerous, and by reading of a suicide made possible by a potion that was initially intended to preserve tender love instead of stealing it, their notions that there is evil in everything seem The brother, frustrated and upset, is unable to "shift the emphasis" that the play has left on these youths, and he feels that he is to blame for "spoil[ing] the love story for a generation of students. " The reader looking on from the outside, however, is able to see that the brother could not have prevented this warped learning no matter how hard he tried. For it seems that the fault lies in the parents of these young people, who were continually planting seeds of suspicion and fear in their children's vulnerable minds. In fact, as we look back on the author's former accounts as a child, it seems that these Chinese parents told their children lies more often than the actual truth. told by her mother that their religion was Chinese. She further remembers her parents having claimed upon the birth of her younger brother, which she had secretly witnessed, that the infant had been miraculously discovered "naked under a pine tree" on Christmas Day. Still perhaps the most disturbing of all is the author's recollection of the war through the eyes of her younger self. Her memories are uncannily realistic and vivid; nevertheless, she was, on more than one occasion, told by her mother that what as a young girl. However, to any reader, it is evident that these are not, and can in no way be mere "scary movie flashbacks." As a result, we are left asking ourselves why any parent would teach their children what they know is untrue. In the case of a war, it is somewhat easier to comprehend the desperation of parents to hold their families together from the tearing claws of battle. And if it will prove to be the only glue that will preserve the family structure, such lying seems more acceptable.
In Fish Cheeks a girl named Amy had a crush on an american boy named Robert, she was afraid that if Robert found out about her chinese culture then he would not like her back. When she found out that he was invited over for dinner Amy was devastated “When I found out that my parents had invited
Most critiques of The Good Earth are preoccupied with the authentic quality of the novel, and while the Western critiques praise it as a novel based on facts, the Chinese hold a different view. Kang Younghill, a Chinese man, in reference to the image Pearl Buck created of China, stated that "it is discouraging to find that the novel works toward confusion, not clarification" (Kang 368). This statement illuminates Kang's feelings that the details, which Buck had presented as factual in the novel, were contrary to the actual life of the Chinese. Yet researches have shown that Buck was rightly informed and presented her information correctly. One detail that she paid special attention to was the family structure within the rural Chinese family, which she presented in the form of the Wang Lung household. The family structure demonstrated by Buck is not restricted to the Wang Lung family, but was a part of every rural Chinese home in the early 1900s. Every member's experiences within the family structure are determined by the role and expectations placed on them by the society, and Buck was careful to include these experiences in Wang Lung's family.
One type of effect the Chinese mothers’ expectations has in their relationship with their “Americanized” daughter is negative since the mothers are unable to achieve anything. An-Mei Hsu expects her daughter to listen and obey as the young ones do in Chinese culture, but instead receives a rebellious and stubborn daughter, “‘You only have to listen to me.’ And I cried, ‘But Old Mr. Chou listens to you too.’ More than thirty years later, my mother was still trying to make me listen’” (186-187). Instead of the circumstances improving, the mother is never able to achieve anything; her forcing and pushing her daughter to the Chinese culture goes to a waste. They are both similar in this sense because both are stubborn; the daughter learns to be stubborn through American culture and wants to keep herself the way she is, whereas the mother wants to remove this teaching from American culture and does not give u...
Similarly, Wong also grew up in America with a traditional Chinese mother. In contrast, Wong’s upbringing involves her mother forcing her into attending two different schools. After her American school day, Wong continues on with Chinese school to learn both cultures. Her mother felt it was her duty to “[. . .] learn the language of [her] heritage” (Wong 144). This puts a burden on Wong as she starts to despise the Chinese culture.
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, I have faced the same issues that the daughter has been through in the story.
The second and third sections are about the daughters' lives, and the vignettes in each section trace their personality growth and development. Through the eyes of the daughters, we can also see the continuation of the mothers' stories, how they learned to cope in America. In these sections, Amy Tan explores the difficulties in growing up as a Chinese-American and the problems assimilating into modern society. The Chinese-American daughters try their best to become "Americanized," at the same time casting off their heritage while their mothers watch on, dismayed. Social pressures to become like everyone else, and not to be different are what motivate the daughters to resent their nationality. This was a greater problem for Chinese-American daughters that grew up in the 50's, when it was not well accepted to be of an "ethnic" background.
Throughout the centuries, regardless of race or age, there have been dilemmas that identify a family’s thru union. In “Hangzhou” (1925), author Lang Samantha Chang illustrates the story of a Japanese family whose mother is trapped in her beliefs. While Alice Walker in her story “Everyday Use” (1944) presents the readers with an African American family whose dilemma is mainly revolving around Dee’s ego, the narrator’s daughter. Although exibiting different ethnicity, the reader should meditate that both families commonly share the attachment of a legacy, a tradition and the adaptation to a new generation.
The scene is always the same: the three of us sitting in a room together, talking. I see her from the corner of my eye, glancing for only a second or two, but always long enough to notice the look on her face, the expression I’ve become so painfully familiar with over the years. I am forced to turn away; the conversation resumes. She is a few feet from us. She hears everything, and understands nothing except what she can gather from the expressions on our faces, the tone of our voices. She pretends not to be bothered, smiling at us and interjecting random questions or comments in Chinese—a language I was raised to speak, a language I’ve slowly forgotten over the years, a language that is now mine only by blood. It is an earnest but usually futile attempt to break through the invisible barrier that separates her from us, and in spite of all her efforts to hide it, that sad, contem...
Both novel and short story collection reflect the fear of a past being unexplored and left behind. They express deep concern about a lost generation of Chinese-Americans and look desperately for the ignored, shut out past as a result.
America was not everything the mothers had expected for their daughters. The mothers always wanted to give their daughters the feather to tell of their hardships, but they never could. They wanted to wait until the day that they could speak perfect American English. However, they never learned to speak their language, which prevented them from communicating with their daughters. All the mothers in The Joy Luck Club had so much hope for their daughters in America, but instead their lives ended up mirroring their mother’s life in China. All the relationships had many hardships because of miscommunication from their different cultures. As they grew older the children realized that their ...
“Paper Menagerie,” by Ken Liu, is an emotional story of a selfish son and his interactions with his out-of-place mother, who had immigrated from Asia to be his father’s wife. Jack is a half-Chinese, half-American boy who lives in Connecticut. In the beginning of the story, he is very attached to his mother, but certain incidents with other kids make him want to be as distant as possible from his Chinese mom. He demands that his mom converts to being a “normal” white American mom and that he and his family should give up all Asian customs. This beautiful story shows that selfishly basing your actions on the need to fit in can harm yourself and others.
“Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested our strengths to establish realities”(5). In the book “The Woman Warrior,” Maxine Kingston is most interested in finding out about Chinese culture and history and relating them to her emerging American sense of self. One of the main ways she does so is listening to her mother’s talk-stories about the family’s Chinese past and applying them to her life.