Amy Tan, an accomplished Chinese-American author, is well-known for her incorporation of her Chinese heritage into her works of literature.
Amy Ruth Tan was born to John and Daisy Tan on February 19, 2952 (“Amy Tan Biography”). Although Amy Tan’s parents were both born in China, she was American born. Daisy Tan was born to a wealthy family in Shanghai, China. John Tan, on the other hand, was an electrical engineer and Baptist minister. Amy Tan’s parents met in a dangerous decade of the 1940’s in China while battles were being fought on all fronts. John Tan was working for the United States Information Service during WWII, which made it fairly easy for him to escape China for the U.S. when the war ended. Daisy Tan, however, was not as fortunate; she had been imprisoned. She escaped in 1949 right before the Communist takeover; she left on the last boat to deport from Shanghai to the U.S. Shortly after Daisy arrived in the U.S., her and John Tan arranged to be married. Amy Tan’s parents had two other children besides her; they were John Jr. and Peter Tan. The Tan clan moved around many times while Amy Tan was growing up, finally settling in Santa Clara, California (Chatfield-Taylor 190).
Growing up in California, Tan continued to embrace the typical values of Americans. She had taken on American values as her own identity, completely ignoring most of her Chinese heritage. In fact, young Amy Tan would answer her mother’s Chinese questions in English (Miller 1162). Teenage Amy Tan lost both her father and sixteen-year-old brother to brain tumors. Soon after that, she learned that she had two half-sisters in China from her mother’s first marriage (“Amy Tan Biography”). In 1987, Tan made a trip to China to meet those very same ...
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...Despite the difficulties Winnie went through while she was younger, she appears to be a strong woman in America. The novel suggests that perhaps this is because she has learned from her past and had to recreate her ideas about women in America (“SparkNotes” Par 6). Yet another theme in The Kitchen God’s Wife is the tension between fate and self-determination. The ideas of luck, fate, and destiny are constantly being tried against the ideas of self-determination, free choice, and will. Winnie’s life is full of choices, and these very choices are what causes her to be become such a strong woman (“SparkNotes” Par 7). Winnie recreates her life in America, which sheds another shard of light on the idea of self-determination over the idea of fate. She chose to recreate herself, and she had to make it happen; fate played no hand in her becoming (“SparkNotes” Par 8).
Amy Tan 's novel, The Joy Luck Club, explores the relationships and experiences of four Chinese mothers with that of their four Chinese-American daughters. The differences in the upbringing of those women born around the 1920’s in China, and their daughters born in California in the 80’s, is undeniable. The relationships between the two are difficult due to lack of understanding and the considerable amount of barriers that exist between them.
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 ...
Kerry Wade’s essay titled: “The Restoration of Voice in The Kitchen God’s Wife” is a literary criticism based upon Amy Tan’s fiction novel The Kitchen God’s Wife. She asserts that Winnie is able to escape the hardships of a patriarchal society and reshape her identity as she transitions from her past into her present life through the act of speaking up. Wade refutes this by first introducing Wen Fu’s dominance which acquaints Winnie’s oppressed silence, then by disclosing Winnie gaining a voice through Jimmie, and finally, by displaying what Pearl’s reaction is along with what she identifies her mother as after listening to the narration of her life story.
...the end when she seeks vengeance on his behalf. Winnie played the roles of wife, shopkeeper, sister, and daughter but was really only being a sister. By the end of the novel, Winnie is more of a secret agent that her husband, because she is the one with secrets that are not uncovered until the end. She enters a loveless marriage for the sake of her family, assuming the role of “wife” so that she can provide food and shelter for her brother and mother. Despite her not being able to successfully complete her mission, she still eliminates her target after his interference—which is the actions of a true secret agent.
In the essay, Tan demonstrates: “Lately, I’ve been giving more thought to the kind of English my mother speaks.” “When I was growing up, my mother’s limited English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English.” “Fortunately, I later decided I should envision a reader for the stories I would write. And the reader I decided upon was my mother, because these were stories about mothers. So with this reader in mind, I began to write stories using all the Englishes I grew up with: the English I spoke to my mother, the English she used with me, my translation of her Chinese, and what I imagined to be her translation of her Chinese. I wanted to capture what language ability tests can never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech, and the nature of her thoughts.” So in this quote, it explains how she learned to accept her mother’s broken English and how they have benefited her. In this paragraph, we learned how Amy Tan conveys acceptance in her mother’s broken
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.
Amy Tan used symbolism to reveal the cultures and how it interacted with the conflict of the story. One example was she used the game of chess as more than just a game. She illustrated it as a game of life and a way of her adaptation into her new American culture. This was demonstrated when Waverly’s mother read the rules of chess but did not understand them. Mrs. Lindo said, “Every time people come out from foreign country, must know rules… They say, don’t know why, you find out yourself” (502). This quote demonstrated the culture gap in the family, because the mother grew up with Chinese beliefs. Symbolically, when they received the American game of chess for Christmas they were excited and
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.
Amy Tan's "A Pair of Tickets," especially, explores the relationship of setting to place, heritage, and ethnic identity. Jing-Mei Woo, the main character, has trouble accepting that she is Chinese, despite her heritage. Jing-Mei Woo believed, at fifteen, that she had no Chinese whatsoever below her skin. If anything, she perceives herself as Caucasian; even her Caucasian friends agreed that she "was as Chinese as they were." Her mother, however, told her differently, "It's in your blood, waiting to be let go." This terrified Jing-Mei, making her believe that it would cause her to suddenly change, "I saw myself transforming like a werewolf." Jing-Mei Woo finally realizes that she has never really known what it means to be Chinese because she was born and has lived in America all her life. After her mother's death, Jing-Mei discovers that she has two twin sisters living in China who have been searching for their mother and that s...
...isfied and complained about her situation instead of exuding a pleasing and pleasant attitude. She was opinionated and stood up for herself instead of being the submissive and blindly following her men. By noting these contradictions to the expectations of the 1960s housewife, Barthelme successfully exposed the limitations of gender roles throughout the novel. Snow White is used as a demonstration of gender roles in a post modernistic work.
Tan even sets the feminist mood with the title of the book, which refers to a woman in Chinese mythology who cared for a selfish man who became a minor god. She pulls from her own life experiences, relatives, and emotions to write this story, a factor that probably contributes to the realness of the plot and the roundness of the characters. Tan's mother's previous marriage to an abusive man, her father's death, and her loving relationship with her relatives (specifically her mother) all show themselves in the intricately woven story of a mother named Winnie, and a daughter named Pearl, and their struggles as Chinese-American women. Much of this story stems from Tan's love for her own mother, Daisy Ching, who gave birth to the brilliant Amy in 1952 in California. Daisy Ching, a great inspiration for this novel, has a vividly detailed recollection of her life in China, which she shares with her daughter.
Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club 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.
“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.
Amy was born in Enfield, London, in England September 14, 1983. She was raised into a culturally jewish family, but they didn’t consider themselves religious. Amy’s mother was Janis Winehouse, she was a pharmacist. Her father was Mitchell Winehouse. He was a part-time taxi driver. Amy also had an older sibling, Alex. He helped his mother around the house with Amy, at the young age of only four. Growing up in Southgate was rough for Amy and Alex. Amy’s uncles who were professional jazz musicians, she wanted to follow in their footsteps.
Tan was born to a pair of Chinese immigrants. Her mother understood English extremely well, but the English she spoke was “broken.”(36) Many people not familiar with her way of speaking found it very difficult to understand her. As a result of this, Tan would have to pretend to be her mother, and she called people up to yell at them while her mother stood behind her and prompted her. This caused Tan to be ashamed of her mother throughout her youth, but as she grew, she realized that the language she shares with her mother is a “language of intimacy” (36) that she even uses when speaking with her husband.