Amy Tan Literary Analysis
Amy Tan: The Interweaving of Her Life and Her Writing What inspires writers to create their masterpieces is interesting to know. Very often, many novels and stories are influenced or inspired by different events and aspects that their authors have in life. An Asian-American novelist and storyteller Amy Tan is not an exception. Amy Ruth Tan (or her Chinese name En-mei) was born in the family of Chinese immigrants February 19, 1952, in Oakland, California, and she spent her childhood and youth in the San Francisco Bay area (“Amy Tan”, Newsmakers). After several major changings, Amy Tan decided to be a writer and began her writing career in 1987. About two years later, she wrote her first novel The Joy Luck Club which immediately became …show more content…
Amy Tan incorporated this special mother-daughter bond in her story “Best Quality” and took Jing-Mei’s place as a daughter. The story tells about a mother Suyuan who just like Daisy wanted her daughter to be an outstanding person and a daughter Jing-Mei who like Amy wants to write and live her American life. At the story, Jing-Mei, her mother, and the Jongs family are having Chinese New Year dinner at which Suyuan serves crabs cooked by herself, and after finishing eating those crabs, guests start having conversations with each other. Later, Waverly Jong, who is the same age as Jing-Mei, and Jing-Mei argues about the work that Jing-Mei did for Waverly’s tax company. At the end of this argument, Suyuan takes Waverly’s place and supports her opinion on Jing-Mei’s lack of style and poor writing skills; Suyuan agrees that her daughter is not sophisticated enough as Waverly who is a very successful tax attorney (Tan 197-207). As it can be seen, Amy Tan felt that she was not sophisticated enough because she did not become a neurosurgeon like her mother wanted. In the story, all Chinese mothers wanted their Chinese-American daughters to become doctors or businessmen and to be better than others. When Jing-Mei and Waverly were little, Suyuan wanted her daughter to be like Waverly, and there always was competition between them. Even though they are both grown women now, the …show more content…
All of it helped her to create this magnificent story which gives the reader a chance to feel how it was to be an Asian-American woman and deal with hardships of life. Often, great stories and novels are inspired by
Raisin In The Sun Literary Analysis
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Compare And Contrast Sarah Winnemucca And Zora Neale Hurston
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Identity By Amy
728 Words | 3 PagesHowever, when Amy learns that his family is coming to dinner, she cries. During the dinner, she is embarrassed because of her loud and rude chinese relatives and the particular Chinese menu that her mother had prepared. She only realizes many years later that “For Christmas Eve that year, she had chosen all my favorite foods,” (1). In this realization, Amy Tan learns that her
Monkey Bridge Character Analysis
1271 Words | 6 PagesThe experiences related and recorded in the novels The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao, and Obasan by Joy Kogawa give great insight to the internal and external struggles East-Asian immigrants face in the Western World, specifically Chinese-Americans, Vietnamese-Americans, and Japanese-Canadians. Although the situations have certainly improved since the mid twentieth century, many of the issues and struggles the characters in the novels face are still real and ever-expanding for over five percent of the U.S. population. To
Mothers And Daughters In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club
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Foreshadowing In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club
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Tan's Miscommunication
656 Words | 3 PagesAmy Tan uses Jing-mei and her mother Suyaun to show that communication is important when she wrote “‘You want me to be someone I’m not…I’ll never be the kind of daughter you want me to be!’”(Tan 153). The reason that this quote is important Is because Jing-mei and Suyuan didn't have a strong relationship and it was because of arguments similar to this. She also shows that communication is important when she wrote “‘Only you pick that crab. Nobody else take it. I already know this.
Character Analysis: The Bean Trees By Barbara Kingsolver
1615 Words | 7 PagesIn the story “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, Jing-mei’s mother thinks America is the Land of Opportunity. She has high hopes that her daughter will become a prodigy. She is not yet sure what her daughter's talents is, but she tries multiple careers to lead her down a successful path. First, Mrs.Woo tries to form her into an actress, but that doesn't work, so she tries to intellectually challenge her by taking small test excerpts from popular magazines she stole from her housecleaning job, but that idea also fails. She finally decides that she will trade housecleaning services for Jing-Mei’s piano lessons from Mr. Chong, an elderly piano teacher who is deaf and eyes are too weak to tell when Jing-Mei is playing the wrong notes.
Summary Of Two Kinds By Amy Tan
1159 Words | 5 PagesAmy Tan’s “Two Kinds,” written in 1989, captures the relationship of a mother and daughter from China that has just relocated to America. So, in the beginning of the short story Tan expresses the mother’s beliefs of America by saying “my mother believed you could be anything you wanted in America” (Tan, Two Kinds, www.rtsd.org). then going into examples such as “You could open a restaurant. You could work for the government and get good retirement and of course, you can be a prodigy, too” (Tan, Two Kinds, www.rtsd.org).
Jing-Mei Where She Stands Analysis
822 Words | 4 PagesJing-Mei: Where She Stands Amy Tan tells us her story through Jing-Mei, a first generation Chinese American, who is trying to find her social standing, in Two Kinds. I think that through the clash of cultures within her household Jing-Mei comes to find she here place in life. She grows up to be “Americanized” since American cultural values are different to Chinese values she chooses to be more of an American child than a Chinese one.
Compare And Contrast Tan And Hurston
1409 Words | 6 PagesTan expresses the life experiences of Chinese immigrants to the United States and attempts to depict the relationship of a mother and daughter through her significant piece of writing ‘The Joy Club’. Therefore, all these authors somehow portrayed their early struggles and their view point towards life from their literary
Amy Tan Two Kinds Literary Analysis
1066 Words | 5 PagesThis disagreement quickly became a source of resentment and anger for both of them, but Jing-Mei and her mother were unable to resolve this conflict because of their different backgrounds and experiences. The story showcases how relationships between mothers and daughters can be strained because of differences in culture and a lack of communication. One of the difficulties between Jing-Mei and her mother is their different cultural backgrounds, which is supported by two points from the story. Firstly, Jing-Mei and her mother both disagreed on the opportunities that existed in America. According to Singer, Amy Tan uses “two entirely
The Development Of The American Dream In 'Two Kinds'
1399 Words | 6 PagesChong for piano lessons and practice, in expectation of complete success at a talent show. As a result of her ignorance, Jing-Mei dwindles in her rigorously long hours confined to the piano bench, and in rebellion to her mother’s irrational standards, performs egregiously. Shortly after the incident, mother and daughter quarrel ferociously and disown the family ties. Nothing mends until years later, when Jing-Mei’s mother offers her the very piano she had practiced on in her miserable childhood, symbolizing peace between the jostled family that had never been set right. In the realistic short story “Two Kinds by Amy Tan, Jing-Mei’s mother does not allow Jing-Mei to stay true to herself by forcing her to take challenging tests, pushing her to play piano, and arguing about what kind of daughter
Joy Luck Club Mother Daughter Relationship
1177 Words | 5 PagesOne dynamic that false expectation strains is the relationship between Suyuan and her daughter Jing-Mei. In a vignette told from the perspective of the latter, Suyuan has the notion that Jing-Mei should be able to perform something at the level of a prodigy. She begins
Two Kinds Character Analysis
937 Words | 4 PagesJing Mei, while portrayed as an obedient child, is only willing to listen to her mother to a certain extent. Throughout the story, it is consistently hinted that Jing Mei would eventually explode against her mother as an attempt to free herself from her mother’s chains. In addition, after the fiasco at the piano recital, she eventually derives further from her mother’s wishes as she “didn 't get straight A...didn 't become class president...didn 't get into Stanford...dropped out of college.” (54). On the flip side, Jing Mei’s mother is a stereotypical Chinese parent who is fully determined to ensure her daughter’s success in a new environment.
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