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Comparing Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club And Sherman Alexie

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Have you played puzzles where you have to find pieces to get a whole picture? Searching for oneself is like playing with puzzles; people look for pieces of themselves. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1989) and Sherman Alexie’s The absolutely True Dairy of a part-time Indian (2007), the protagonists of both book search for themselves in different ways. When Jing-mei is young she ignore her mother’s hopes, but as she grows up she finds herself by understanding those hopes of her mother; as for Junior he finds himself by searching the white-part within himself, however, both of them go on the journey not only physical, but also spiritual to find who they are and Jing-mei finds her Chinese part on the journey. By looking inside herself and …show more content…

Junior is from a poor Indian family. He has brain surgery when he was very little. One day after he finds there is no future in the reservation, he decides to go to a school in Reardan where is full of white children. After a year studies in Reardan “I realized that, sure I was a Spokane Indian, I belonged to that tribe … And to the tribe of basketball players. And to the tribe of bookworms”(Alexie 217). Junior leaves his home, his family and his best friend to go to study in a new environment. In the basketball game with reservation, Junior has to compete with Rowdy face to face, and he is so afraid that he throw out before the game begins. But Junior still helps his team win the game that even Rowdy dose not believe Junior dose it. Junior finds another piece of him through facing fears. In class Junior becomes good friend with Gordy who is a genius and an outsider of the class. They both love reading books and they form a tribe of only two of them. In the following year, they study together and learn new knowledge together. Studying with Gordy shows Junior the joy of learning and expressing his ideas which lead Junior closer to his dream. Communicating with Gordy, Junior sees more of the world and he knows besides alcohol and poorness there are many interesting things in the world. Therefore, the missing pieces

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