Lost Sister Poem Analysis

She jumped into the family well. We say that your father has all brothers because it is as if she had never been born. " These lines reveal the erasure of her aunt’s existence by her family in order restore honor for the actions of a woman who delineates from Chinese, patriarchal customs in the pursuit of love. The story of No Name Woman serves as a backdrop for Kingston 's own

As my essay will prove the split from one generation and the other relates to the process of Americanization that the daughters undergo, as well as the values and Chinese heritage that the mothers refuse to let go off. These factors will cause mutual suffering and in the end a generational gap between the two groups. The resulting generational gap animates the narrative, as mothers and daughters seek to appreciate each other, and their individual efforts diminish and contain the traumas depicted as precise of the maternal, Chinese culture. 1.

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston addresses prevalent topics faced in America today. How should women act? Should women be treated differently from men? In her memoir, Kingston faces many obstacles with her Chinese-American identity such as finding her voice as a young woman. In “White Tigers,” Kingston tells her own version of a popular Chinese ballad, “Fa Mu Lan,” while incorporating her own reality back into the section.

By providing context for the rest of the poetry book and through the use of stylistic features, Howe is able to enforce the idea of a spiritual journey. In order to fully understand the poem, one must understand the context. Sarah Howe grew up in a bicultural family with a Chinese mother and British father. While some would assume this meant she had equal exposure to both cultures, her Chinese heritage was suppressed as a result of racial bullying, leaving her identity elusive and uncertain.

“After losing everything in China…She never looked back with regret. ”(Chunk 1 ¶3). Jing-Mei’s mother is a Chinese immigrant with the typical ‘everything is better in America’ mindset. Jing-Mei, being raised in America, had more of an American mindset. “You want me to be someone i’m not…I’ll never be the daughter you want me to be!”

. . she was always waiting right around the bend with a new way to prove to me how little the whole thing mattered to her” (278). Sissy craves nothing more than her mother’s love and attention, but she realizes that Rose can never give her them. In her childhood, Sissy did not care if the attention she got from her mother was good or bad, as long as Rose acknowledged that she was there. Sissy is very loyal to her mother, loving her, craving her attention.

Jing-Mei comes from China and Chinese background has to adapt comfortably with being in American culture. “Only two kinds of daughters, those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind; only one kind of daughter can live in this house, obedient daughter.” What I interpret from this text is that the obedient daughter in Jing-Mei's mother’s case is the Chinese daughter, while the daughter who follows their own mind is the American daughter. The mother wants Jing-Mei to be the obedient daughter. Culture can detrimentally change a

This quote, near the end of the story is where it is clear that the father has made his decision to escape. Because he had promised his father to stay with him as long as he lived, if the father had never died, the son would have probably never become a professor. So the books influenced the father to escape and this helped the son escape as well. The Little Chinese Seamstress in ‘Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress’ is illiterate and has no real ambitions in life,until she meets Luo and the narrator who change her life with the writings of Balzac. At the start of the story, the narrator asks Luo if he is in love with the Little Chinese seamstress and he replies that she is “not civilised, at least not enough for me!”

For example Annie's feet hang off the bed inferring that she's had the same bed since childhood, which in a way isn't that abnormal but the fact that she outgrew it and a new one wasn't bought tells me that they don't have the funds for it, also Marita shares a room with her mom, it isn't necessarily bad but it's all her mother can afford being a single mother. They also both grew apart from a close friend, Annie had grew apart from age and basally getting sick and somewhat despising her, and then in Maritas case hers was lost from

(86) He worked a lot and when he came home, he wanted to eat supper, read the paper, and go to bed. Connie’s relationship with her sister, June, was probably the most stable, although it still wasn’t very healthy. Connie had ill feelings toward June because she wasn’t as pretty, worked at the same high school Connie attended, and was favored by her mother.

In both novels the children fail to grasp their parents point of view and vice versa. In The Joy Luck Club the points of view of the Chinese speaking parents and their English speaking children are severely limited by the language barrier that exists between them. Jing-mei one of the daughters in The Joy Luck Club, called June by her American friends, states that the way she and her mother speak, “ made me feel my mother and I spoke two different languages, which we did. I talked to her in English, she answered back in Chinese” (Tan 12). June and her mother literally speak two separate languages, and with this occurring, a common point of view can never be reached.

This story that Suyuan Woo tells her daughter shows how deeply the Japanese invasion of China affected the identity of many Chinese people. They were forced to flee their homes and their lives with only a few of their valuables, but eventually they had to give up those up too. Those few items were all that they had left to define themselves and remind them who they were so when they lost them they lost a significant part of who they were. Suyuan Woo lost more than just her past identity, she actually had to leave her twin babies on the side of the road in the hopes that someone could save them. This shaped her identity because throughout the remainder of her life she had to wonder if leaving them behind was the right choice and if they were

Dee and Maggie’s behavior did not change throughout the story, but Mama’s attitude proves to be drastically transformed by the end. As Dee is introduced towards the beginning, the author implies that Maggie thinks “her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that ‘no’ is a word the world never learned to say to her”. However, while Dee and Mama argue over the quilts, Mama claims, “I did something I never had done before: hugged maggie to me, then dragged her on into the room, snatched the quilts out of Miss Wangero’s hands”. This action from Mama distinctly epitomizes her denial towards Dee. Mama’s rejection perfectly exemplifies her change, because in retrospect, Dee is portrayed as a girl who never had to think twice about

The relationship she had with her mother, her mother’s experiences, and her lost Chinese culture are all reasons to why Tan’s life is so connected to the book. Amy Tan and her mother, Daisy Li, have been known to have

“Why go back home when you can relish in the freedom of adulthood and possibly irresponsibility?” “Is that a hint of rebellion I hear? How could the angelic April Donovan ever think of committing anything near wrong? Seriously though, I’m glad to be going home. There wasn’t anything here for us here anyway