This is the classic story between parent and child in Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds.” The theme of this story revolves around a mother who wants nothing but the best for her daughter. Mrs. Woo, the mother of Jing-mei, is a struggling immigrant who had lost everything in China and believes in the American dream by stating, "My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America” (639). She puts Jing-mei into various activities to figure out what she could be good at. The universal theme is conflict between a mother’s desire for her daughter to achieve greatness and a daughter’s personal yearning to find out who she is.
As the child of Mexican immigrants, I have always felt the pressure and responsibility of making my parents’ sacrifices worthwhile. Growing up, I understood that my childhood was significantly different from that of my parents. My parents parted from their families, lost touch with friends, and surrendered careers in order to give my brothers and me the opportunity of an education without barriers. The sacrifices my parents made changed every aspect of their lives and shaped the direction of mine. The memory of my oldest brother’s graduation and the overjoyed tears welled up in my parents’ eyes motivates me to fulfill my parents’ American dream, the reason they abandoned their aspirations in order for me to achieve mine. My family’s value on
Shame and guilt can go hand in hand, as seen in; Flight, The Glass Castle, and The Joy Luck Club. As the three novels progress, many of the characters suffer with inner shame and guilt. While the characters suffer with these things, it somehow seems to shape and change them. Through the characters hardships and struggles, the theme of shame and guilt emerges.
When I was 10 years old I looked up communism, and it meant ‘a society where property was public, and everyone would be helped according to needs.’ This confused me because I had always heard of communism in a negative context. Such a society would mean that, everyone would have food, water, shelter, an education and job. This is the ideal society. So why was it talked about with disgust and horror? Until reading Red Scarf Girl, I believed in that the ideal society could, no, would someday exist. But now I have been convinced otherwise.
The Gold Rush, beginning in 1848 and ending in 1855, was a period in American history which opened the doors of opportunity to a new group of immigrants, the Chinese. The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, California, in 1848 was the cause of mass Chinese immigration that would last for decades to come. When James Marshall discovered gold in 1848, there were fifty-four recorded Chinese in California, this number quickly rose to 116,000 by 1876. Title (Chinese Immigration During the Gold Rush: The American Encounter) The California Gold Rush allowed for immigrants, such as the Chinese, to encounter the various beliefs and suspicions of the American society. One of the many results of the Chinese experience was the Chinese Exclusion Act, which
Mao Zedong was born on December 26, 1893, in a peasant family in Shaoshan, central China. He was a Chinese communist Party leader from 1935 until his death in 1976, and he was a chairman of the People 's Republic of China, which he governed from its establishment in 1949 to 1959. Mao Zedong occupied a critical place in the story of the country’s resurgence. His motivations were to make China classless country and to promote the Cultural Revolution, he also wanted to make China great, modernized and strong country. Mao Zedong was a great leader because he changed China in a much better country by transforming it into a modern nation, strengthening the economy, and achieved gender equality.
On the occasion of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, “Self Reliance,” Joy Zhou chooses to positively embrace his writing in a reflective argument. Although the essay seems to present itself in a traditional style, her words resemble a more opinionated approach that is supported by her personal life; she comes across as an inspired individual who agrees with Emerson’s ideology. Zhou tackles her claim by breaking off short quotes from Emerson’s essay directly and supporting his relevance with modern, personal experiences. Her first main paragraph discusses Emerson’s quote, “‘[t]here is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.’” Responding, Zhou provides an anecdote in which
China has always had a reputation for having a rigorous education system, as it is characterized by heavy emphasis on rote memorization of texts and the ignorance of critical disposition and rational reasoning. In ancient China, the Civil Service Examination served as a system for the most talented scholars to obtain an official position in the palace. Education has been perfected throughout the years and when Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, rose to power, he altered policies and standard ideologies. The Cultural Revolution, which was mobilized by Mao to reassert his authority and eradicate reactionaries, affected several facets of
Satire is used in literature to criticize and point out society’s flaws. The criticism is usually masked in humour. Irony is commonly used in satires to expose flaws, an effective example is John Smith’s A Modest Proposal, he effectively uses irony, to communicate his argument about the poverty in Ireland at the time. Similarly, in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale she criticizes the society that women live in. Atwood uses allusions to the Old Testament, Cultural Revolution, Salem Witch Trials, and the Taliban to satirize the oppression of women in political, religious and social aspects.
Chairman Mao Zedong’s Great Proletarian Revolution created scarring effects on the Chinese youth of the time. Chairman Mao’s propaganda encouraged the young population to revolt against the old systems, to give up their education and to support and participate in his revolution. Finally, Mao’s policies stripped the youth of their identities and created a generation of mindless and uneducated adults. These actions taken by Mao and his communist government failed to achieve their goals and forced the entire population to suffer through a decade of economic struggle.
The Woman Warrior is a “memoir of a girlhood among ghosts” in which Maxine Hong Kingston recounts her experiences as a second generation immigrant. She tells the story of her childhood by intertwining Chinese talk-story and personal experience, filling in the gaps in her memory with assumptions. The Woman Warrior dismantles the archetype of the typical mother-daughter relationship by suggesting that diaspora redefines archetypes by combining conflicting societal norms.
The Elephant and the Dragon by Robyn Meredith highlights China’s and India’s industrial growth and worldwide. Meredith describes China’s and India’s history and how both countries went from being poor to worldwide powers. Meredith shows how each of the country’s leaders influenced the fall of the economy and how future leaders led to the rise of economic growth. In each economy Meredith states that the leaders of both countries found themselves with no choice but to change and she describes the inspiration that both countries deprived their ideas from with lead to great change for the government and the people. The last subject that is highlighted in The Elephant and the Dragon is how America is being effected and if China and India will
That in return turns into resentment within the mother daughter relationship. In a study performed by Akm Aminur Rashid that was published in the Journal Of Humanities And Social Science states Mrs. Woo “places unreasonable expectations on the shoulders of her young tender daughter. While the mother may not exactly know where her daughter’s prodigal talents lie, she is nevertheless adamant that her daughter is destined for greatness, by virtue of having been born in America” (Matondang, A. Yakub, and Dja’Far Siddik, IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science, Www.iosrjournals.org). Although, Tan’s story is set 29 years ago, this issue of elevated expectations and cultural differences still remains today. Therefore, “Mrs. Woo’s aspirations for her daughter can be learnt from her dogmatic belief that America is the Land of Opportunity” (Matondang, A. Yakub, and Dja’Far Siddik, IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science, Www.iosrjournals.org). Which is safe to say that America does have many opportunities in which one can succeed in. But as an American we may see the chances of being some type of prodigy differently due to cultural
Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, has created an article called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother that intensively describes differences in the usage of parenting methods in Chinese and Westerners culture. The author has personally raised her children in a highly strict manner so her children succeed in life and academics. Chua often refers to the term “Chinese mother” that describes her parenting style apart from Western parents. The main purpose of this article is to show the two parenting techniques and how they affect the child 's success. Amy Chua’s intense Chinese mother style is extremely hard on children.
Mao Zedong was a Chinese communist leader and is the founder of the People’s Republic of China. Mao was born on the 26th of December 1893 into a poor peasant family in Shaoshan, in Hunan province, which is a province in central China. After becoming a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, Mao has greatly influenced and shaped China into what it is today. He is regarded as one of the most controversial leaders of the twentieth century as a result of the widespread impacts and hardships that the Chinese people had to endure as a result of his policies and reformations. Firstly, the impacts and effects of the Great Leap Forward, which turned out to be a disaster, killing between 20-40 million people and ironically sending China backwards. Secondly, the Cultural Revolution and the chaos and disaster this had on the Chinese population, especially through the “Down to the Countryside movement” and finally, the Cult of Mao and what the idolisation and glorification of Mao meant for the future of China.