A thought provoking observation was expressed by Kirsten Dinnall Hoyte regarding Amy Tan’s Two Kinds, “Like many immigrants, the mother both wants her child to be American and fears her daughter's Americanization and the accompanying cultural changes" (165). But why would June's mother immigrate to the United States if she feared the influences of another culture? What historical circumstance could have sway June's mother to have left her homeland and everything in her life behind? After relentless research, I hypothesized that World War II propelled the story of Two Kinds because it provoked the Japanese to invade China and promoted the influx of Chinese immigrants to Chinatown around the 1950s. This in tune, would lead to the mother’s infatuation with making June a prodigy as well as the ongoing misunderstanding among June and her mother. Towards the end of the story, June still lacks the insight of the causes of her mother’s …show more content…
June had an extraordinary life in America in comparison to her mother’s life in China. June being young and naive, she could have perceived the high prospects of her mother as tough and which lead to amp distress. But truly, these troubles were insignificant when contrasted to her mother’s loss of family, destruction of her homeland, and probable poverty stricken circumstances due to World War II. For this reason, it is understandable why June’s mother would become so outraged when June roared, “I wish I were dead! Like them” (Tan 389). To her mother, the climatic mention of the past was her vulnerable point. Not only was she reminded of those challenging times when June bellowed those words, but also demonstrated the ungratefulness of June. Overall, grasping the historical context of the story can explain the actions and reactions of June’s mother throughout Two
Chapter six examines the anti-Chinese sentiment with the emerging class antagonism and turmoil between white capitalists and workers. The unwelcomed arrival of Chinese immigrants brought along their own social organizations such as the huiguan, fongs, and tongs. These types of social organizations secured areas of employment and housing for Chinese immigrants in California. This social structure that was unknown to Anglos led them to also categorize Chinese on the same level as Indians by depicting them as lustful heathens whom were out to taint innocent white women. These images were also perpetuated onto Chinese women, thus, also sexualizing them as all prostitutes.
A History of Asian Americans, Strangers From a Different Shore, written by Ronald Takaki, displays an extensive history of Asian Americans as he combines a narrative story, personal recollection and spoken assertions. As long as we can remember, many races such as the Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese and Japanese have dealt with some type of discrimination upon arriving to the United States. A particular part in the book, Chapter 11, mainly focuses on Asian immigrants and Southeast Asian refugees from the 1960s to the 1980s that were treated as the “strangers at the gate again.” Ronald Takaki refers to them as “strangers at the gate again” as a figure of speech for the people who are from Asian background who have struggled to settle in the United States, only to find out that old
"The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" by Jamie Ford is a captivating coming-of-age story that follows the life of Henry Lee, a Chinese-American boy growing up in Seattle during World War II. Throughout the novel, Henry experiences profound personal growth and self-discovery as he navigates the complexities of racial tensions, family expectations, and first love. This essay will explore how four quotes from the book exemplify the transformative journey of Henry's coming of age. Paragraph 1: In the early stages of the novel, a young Henry grapples with his dual identity as an American-born Chinese.
Living as a Chinese-American, the narrator had to take on American attributes in order to be accepted -- for example, while normal Chinese women spoke with strong and assertive voices, the narrator adopted a whisper in order to appear “American-feminine. ”(1) As a result, however, her shy demeanor caused her to be an unpopular outcast. She saw herself in another Chinese-American girl at her school, as they had certain, negative similarities. “I hated the younger sister, the quiet one.
In the play Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry takes place on the southside of Chicago where Walter and his family are racially profiled and show us how the survive throughout their struggles. The central struggles for the younger family in their search for the American dream is mostly poverty and being racially profiled against for their actions. Hansberry challenges the traditional gender roles and issues of dominance throughout the play when Mama gives Walter lee the rest of the money at the end of the play. He becomes all excited and was supposed to save some for himself and put the rest of the money to Beneatha 's education. Instead, he gave all that money to Willy another character in the play which later on that he stole from him.
“Two Kinds” a short story out of Amy Tan’s book “The Joy Luck Club” is a representation of the pressures immigrant children face from their parents. In the story, we follow a young girl named Jing-Mei as she embarks down the road to becoming a Prodigy. Her mother believed that “you could be anything you wanted to be in America” (Tan). For Jing-Mei that meant her mother believed she could become instantly famous. “Of course, you can be a prodigy, too”, her mother told her (Tan).
“The ways in which the characters in Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A raisin in the sun, are affected by racial imbalances and respond to the injustices engendered by such inequities are solely influenced by their gender.” I agree with this statement to an extent. Although it is correct that gender plays a big role in this play, there are other factors to consider. Context:
In a GCA, each character has different personalities, traits, and attributes that are distinguished through different shapes, sizes, and colors. Each of the characters develop different relationships with each other, that help tell the story, which are shown through lines, arrows, and squiggles. The characters are the most important elements in a narrative story, and their relationships can help tell the story without directly saying it. In this GCA, Paul Fisher, Erik Fisher, and Luis Cruz were described as a blue-violet heptagon, a dark red pow, and a light green cloud, to symbolize the essence of each of these characters in Edward Bloor’s book, Tangerine.
She started helping around the house, but when she figured out that it wasn’t much, she got a job at the fields and even though she had no experience in it she still went ahead and did it. “Mama had been strong for her. Now it was her turn to be strong for Mama. She must show her that she didn’t need to worry anymore.”(p163) Based on this quote, I can tell that she knew she had to be strong and her Mom’s sickness didn’t make her more sad than she already was, it motivated her to be strong for her mom and whatever was coming up.
Throughout the entire novel, the mothers and daughters face inner struggles, family conflict, and societal collision. The divergence of cultures produces tension and miscommunication, which effectively causes the collision of American morals, beliefs, and priorities with Chinese culture which
The characters in the book are shown to have real human psychology when put into stressful situations. Some emotions that are shown in the book is compassion, fear, paranoia, and overconfidence. The first emotion is compassion which the protagonist Amy gives to the Starlings who are unaware that they are in danger by the man in the black, even though Amy and Dan are competing against them they show compassion because it is a basic human survival technique to save your own species. Another emotion that we see in this book is fear, right after the bomb exploded Amy and Dan were picked up by their Au pair. During the car, Amy was explaining what happened but kept on stuttering.
In the novel Wonder by R.J Palacio, a number of symbols help to show Auggie's journey as he goes through the struggles of school. The different symbols and how they represent Auggie's journey are referred to throughout the novel. Auggie's masks, his Padawan braid and the universe are all used to symbolise his journey. Along the story line, Auggie wears a range of different masks.
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. A mother’s typical role in a mother-daughter relationship is one of guidance and leadership. Parents are responsible for teaching a child right from wrong and good from evil.
"Two Kinds" by Amy Tan is a complex representation of an unsteady mother-daughter relationship. The focal point of the story is oftentimes troublesome yet inescapable and uncovers clashing values. The relationship between Jing-mei and her mother stretches throughout the story. Conflict rises as opposite standpoints in connection with identification surface. Living in America as a Chinese immigrant, Jing-mei 's mother plants her dreams of American success on the shoulders of her daughter.
“Two Kinds,” by Amy Tan, essentially revolves around the struggle of Jing Mei and her constant conflict with her mother. Throughout her life, she is forced into living a life that is not hers, but rather her mom’s vision of a perfect child; because her mother lost everything, which included her parents and kids, so her only hope was through Jing Mei. Jing Mei’s mom watches TV shows such as the Ed Sullivan Show, which gives her inspiration that her daughter should be like the people and actors. First her mom saw how on the television a three-year-old boy can name all the capitals of the states and foreign countries and would even pronounce it correctly. Her mom would quiz Jing Mei on capitals of certain places, only to discover that