...America. However, a realization hits that coming to America does not suddenly ease life but rather puts their daughters in more circumstances where sacrifice is also necessary. Amy Tan’s novel , The Joy Luck Club, provides thorough examples of personal sacrifice...
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...the male patriarch to be the controller of the family and women to only be a small happiness (Abraham). Since then, Chinese women were stuck into many unhealthy relationships with no means of escape. Amy Tan shows these flaws of China's patriarchal system in her novel The Joy Luck Club. Through four sets of mothers and daughters, Tan uses short stories to show the similarities and differences between the Chinese...
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...Another idea conveyed by Tan is how you often need to embrace yourself and your mind, to let them free. Rose realizes she is going to have to force herself to accomplish the daunting task of decision making, rather unwillingly, during and after her divorce with Ted. While Ted was out of the house, the garden in front of the house that he had put countless hours into, and loved with an intense passion, became overgrown with weeds and looked extremely disheveled. During their marriage, Ted made all of the decisions for the couple; he often didn’t even let Rose answer the questions he asked her, as he just answered them himself. Not only does Ted just answer his own questions, but he also doesn't even ask the questions. This allows Rose to nestle...
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...Ever struggle with your mom or dad? Well, ‘Rules of the game’, a snippet from the book ‘The Joy Luck Club’ has many themes, and that is one of them!. From selfishness and being greedy, to ignoring Waverly’s, the main character's, family. Waverly has no trouble with thinking properly at the beginning but falls short at the end when she argues with her family. Keeping this up, Waverly becomes self-absorbed by the end. That is why I believe that the author thinks that people should think before they act. By how she acts normally, and how she changes, you can tell the author must’ve wanted something mental to be going on inside of Waverly’s head. Waverly thinks before she acts at the beginning. ”Having watched the other children opening their gifts, I already knew that the big gifts were not necessarily the nicest ones. One girl my age got a large coloring book of biblical...
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...The Different Facets of Characters The different perspectives writers put into their stories give readers a more complete understanding of the characters. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Rose Hsu Jordan constantly refuses to confide in her mother, An-mei Hsu, about her divorce, choosing to talk to a psychiatrist instead, while her mother wants to help her. Both mother and daughter have experienced a tragedy involving death in their pasts, which leads to how they act in the present. However, when Rose goes through more serious conflicts during her adulthood, she often looks to others for help instead of her family. Her opinion of her mother changes from admiration when she was a child, to the opposite in her adulthood. Tan’s use of multiple...
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... One of the main big ideas in the novel is relationships between mother and daughter. In the novel, all of the main characters are four mothers and four daughters, and in the plot, all of the characters show a relationship and a connection between each other. For example, when Rose Hsu saw her brother, Bing, fell down on a cliff in the beach, her mother, An-mei, punishes her by going back to the beach and finding him. The next day, Rose and An-mei couldn’t find him at the beach, which means that Bing is dead. Then, Rose learns her lesson from her mother which is to have fate in trying everything. An-mei also said, “You must think for yourself, what you must do. If someone tells you, then you are not trying,” (130) and she meant that Rose should think about what she has to do, not other people. The relationship between An-mei and Rose shows that the mother will always teach the daughter a lesson from today and learning it tomorrow like when Rose lost Bing and An-mei teaches her a lesson. Overall, all of the mothers and daughters learn from one another as they settle in the American life. Another main big idea in the novel is culture and the transitions between one another. In the novel, all of the main characters are Chinese, but only the mothers stick to their Chinese roots while the daughters show a bit Chinese but adhere to the American roots. One example that represents the big idea is when Waverly Jong wants to go to China for her honeymoon, but she is worried that she doesn’t...
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...The Languages We Speak Most people speak one to two languages, knowing the first as their primary, and learning the second either as a tradition if you have a multilingual family, or learning a secondary language at school. People have many different stages of talking/speaking, and it varies depending on who they are around. Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club, explains the many ways that people will convey their inner emotion through the tones and attitudes with different groups of people in their lives. Such as siblings being snarky and childish with one another, but inverting to the opposite when speaking to their parents. For most families, when they they converse with each other, they have relaxed tones, as many families do, and have...
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...A Glimpse of Amy Tan As one of the first Asian American cultural writers of her time, Amy Tan is also one of the most significant contemporary writers of Literature today. Amy Tan brings to life the struggles of dual cultural identity, generational clashes due to age and cultural gaps minority woman face in society. Many of her stories are based upon real obstacles her, her Mother and Grandmother had in their lives as young woman, facing not only the minority issues but the sexiest stigma’s of their times. Born in Oakland, California in 1952, Amy Tan was born to immigrants that had left lives and family behind in China. As a teenager, Amy was faced with the tragic death of her Father and a few months later her Brother. Shortly after their deaths Daisy, Amy’s mother, decided “to cleanse the evil influence of their "diseased house". (Mote) And moved her family to New York, Washington, Florida and finally to Europe. At first they lived in the Netherlands and eventually settling in Monteux, Switzerland where Tan completed high school. Being considered an outsider by her peers, and the continuous feeling of anger and loss she felt from losing her brother and father, she began hanging out with a crowd of drug-dealing hippies and at sixteen was arrested. Her relationship with her Mother became increasingly strained and after a close encounter of almost eloping with a mental patient, Amy and her family returned to United States where her mother enrolled her in a small Baptist...
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...[pic] Chinese Traditional Woman Image --- the Chinese Mother in Joy Luck Club by 陆婉霖 A thesis presented to the School of English Studies of Xi’an International Studies University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts May 18, 2011 Class: 2007-19 Advisor: 常莉 西安外国语大学 毕 业 论 文 开 题 报 告 |姓名 |陆婉霖 |性别 |女 |班级 |2007-19 |学号 |0701011921 | |论文题目： | |Chinese Traditional Woman Image --- the Chinese Mother in Joy Luck Club | |《喜福会》中中国式母亲体现出的中国传统女性形象 | |任务起止日期: 2010 年9 月1 日 至 2011 年 5 月27日 | |论文主要内容及参考文献： | |本文从跨文化交际和文学的角度对谭恩美的小说《喜福会》进行了分析。通过认知解读传统文化中的女性角色以及书中主人公的遭遇，使读者理解| |书中上一代母亲们的自我认知历程以及在此过程中所形成的价值观。文中展现了四个母亲和四个女儿的成长背景及人物性格，概述了每个人物所| |经历的不同境遇，分析了单独事件的文化原因及影响，从而呈现出典型的中国传统女性形象。文章从不同角度举出例子概括这一普遍的社会现象| |并且分析了母女冲突的原因并且从积极的角度对其结果给予了分析与展望。 | |参考文献： ...
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...Novels are criticized to see if the author creates a book that will stand the test of time. Jane Eyre and The Joy Luck Club both connect the maternal figure and use the narrative language to tell the stories of the women in both novels. Charlotte Brontë has created a novel that is referenced often and allows coming of age novels to spring-board off of her beliefs. Amy Tan’s coming of age novel could stand to be the test of time and can be modeled after Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre not only stands the test of time by showing the importance of women in society through Jane, but also first person to iterate the importance that Charlotte Brontë draws the reader into the narrator’s feelings. The Joy Luck Club uses the narrative language which can stand the test of time for the future similarly to Jane Eyre and develop characters through first person. Often times Brontë does not mention Jane’s mother, however, when she does elaborate on a...
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...Engl_114_686 January 31, 2014 Home Language In the lecture of Amy Tan, “Mother Tongue” is described as the way in which language develops from location in which we are raised, and unconsciously we adapt our language with each group we socialize with in our lives. Tan describes herself as someone who is “fascinated by language in daily life. There was a specific moment in the text that Tan realizes that she is using different “Englishes” in different social contexts. Tan was giving a speech about her life, writing, and her book "The Joy Luck Club," to a group of scholarly people, but her mother was also present. It was at this time that she realized that her expressions were more academic, using more formal English, a language she had never used with her mother. Along with the lecture, she relates several examples of how her mother’s “Englishes” influenced her throughout her life, and how sometimes it was a barrier to communication. It was for this reason that Amy Tan decided to write a book where the reading level is easy and understandable--for those who like her mother had difficulty with complex English grammar. In many ways, Tan’s mother’s immigration experience was molded by her grasp of the English language. At times, new immigrants are pre-judged due to their language abilities, which can make life even more difficult. As a new immigrant to the US I can relate to many of Tan’s mother’s experiences. Amy Tan gives as an example when she was talking to her mother about...
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...do. Sometimes kids don’t want to live up the expectations of their parents because they can’t live it up to the fullest. Like in Amy Tan's “Rules of the Game” and Bissinger’s “Dreaming of Heroes”, the kids parents wanted them to meet the expectations they wanted them to achieve, but they couldn’t live it up. In my next few paragraphs, I’m going to tell how the parents in those chapters affect their children life. In “Rules of the Game” from Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, Lindo Jong wanted Waverly, her daughter, to learn how to play chess because it relates a lot to life. Waverly didn’t want...
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...July 17, 2016 In the article "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan she writes about both hers and her mother's experience with language. Tan admits she is "not a scholar or English or literature" (Tan 2006) but expresses her thoughts and supplies empirical evidence about how both she and others judged her mother's intelligence by how she spoke English. Tan introduces us to the concept of "Englishes", i.e. the English used in her household; the English she was taught in school; the English she writes in. Tan writes about the possibility that students, particularly Asian Americans, may be steered away from careers in Literature or creative writing because of the "broken or limited"(Tan, 2006) English used in their homes. I continue to feel that Tan's main goal of the article is to get us to think about the ways we view people who speak "limited or broken" English. As a continuation of the author's goal she writes about how really listening to her own talk as she spoke to various groups about her writing life and her book "The Joy Luck Club” caused her to realize the "whole talk sounded wrong." What she was hearing and learning, perhaps for the first time, was that she was not using one of the "Englishes" that she "did not use at home with my mother." I did identify some new key points and these are how Tan writes about how she thinks "about the power of language--the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth." One way the reading supports this...
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...Breaking the Language Barrier Dawn Schwaeber FYS-102-DL2A: First Year Seminar Adjunct Professor Camille A. Kramer March 23, 2014 Abstract “The Mother Tongue” which was written in 1990 is a touching story of acceptance and appreciation written by Amy Tan, who is most famous for her novel “The Joy Luck Club”. I read over the story several times, and in doing so I realized what language, and interpretation of that language really is. This inspiring writing piece shows that it’s not just a mere combination of words and grammatical phrases thrown together to form sentences and even paragraphs, it’s really about conveying a message with passion and emotion. A message that might inspire an idea, an image or a resolution to a problem. Tan’s essay shows me that the language a person learns at home is not necessarily the normal language of the society. Despite the limitations her Mother’s broken English placed on her as a child, Tan has become a successful writer. This to me, is truly incredible and breaks the language barrier. The Mother Tongue Amy Tan is someone who has always been fascinated by language. In the beginning of her narrative essay “The Mother Tongue, which was published in 1990 she states that “I am fascinated by language in daily life. I spend a great deal of time thinking about the power of language. – the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or the simple truth.” She goes on to describe the various forms...
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...Nicholas Wiest Beverly Williamson English 111 September 21st, 2012 Critical Analysis Essay I have chosen “Mother Tongue” for the subject of my essay. I chose this essay because Amy Tan has a unique writing style which has tone that is clear and identifiable. Tan makes her arguments in a way that is easily understood. While her tone is sometimes humorous and captivating, it still clarifies some serious issues. These qualities among others leave Tan’s work to be desired by almost any reader because her tone and style are both genuine and upfront. This essay will talk about how Tan’s work in her essay “Mother Tongue” uses several different styles and tones to make her point of regarding the differences of her communications with her mother and other people in her life. In a way, Tan’s story is about tone and style, in the sense that how you convey a message is just as important as the content of your statement. Tan’s essay examines the differences in how she communicates with her mother, and how she communicates with everyone else in her immediate environment. I find it interesting that you can find examples of her point right in the story. You can see that Tan focused her essay to be grammatically correct, and descriptive, so that the readers such as ourselves can interpret it. It’s clear that she considers this in the very beginning of the text where she states, “I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language-the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual...
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