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Amy Tan Struggles

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Millions of immigrant children wander aimlessly between two worlds. Worlds that are both very different, but never feel right. Encountering life from a different perspective, these children have much to offer the world. Born in California, to Chinese parents, Amy Tan is one of those immigrant children.. Her stories share similarities to her struggles of being an immigrant child and her encounters with conflict throughout her life. Amy Tan's experiences influence her books by bringing elements from her life into the characters, conflicts, and ideas in her stories. Amy Tan’s life is seen in many of her books which entail the relationship between Chinese generations and their struggle to balance two cultures. Tan's Chinese parents wanted American …show more content…

Amy Tan went through many disastrous experiences as she describes her life as being, “this magnet for danger and having all these terrible things happen”(Interview). She felt very unlucky for a while. And then realized in spite of all these things, she stayed alive, which made her a lucky person. Despite many bad things happening to her: the murder of her best friend, all the car accidents, the near-drowning, the robbery, the gun to her head and the mud slide, she still has a positive outlook, which impacts the ideas in her books(Interview). In The Kitchen God’s Wife, she states many ideas inspired by events in her life. Through her words on her pages, she conveys her ideas, as the mother Winnie remembers a “common saying everyone in China was raised with: If you can't change your fate, change your attitude”(Tan, Kitchen). Winnie thinks people who dealt with painful events, no longer blamed fate and no longer looked at the awful things in their life. Instead, these people believed they had something to fight for. Similar to the situation in Amy Tan’s life, Winnie decides to change her attitude and consequently her outlook on life changes as well(Tan, Kitchen). The morals in Tan’s books, result from the events in her

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201 Words | 1 Pages

In the passage written by Amy Tan the author uses adjectives and feelings to reveal that an embarrassing experience in her youth changed her prospective on her heritage by showing her she needs to always be reminded of her heritage. One of Amy’s emotions in this passage is she feels embarrassed that her Chinese family that came over would get up to get their while the American would wait patiently for the food to be passed. One thing that made Amy embarrassed was when her dad took the fish cheek and said “Amy your favorite.” Another emotion was she was scared that the boy wouldn’t like their Chinese food or wouldn’t like there Chinese Christmas. But Amy’s fear was realized because the ministers family didn’t eat a lot nor did they talk.

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867 Words | 4 Pages

She mentioned the bond between mothers and daughters in her novel. Her writing style mainly includes the love relationship between Chinese parents and their American children. According to Nea Big Read, “Tan’s writing style is transparent and neat” (NEA Big). She focuses on love and forgiveness relation between the people of old and new generation. Friendship and familial relationship were the main concerns of her writing.

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207 Words | 1 Pages

Thesis Statement about theme of literary work- In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, expressions of love and hatred are shown in multiple mother-daughter relationships resulting in negative impacts such as pain, bitterness, and regret because of their differing opinions. Support Point #1- Suyuan Woo guiltily leaves her twin daughters on the ground in China as she walks away in tears.

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1409 Words | 6 Pages

Tan expresses the life experiences of Chinese immigrants to the United States and attempts to depict the relationship of a mother and daughter through her significant piece of writing ‘The Joy Club’. Therefore, all these authors somehow portrayed their early struggles and their view point towards life from their literary

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877 Words | 4 Pages

Fae Myenne Ng was a first generation Chinese-American. Being in a family that immigrated to the United States after it was finally allowed, influenced her writing. Fae’s writing brought light to the Chinese-American culture and the struggles they must face in a country founded upon freedom. Primarily, Fae’s biographical background greatly influenced her writing; she moved to the United States at a very young age.

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487 Words | 2 Pages

Journal #6, Tan In Amy Tan’s “Fish Cheeks,” she expounds her embarrassment at her Chinese Christmas family dinner with her crush, the Minister’s son. Tan realizes years later that her mother prepared that Christmas dinner because it was all of her favorite foods. Tan was facing conflicts between the two cultural differences and becomes aware that she should embrace her Chinese culture, while living in the American culture.

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338 Words | 2 Pages

Amy Tan elaborates her feelings and struggles she faces being chinese in her short story, “Fish Cheeks”. In Tan’s story her family makes her feel trapped in the Chinese culture when they invite the ministers family over for Christmas Eve dinner. Tan has an epiphany at the end of the story when her mother embodies, “Your only shame is to have shame”. Throughout the story, Tan can be described as shameful.

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495 Words | 2 Pages

Was King Henry a hero or a fraud? I believe that King Henry was a hero because he showed many traits of it and proved himself to be a hero with many acts. King Henry showed leadership and courage, he also earned his soldiers trust and showed them that he was trustworthy himself. He also promised his soldiers that he would fight with them and he kept that promise. First, I believe King Henry shows leadership to his troops by encouraging them to go into battle with him.

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1263 Words | 6 Pages

In her novel, The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan focuses on the fact that the bond between a mother and daughter can overcome any ethnic barrier. Despite there being many disagreements and arguments about the ways to live their lives, Tan defies this issue by creating a bond that is unbreakable even though the experienced different upbringings. Certain disagreements keep the novel interesting and create a conflict depicting the problems stemming from this barrier. Through her use of similes, metaphors, and flashbacks, Tan shows how the bond between a mother and daughter can withstand even the strongest cultural differences.

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760 Words | 4 Pages

Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club is an amazing representation of what Chinese immigrants and their families face. The broad spectrum of the mothers’ and daughters’ stories all connect back to a couple of constantly recurring patterns. These patterns are used to show that how the mothers and daughters were so differently raised affected their relationships with each other, for better and for worse. To begin with, the ever-present pattern of disconnect between the two groups of women is used to show how drastically differently they were raised.

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1177 Words | 5 Pages

Mother knows best. And yet so many daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club feel slighted by what the matriarchal figures in their lives have in mind for them, or rather, what they believe their mothers have in mind for them. A perfect storm of expectation, true and false, about love, about success, about being Chinese. The souring of mother-daughter relationships in The Joy Luck Club stem from unrealistic or ill conceived expectations that both parties hold for the other.

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696 Words | 3 Pages

In the beginning, the story shows an innocent crush between two young teenagers, and turns the main lesson into being proud of your family and your heritage. In Tan’s case, being Chinese helped her realize that her family is not something to be shameful of, although she was wanting to look and act more like a white American. Years after she got over her crush on Robert, she had realized that it was not worth to change herself for a boy, because she was embarrassed of her family. Many readers have taken the lesson as; Some things you would not understand when you are younger, make much more sense when you are

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737 Words | 3 Pages

Amy Tan is a Chinese-American author who was born on February 19, 1952, in Oakland, California. In Tan’s early life she had many struggles because her parents desired for her “to hold onto Chinese traditions and her own longings to become more Americanized” (Encyclopedia). While she wanted to become a writer when she was still young, her parents wanted her to become a neurosurgeon. When she got older and went to college she majored in English then started her career in the 1970’s. She was a technical writer and then started writing fiction stories.

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2019 Words | 9 Pages

Thesis Statement: In the short story, Two Kinds, Amy Tan develops a narrator who as a child seeks her mother’s approval of her, but develops into a child with her own mind, and by the end of the story embodies a woman who realizes that her mother has her own expression of love for her daughter. Thus, Amy Tan depicts a message about Jing-Mei, the narrator, accepting that everyone, especially her mother, has their own expressions of love. This will look different depending on who a person is and their background. Even though Jing-Mei does not always feel her mother loves her, she learns that her mother loves her by reflecting on her childhood and struggles.

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1140 Words | 5 Pages

The Reformation: Impact of Revolt In the years surrounding the 1500’s there was a movement called the English Reformation that lead to great change in Europe. This change was very beneficial and came in many forms, but it was all started by one man by the name of Martin Luther. Luther protested the Roman Catholic Church saying that they were wrong in some areas; this causes Luther much trouble, but in the end it started a revolution involving new religions, political reform, and new ways of thinking and believing.

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