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Amy tan essays
Social and cultural influences on personal identity
Literary styles of amy tan
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Amy tan essays
Social and cultural influences on personal identity
Literary styles of amy tan
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
“Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan is primarily an autobiographical piece about her experiences growing up in a household that chiefly spoke “broken” English, and a reflection on how this gave her a unique perspective on the transformative properties of language. Yet, it is no way an academic analysis, a deliberate choice, Tan even includes a short disclaimer in the beginning concerning this, and the excerpts she includes come from her own background, her personal observations, something which I found quite refreshing. As someone who comes from a mixed family and identifies as Asian-American, I related a great deal to her upbringing, and in many instances down to the exact circumstance. For example, she details an incident in which she
All But My Life, by Gerda Weissmann Klein, is an absolutely amazing autobiography. Gerda tells about her childhood and how she grows into an adult in many German labor camps. Gerda’s home town has been taken over by the Germans during the holocaust. Her wealthy jewish family is forced to live like slaves until they are separated and moved to different German camps. Gerda tells her story like the reader is there with her.
The book I read was People of the Sparks by Jeanne DuPrau. The book is about all the people of Ember getting to this village that got out of a depression a few years ago and they are finally back up on their feet. Some of the people of Sparks don't like that the council people let the Emberties just settle in their village. The book is mostly about how the Emberties struggle to adapt and how they come to peace with the people of Spark. The narrator is someone from outside the story, so the point of view is third person.
Amy Tan is an American writer who has written several bestselling novels, non-fiction essays, and children’s books. Amy was the second-born out of three children to Chinese immigrants, Daisy and John, who was an electrical engineer and a Baptist minister. She was born in Oakland, California. John, Amy’s father and Peter, Amy’s older brother both died of brain tumors within a month of each other which made her mother decide to move her and her younger brother to New York, Washington, Florida, Germany, Netherlands, and finally to Switzerland, where they eventually settled down and where she graduated high school. After so, they moved back to the United States and they settled in San Francisco.
How does one become a man? Have you ever wondered if you are truly a man? In the novel, “The First Part Last,” the main character, Bobby, wonders if he would ever become a man. Bobby is a sixteen year old teenager who was careless and impregnated another teen named Nia. Bobby decides to raise the baby himself after the mother goes into an irreversible vegetative coma.
Didion WT1 Rationale-On Growing and Self-acceptance I chose to write my WT1 as a personal essay because it most successfully met my goal of wanting to communicate the struggle of growing up and finding self-acceptance. The use of literary terms like similes and personification allowed me to create a humorous tone that is more relatable to my audience, children with immigrant parents or children who have felt like outcasts. A simile is used when the narrator describes her first day of kindergarden and how she felt “like [she] was an alien who had disembarked from a spaceship.”
Melancholy is the dominating mood in the book entitled “Between Shades of Gray” by Ruta Sepetys. Through this nail-biting adventure, you will encounter the agonizing events of Lina and her family during June 1941. Surely, any sane person would feel the sorrowful events that the Lithuanians had felt during the barbaric events that took place during the duration of World War 2. Specifically, why I felt an overwhelming feeling of sadness throughout the novel was thinking of the horrific events that the Lithuanians went through. Particularly in chapter 26 when Lina, a 15 year old girl, was forced to strip in front of NKVD officers along with many other women.
“Only two kinds of daughters, she shouted in Chinese. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own minds!”(Tan). The story Two Kinds by Amy Tan and the story A Brief Moment in the Life of Angus Bethune by Chris Crutcher share many similarities and differences. One element where the two stories share similarities and differences is in the protagonist.
A teenage girl full of secrets and surrounded by the unknown and changing dramatically. In the book Embrace by Jessica Shirvington, there’s a girl about to turn 17 named Violet, she is strong headed, and a changing roller coaster due to major tragedies happening in her life. Many tragedies throughout the book had Violet changing who she was and how she acted. Violet has many different traits that set her aside from other characters, for example, she is a go-getter and strong headed which sets her aside from her best friend.
Individuals may come across a moment in their lives where he/she will have to choose between their own interests or to conform to the norm of society. To some, the choice will be clear; others may feel conflicted where the choice will be unclear. In the short story, “The Glass Roses” by Alden Nowlan, Nowlan shows a sensitive individual’s reaction when experiencing difficulty while deciding between their self-interests or to integrate into society. Stephen, a young fifteen year old boy, suffers from being significantly different to those around him. As a result, he musters up both feelings to fit in his social environment and his own interests.
Estrella, too oblivious and innocent to acknowledge the hypocrisy and judgment, is blown away when she realizes that people do not care for her education but more of her presentation and physical appearance. Estrella knows that her curiosity of the world does not concern her teachers but becomes somewhat ashamed of her physical appearance. Often this shame brings migrant children to fall back into the fields, believing their appearance cannot potentially aide them to succeed in greater things. This is visible even today in the United States. Even in this developed country, the United States segregates migrant families and typically stereotype them into doing all the dirty work.
Shaped by the journey of life, each and every human develops an everlasting identity from their perception of the world. Everyone’s identity sticks, but humans contain the capacity to change their identity throughout life; an attribute Esperanza shows greatly. Oppressed by male figures and because of her wealth, and race, Esperanza develops her sense of identity from negative aspects of her life, causing her to feel shame and develop an aspiration to form a new identity. For so long she develops her worth from what others think and say about her, but contains the power to see beyond and what her really life holds for her.
By incorporating the expectation of being a prodigy, the mother played a very large expectation upon the daughter, this affects her view by showing she
In the nonfiction passage "Fish Cheeks" by Amy Tan, the author learns a valuable lesson about her heritage and learns to appreciate all aspects of her Chinese culture. Through her choice of vivid, colorful language, Tan creates a descriptive image in the reader's mind that clearly depicts what happened to her at Christmas Eve dinner. In the passage written by Amy Tan, the author uses detail and diction to reveal that an embarrassing experience in her youth changed how she felt about her family's heritage and culture by making her realize that her feelings of shame were based on other's opinions of their traditions more than her own feelings. Through her descriptions of their Chinese traditions and culture, the author reveals that she
Some information about the author: She was born in China and studied in a local Chinese school for a few years before switching to an International school. It provided her the chance to experience first hand the real meaning behind "broken English", and understand how non-standard varieties of English have their own rules and shape a community 's sense of identity. In this article, she shares her views on Amy Tan 's "Mother Tongue" and talks about the power of language. I was reading Amy Tan 's "Mother Tongue" when I came across the idea of language being "fractured and broken". She gave examples of how her mother’s limited English caused her to be given poor service at department stores, banks and restaurants.