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Identity In A Pair Of Tickets

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In the short story “A Pair of Tickets,” Jing-Mei Woo visits China with her father to visit the twin sisters her mother left behind on the journey to America. Her mother, Suyuan, has passed away and the twin sisters are unaware of her death. Jing-Mei Woo has encountered struggles with her mixed heritage and questioned her combined American and Chinese culture her entire life. She feels out of place and doesn’t know how to speak Chinese. But now, her history of covering up her Chinese roots is being revaluated. Being raised in California, the Chinese half of her cultural identity was usually concealed and too “foreign” to be accepted in her hometown. On this trip, Jing-Mei Woo finally starts to feel like she figured out what it truly means to …show more content…

My culture is split right down the middle, but it often feels like the majority of myself identifies with American culture. When I was younger I visited China and was overwhelmed by the sharp speech, pungent smells, and vast sea of people. It was a stark difference to my quiet and subdued neighborhood in Brooklyn. I felt like I was on the cusp of an entirely different world, not fully American, but not fully Chinese. Then I met Abby, a family friend, and we clicked immediately even though we had almost nothing in common, besides our shared Chinese culture. She was the sister I never had. We braided each other’s hair, her’s was thick and black, mine was thin and light brown. But it didn’t matter, the braids were identical.
Seeing that, it didn’t matter the circumstances of our contrasting lives, we were still connected through our Chinese culture. Even though I wasn’t the classic brown eyes and black hair Chinese girl, I finally understood what it meant to be half-Chinese. I didn’t have to see myself in Chinese customs and physical features, but I saw myself in my family, my roots. Suddenly, the other half of my identity made sense. The half of me that I did my best to suppress became the part of me that I treasure. I built a bridge between the two halves of me that I never thought could

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In “a Pair of Tickets” by Amy Tan, the main conflict is Jing-Mei Woo’s internal struggle of yearning to form a connection with her Chinese heritage. This longing to be a part of real Chinese traditions is seen when her father begins to tell her a story in English, but she says, “No, tell me in Chinese” (157). It would have been much easier for Jing-Mei to understand her father if she would have allowed him to continue in English, but instead she requests he speaks in Chinese. This shows that she truly wants to connect to her Chinese roots because she is willing to put forth a great amount of effort in order to understand the story in a less familiar language. She is eager to do this because she wants to feel like a true Chinese by hearing and

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It was her mother that first understood that she couldn’t erase her Chinese side, that it was a part of her identity as much as being American was. As she reminisces on this, it starts to guide her in finding her identity. When she meets with her sisters, she thinks to herself “... I see no trace of my mother in them [her sisters]. Yet they still look familiar. And now I also see what part of me is Chinese.

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Through analyzing the stories about their lives’ hardships and experiences, it is revealed that Suyuan’s American Dream is achieved by Jing-mei by going back to her own country, retrieving her two sisters, and makes the family whole again. The story of Suyuan and Jing-mei chasing their American Dream teaches us a lesson: Never gives up your dreams casually. One day, you will be thankful for your persistence, when the dream comes

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Moreover, the author didn’t like the Chinese class, and she described it by having a disgusting smell. For instance, she said that the Chinese classroom smiled like Chinese medicine, and dirty closets. While she preferred the soft perfume of her American teacher that she wore in American school. In addition, her mother always forced her to speak in Chinese language instead of the English language because her mother didn’t know how to speak English well. In addition, the author’s father makes fun on his wife by naming her an English name.

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