The text, “Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian” written by Sui sin Far, is a story about a Chinese European, Eurasian, girl struggling in North America. The girl, Sui Sin Far, lives in North American countries, Canada & the United States of America, with her family-Chinese mother, English father, and her brother and sisters. Sin Sui Far struggled with racial discrimination in the countries of Canada and North America because of her Chinese Eurasian ethnicity. Far first noticed the racial discrimination has a young four year-old child when nurses were examining her about being Chinese. Although the first encounter of racial discrimination against Far did not hold to her mother, Far knew she was different.
The influence of food on cross-cultural identities is also explored through Lena St. Clair's story, 'Rice Husband'. Through this story, Tan addresses the problematic nature of the collision of Western and Eastern ideals. Lena, being born in America from a Chinese family experiences beliefs and ideologies from both cultures. For instance, the superstition and mysticism that Chinese culture associates with food is merged with the Western association of food with diet and body image. Lena's mother tells her that if she leaves rice behind, the number of rice grains in her bowl will be the number of pock marks on her husband's face.
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
These poems discussed factors leading to immigration, such as poverty, arranged marriages through the “picture bride” system, and ambition. They communicated to historians the complex and differing stories of immigrants bravely facing a new world of American Sinophobia and Yellow Peril, allowing a more complex analysis of Asian-American history. These poems, alone, have shaped much of our modern understanding of early Asian
Michelle Gaffner also notes the tension put on relationships due to cultural indifferences in her article “Negotiating the Geography of Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club” when she writes, “The mother-daughter relationships in both China and the United States represented in The Joy Luck Club not only provide a link between the past and the present but also suggest how the ability, or the inability, for mothers and daughters to share geographically informed cultural stories influences both mother-daughter relationships and individual and cultural identity” (83). The
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.
While reading Who’s Irish? from a Chinese elderly women’s perspective, I was enlightened about the Chinese culture compared to my American culture. Throughout the short story, Gish Jen’s theme focuses on showing how the American culture and Chinese culture differ through the elderly women’s comments, reactions and relationships. This was very interesting to read given Gish Jens background with both cultures. Throughout this story the grandmother and daughter, Natalie often butt heads in what they thought was appropriate to carry over from the Chinese culture.
Kingston’s book The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, first published in 1976, portrays her childhood, her family, and the mythical stories that shaped her upbringing. In this work, Kingston compellingly depicts the intersection of Asian identity and gender roles. Emphasizing how Chinese and American ideals of femininity are often at odds, she writes, “The immigrants I know have loud voices, unmodulated to American tones even after years away from the village where they called their friendships out across the fields. speaking in an inaudible voice, I have tried to turn myself American-feminine” (Kingston 11).
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.
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston addresses prevalent topics faced in America today. How should women act? Should women be treated differently from men? In her memoir, Kingston faces many obstacles with her Chinese-American identity such as finding her voice as a young woman. In “White Tigers,” Kingston tells her own version of a popular Chinese ballad, “Fa Mu Lan,” while incorporating her own reality back into the section.
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.
As many Chinese-Americans grew up in the 1960’s, one women described it best in her multiple literary works. Bestselling, Chinse-American writer, Amy Tan in her autobiographic essay, “Fish Cheeks”, illustrates her humiliating experience at a Christmas Eve dinner at the age of fourteen. Tan’s purpose is to interpret the idea of how her mother cared for Tan deeply and wanted her to be proud of her Chinese heritage and family. She adopts a nostalgic tone in order to engage relatable thoughts and feelings in her adult readers. Even decades after the essay had been written, readers can still relate to the embarrassing situation that Tan had to face.
When Asian came to America— a place where full of unfamiliar faces, speak different language, have different belief and culture, how would they respond and adapt to these changes? This essay investigates on Asian American experience in terms of culture, racial discrimination, culture assimilation and confliction, and lost of identity through diverse motions in four Asian American poems- “Eating Alone”, “Eating Together”, and “Persimmons” by Li-Young Lee, and “The Lost Sister” by Cathy Song. From the motions or movement in the poems, we can further look into their life and feeling of being an Asian American. In “Eating Alone” and “Eating Together”, speaker would like to express his yearning towards his death father and convey the hierarchy of a Chinese family. In “Persimmons”, speaker claims his unfortunate childhood experience to carry out the theme of racial discrimination and culture
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
Although part of that process of negotiation occurs on the level of mother– daughter relationships, what ultimately reconnects the mothers and daughters are not their genetic ties but rather certain parallel experiences as women marked by their Chinese heritage mainly experiences of patriarchal oppression within familial relationships, racially marked oppression within the American culture, and the difficult negotiation of a Chinese American identity. Moreover, the parallels between the four mother–daughter relationships and the existence of The Joy Luck Club as a community that encompasses and at times helps to negotiate these relationships highlights an interdependence that extends beyond the mother–daughter
