LOI: How does Amy Tan use harsh and alienating tones in her collection of short stories to highlight the difficulties she faced during childhood as a result of her parents being first-generation immigrants?
Amy Tan’s collection of short stories follows her life as a child and experiences she faced. Tan’s parents immigrated to the United States from China, and oftentimes her family was unjustly treated as a result. While taking the reader through her childhood memories, one is able to connect with Tan over numerous shared experiences. This paper will focus on how Amy Tan uses harsh and alienating tones to highlight memories that made her or her loved ones to be estranged from the rest of society.
To begin, Amy Tan communicates the tone of alienation
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The piano was old and full of imperfections while also being too big for young Tan. Amy recalls that the ivory keys “looked like the bad teeth of old people.” which were opposite from the perfect wood keys on the piano at her house. The use of simile in this quotation also furthers the imagery of the piano keys, showing that they were horrendous compared to the piano keys that Amy was used to. As a result, the keys did not feel right under Tan’s small fingers and became a problem while Amy was trying to play. After attempting to play her song perfectly at the recital, Tan’s fingers kept messing up in the same measure– even after the third round of playing. As a result of the unfamiliar piano at the recital, Tan states that her fingers were “jammed into bad habit”, unable to surpass the point in the music where her fingers became entangled with each other. The harshness portrayed by the inability of Tan to perfectly produce a musical piece later led to her hatred of piano altogether. While reflecting on this portion of her life, Tan recalls that it seemed as if, “15 years of piano had led to nothing.” The hyperbole within this quotation highlights the pressure for success that was placed onto Amy’s shoulders at a young age evicted the love for music and that type of artistry from her, and as a result left her not wanting anything to do with piano any