Essay on Search for Identity in Amy Tans The Joy Luck Club

Search for Identity in Joy Luck Club      Ã‚   Each person reaches a point in their life when they begin to search for their own, unique identity. In her novel, Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan follows Jing Mei on her search for her Chinese identity – an identity long neglected.    Four Chinese mothers have migrated to America. Each hope for their daughter’s success and pray that they will not experience the hardships faced in China. One mother, Suyuan, imparts her knowledge on her daughter through stories. The American culture influences her daughter, Jing Mei, to such a degree that it is hard for Jing Mei to understand her mother's culture and life lessons. Yet it is not until Jing Mei realizes that the key to understanding who her mother was and who she is lies in understanding her mother's life.    Jing Mei spends her American life trying to pull away from her Chinese heritage, and therefore also ends up pulling away from her mother. Jing Mei does not understand the culture and does not feel it is necessary to her life. When she grows up it is not "fashionable" to be called by your Chinese name (Tan 26). She doesn't use, understand, or remember the Chinese expressions her mother did, claiming she "can never remember things [she] didn't understand in the first place" (Tan 6). Jing Mei "begs" her mother "to buy [her] a transistor radio", but her mother refuses when she remembers something from her past, asking her daughter "Why do you think you are missing something you never had?" (Tan 13) Instead of viewing the situation from her mother's Chinese-influenced side, Jing Mei takes the juvenile American approach and "sulks in silence for an hour" (Tan 13). By ignoring her mom and her mom's advice, Jing Mei is also ignoring... ...Jing Mei realizes the part of her that is Chinese is her family. She must embrace the memory of her dead mother to grasp that part of her identity.    Works Cited and Consulted: Gates, David. Critical Extract. Asian-American Women Writers. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1997. 83-4. Heung, Marina. "Daughter-Text/Mother-Text: Matrilineage in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club." Feminist Studies (Fall 1993): 597-616. Huntley, E. D. Amy Tan: A Critical Companion. Westport: Greenwood P, 1998. Shear, Walter. "Generational differences and the diaspora in The Joy Luck Club." Women Writers. 34.3 (Spring 1993): 193 Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Vintage Contemporaries. New York: A Division of Random House, Inc., 1991.. Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. Reading Asian American Literature: From Necessity to Extravagance. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993

Alice Walker’s the Welcome Table Essay

Alice Walker’s The Welcome Table is a short story that gives a historical and cultural look at how segregation in the south influenced people’s lives. The story portrays an old black woman as the main character. It has plot, setting, characters, symbolism, theme, tone and imagery that the author skillfully narrated in the third person omniscient point of view to create the story. The reader experiences an insight into behavior that was caused by segregation in the State of Georgia in the south. â€Å"The reverend of the church stopped her pleasantly as she stepped into the vestibule†¦..†Aunty, you know this is not your church?†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.Inside the church she sat on the very first bench from the back.† (Clugston, 2010) Head of the congregation the reverend instigates the act of religious segregation and without further prompting; his congregants willingly follows. The story also portrays the church people’s mindset to maintain religious segre gation even in the act of worship. â€Å"They looked with contempt †¦.at the old woman†¦could their husbands expect them to sit up in church with that? No, no†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Clugston, 2010) The narrator uses strong descriptions to recreate the era and to pull the reader into the story. It really shows how segregation influences people in their everyday life. Black slaves were freed. However, black and white people remained segregated because segregation was the way of life for the people during that period in Georgia. The system of segregation demanded that black people had to sit in the back of public busses and the old woman in the story knew her place because she freely sat at the back of the church. â€Å"Inside the church she sat on the very first bench from the back,† (Clugston, 2010). Religious segregation is the main theme. The song at the beginning of the story sets the tone and pulls the reader into the south where ex-slaves sang Negro spirituals for comfort. â€Å"I’m going to sit at the Welcome table; Shout my troubles over; Walk and talk with Jesus; Tell God how you treat me; One of these days!†(Clugston, 2010) Religious segregation was a major part of the culture in Georgia and it is the theme of this story; in that the author details the harsh cold manner in which it affects people. The spiritual at the beginning points to hope to one day experience welcome (acceptance), to sit and talk with Jesus who both the blacks and whites are worshipping but cannot do so under the same roof. In other words, the song is an expression of hope that segregation will end. The black old woman braves freezing temperature, without warm enough clothing to go to the house of worship. Winter represents death, stagnation and sleep (Clugston, 2010) and the old black woman represents slavery. The black old woman, symbolizing slavery is almost blind and almost dead. Yet she is determined to struggle through the freezing cold to push past the reverend, and ignore the young usher to seat herself in the whites only church. â€Å"She brushed past him anyway, as if she had been brushing past him all her life, except this time she was in a hurry. Inside the church she sat†¦It was cold, even inside the church†¦.† This act by the dying old black woman is symbolic of the ex-slaves’ struggle to conquer the final frontier of segregation more so religious segregation. The author uses symbolism in this case to represent the people’s behavior towards the old woman and her determination to have her way. The Author skillfully uses imagery to tell a powerful story The Welcome Table. The very beginning paints a picture of the main character. â€Å"In her Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes:†¦.head rag stained with grease from the many oily pigtails underneath,† What seems like a simple description of her clothes contained words that contributed to the painting of the picture. Then on the other hand the ladies of the church required a different set of adjectives. â€Å"Leather bagged and shoed, with calfskin gloves to keep out the cold†¦.This done, the wives folded their healthy arms across their trim middles†¦Ã¢â‚¬  This vivid contrast also represents the religious disparity between the black people and the white people even though they are both worshipping the same god. â€Å"The reverend of the church stopped her pleasantly as she stepped into the vestibule†¦..†Aunty, you know this is not your church?†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.Inside the church she sat on the very first bench from the back.† (Clugston, 2010) The black old woman, symbolizing slavery is almost blind and almost dead. Yet she is determined to struggle through the freezing cold to push past the reverend, and ignore the young usher to seat herself in the whites only church. Alice Walker’s The Welcome Table gives a historical and cultural look at how segregation in the south influenced people’s lives. The author skillfully narrated in the third person omniscient point of view to create the story. The reader experiences an insight into behavior that was caused by segregation in the State of Georgia in the south. The spiritual at the beginning points to hope to one day experience welcome (acceptance), to sit and talk with Jesus who both the blacks and whites are worshipping but cannot do so under the same roof. In other words, the song is an expression of hope that segregation will end. REFERENCE Clugston, W. R., (2010). Journey Into Literature, San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education Inc. Barnet, S., Berman, M., Burto, W., (1967) An Introduction to Literature 3rd Edition Toronto, CAN:Little, Brown and Company Inc.

Analysis Of The Novel The Catcher In The Rye - 1230 Words

The Catcher All the suffering, stress, and addiction comes from not realizing you already are what you are looking for. --Jon Kabat-Zinn By looking these hopeless people in San Francisco, that reminds me the horrible things that happened in front of me at that summer in New York. Some of the hospitalized people killed themselves in front of everyone at the Central Park. Those people all had the mental illness which suffered from the great depression, so they had the ideas to commit suicide just like main character Holden Caulfield, in the novel, The Catcher in the Rye. The author, J.D. Salinger used a creative way and interesting tone to show miserable of the teenage stresses to the reader. In the book, Holden has to face the not only the†¦show more content†¦It’s not paradise or anything, but it’s as good as most schools. Some of the faculty are pretty conscientious’† (Salinger 62). This displays the importance of the education and the influence of human behavior. Like Holden keeps criticizing others are phonies, but he doesn’t realize he has already been one of them due to the inflection. This connects to what Dr. Banks has ever said, â€Å"Do you have insight into your own conduct?† He also becomes to realize he needs to be phony to live in this dark world. From learning Holden’s development for becoming a phony which helps us understanding as we grow up, the world surrounds us is becoming more and more complicated and fake. Some of the things, we see, we hear and even we learn it is not real, so we have to open our eyes to see the truth. The family is about love, not money. Holden was born in a wealthy family, but everyone in the family is busy. So, they sent Holden to the private school to let teachers take care of him. However, Holden has never learned how to communicate with others due to lack of practicing from parents. This causes him to be lonely and depressed. Also, his only one friend, his brother Allie’s death pushes him to be more forlorn to live and lets him have lots of problems with committing suicide. â€Å"I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon we had that summer, but myShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of Characters And Themes Of The Catcher Rye 1537 Words   |  7 Pages Analysis of Characters and Themes in The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger was born in 1919 to a wealthy Manhattan family. He grew up in the same social conditions as Holden Caulfield does in The Catcher in the Rye. The last thing Salinger cared about was being a successful student because he was very lazy, without care for his responsibilities and tasks. 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