Tan's experience with the piano underscores the stark contrast between the way her mother believed fame and fortune work in America, and the way she believed they worked. She writes, "Unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be, I could only be me. And for all those years we never talked about the disaster at the recital or my terrible declarations afterward at the piano bench.... So I never found a way to ask her why she had hoped for something so large that failure was inevitable," (Tan). To Tan, the goals associated with the American dream were simply so lofty, and so exaggerated, that assessing blame to the individual for failing to live-up to them was completely unjustified. Still, to the very end -- even though her mother eventually stopped pushing her to become a prodigy -- her mother held the belief that such social benefits come to those who simply keep working: "You have natural talent. You could be a genius if you want to," (Tan).
However, "Two Kinds" presents a somewhat more complex picture of how the looming shadow of the American dream can influence actions and relationships than simply disagreement over whether the dream is actually attainable or not. Certainly, this is the issue that drives a bitter wedge between mother and daughter; but the fact that Tan does not believe that the American dream is real actually causes her to strive for failure. On some level, Tan hopes to fall short of her...
Amy Tan and the Joy Luck Club Biography The Joy Luck Club Generation Gaps in the Joy Luck Club Cultural Differences Chinese-American Life Amy Tan and the Joy Luck Club On February 19, 1952, Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California, to John Yuehhan, a minister and electrical engineer, and Daisy Tu Ching, a nurse and member of a Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan web site). Tan's father fled to America to escape the Chinese Civil War and
Amy Tan and Jhumpa Lahiri Both Amy Tan's "Two Kinds" and Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Third and Final Continent" tell stories about the cultural clash between eastern cultures and the western world of the United States. This is not the only point of similarity between these two women or their writing styles. Besides the fact that they were second-generation immigrants, both women had mothers who wished them to hold onto their heritage
Reading between the lines it can be understood that one must not be influenced by the pressures of the environment and of the other people. All in all it can be stated that a major theme in the works of May Tan is represented by the American colonialism taking place in the contemporary world at cultural level. Just as it has been stated in the beginning of the paper, language
For Amy Tan, however, attempting, for her parents' sake, to become simultaneously Chinese and American, without compromising either culture, or herself, was a tricky balancing act. As E.D. Huntley adds: Amy Tan spent her childhood years attempting to understand, as well as to come to terms with and to reconcile, the contradictions between her ethnicity and the dominant Western culture in which she was being raised and educated. She lived the
When it came time to recite what she knew, Jing-Mei was so sure of herself that she could pull it off that she began making sure all they keys on the piano were punched incorrectly and realizing it. Jinq-Mei method was successful but it was here that she brought shame to her mother. The show was a disaster and Jing-Mei hated the piano so much to the point that
Pair of Tickets by Amy Tan and the Lady with the Pet Dog written by Anton Checkhov. Basically the paper studies in detail the character development in the two works under discussion. The Works Cited four sources in MLA format. Introduction to Fiction An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama by X.J Kennedy and Dana Gioia is a magnum opus and a literary contribution that is one of a kind. This
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