A Pair of Tickets by Amy Tan

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Amy Tan is a Chinese American writer, whose short stories portray the theme that finding the balance between heritage and culture is not always easy. This is seen through Amy Tan’s own life experience and through a couple of the many short stories she has written, for example, “Two Kinds”, “Rice Husband”, and “A Pair of Tickets”. In the following short stories, the daughter becomes everything the mother wished for, but meanwhile, the daughter becomes more American like and loses her Chinese values. Due to this fact, the mother and daughter find it hard to communicate (Rozakis 13).
Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California in 1951. Amy Tan’s name in Chinese is An-mei, whose meaning is “blessing from America” (Huntley 1). Amy was the middle child of John and Daisy, who had arrived to America in 1944 and were mandarin-speaking (Ho 40). They were also first generation Chinese Americans and were married in the U.S. Tan has two older brothers Peter and John, named after her father. Her father, John was an electrical engineer, trained in Beijing (Ho 40). When he arrived to America, he was offered a place to study in Stanford but refused it to instead become a minister. Amy’s mother, Daisy, had been married before, but she decided to abandon the marriage since it had become abusive. The price for leaving her first marriage was also having to leave behind three children (Ho 40). As Huntley states, Tan’s parents’ unusual backgrounds would further on provide her with material for her novels (1).
Tan describes her childhood as lonely and isolated. Her early childhood also involved a lot of moving, form house to house (Ho 40). She lived the classic minority experience (Huntley 2). At school she was usually the only Chinese student in her c...

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...impacted millions of women worldwide. Tan’s works not only captured Chinese women’s attention but women with all kinds of cultural background and it helped them reconnect with their heritage as well.

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold, and Stephen Souris. Amy Tan. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2000. Print. Pages: 1, 2, 66, 70
Ho, Wendy. In Her Mother's House: The Politics of Asian American Mother-daughter Writing. Walnut Creek: AltaMira, 1999. Print. Pages: 22,23,40,49
Huntley, E. D. Amy Tan: A Critical Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998. Print. Pages: 1, 2, 41, 42
Rozakis, Laurie Neu., Garey Carey, and James L. Roberts. The Joy Luck Club: Notes ... Lincoln, Neb.: Cliffs Notes, 1994. 1999. Web. 21 Mar. 2014. Pages: 12, 13, 45
Yuan, Yuan. Ideas of Home: Literature of Asian Migration. Ed. Geoffrey Kain. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1997. Print. Pages: 158,162

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