A Mother’s Influence on Her Child’s Dream Yi Shun Lai’s Novel Not a Self-Help Book shows a power struggle between protagonist Marty Wu and her mother. The main struggle is seen in Marty attempting to live a life independent from her mother’s control, as Momma Wu struggles to mold it to her own selfish desires. The dynamic blossoms from mistakes Momma Wu makes throughout her life. These mistakes cause Momma Wu to attempt to shape her daughter’s life into one that she wishes she had. Filled with regret and disappointment in herself, Momma Wu suffocates her daughter with scrutiny and instruction. Constantly under pressure, Marty nervously falls short of her dreams. Momma Wu’s involvement in her daughter’s life causes her to fear failure, avoid …show more content…
commitment, and bottle up frustration. These traits installed in Marty trigger the collapse of her ideal life. Marty Wu’s shortcomings are because of her mother. Marty lets her mother control her. In almost every aspect of her life, Marty allows her mother’s tight grip to manipulate her decisions in hopes it will please her. Marty dresses, acts, and speaks in a way she hopes her mother will accept. The control Momma Wu has over her daughter is shown early in the novel during a phone call between the two as Momma Wu complains to her daughter that on television “they talk about editors and writers. Why can’t you be one of those? At least then I hold my head up high.” Marty soon replies by saying, “Well, that’s why I took this job. To try and make you happy, so you wouldn’t seem so unhappy” (Lai 4). Early in the novel Marty’s fear of disappointing her mother is shown. Furthermore, her tentativeness is exposed as she begins her response with ‘well’. Marty uses this buffer to steady herself before formulating an answer that will please Momma Wu. Furthermore, she states she took the job to make her mother happy, she then repeats herself, barely changing her wording. She does this to add substance to her reply and hopes that it will further please her mother. This tentativeness around her mom displays Marty’s fear of disappointing her. This, over time, leads to a fear of failure and inhibits her from taking risks needed in order to reach her dreams. Additionally, in this excerpt, Marty’s mother classifies a successful career by something television programs would speak about. Always following what dreams Marty has, this dialog allows the reader to peer into Momma Wu’s aspirations. Her mother would ‘hold her head high’ and be proud of her if she could be talked about on television, however Marty has never shown any desire of this achievement. In reality Momma Wu would like to see herself in this position. Despite Marty taking the job to please her mother, Momma Wu still is not satisfied. It is never stated what Momma Wu’s career was, or even if she had one. It is very possible that she has aspirations of being famous and is attempting to push her daughter to strive for the same goal. Regardless, Momma Wu believes Marty should have a career that makes her proud and reflects goals that she was never able to achieve in her youth. Marty gives up much of her free will in hopes to please her parasitic mother. This behavior is forced by Momma Wu so that she may vicariously live through her daughter. However, it has adverse effects on young Marty. She realizes that her mother disapproves a job that she took to make her happy. Because of this, Marty is terrified of the idea of revealing her lifelong dream of opening a costume store, a thought that she obsesses over, but a pursuit that she thinks her mother will not approve. Momma Wu’s harmful control is also shown when the two are in Taiwan.
When Marty is speaking of going back to New York City her mother exclaims, “Why? Why? I’ve set things up so well for you here: you have a home, a family here. You can do whatever you want. Lie around all day and eat chocolates!” (Lai 149). Momma Wu erupts with anger at the idea of Marty making a decision out of her own design. She makes an emphasis that it was her who set things up so well for her in Taiwan. However, all she did was pay for Marty’s ticket to the east Asian island. The family and compound that they reside in was already there. Momma Wu attempts to shift unearned praise to herself as if she is trying to seem more valuable. If it seems as though she sacrificed for Marty, then her daughter will be more hesitant in going against her wishes. Momma Wu continues her tantrum as she screams, “Spend all day hunting for a boyfriend, if you want!” (Lai 149). It is said in the novel that Momma Wu was left a sizable amount of money by her husband. Because of this, it is no surprise that she would try to bully Marty on giving up on her dreams and try to find a man to settle down with. In the same altercation she goes on to say, “And finally, you got a job! A job that is well respected!” (Lai 149). However, a couple days before the outburst, Momma Wu explained how disappointed she was in Marty’s new position. Momma Wu clearly demonstrates how upset she gets when Marty makes a decision without considering her mother. Because Momma Wu is harsh on her when she makes choices without her in mind, Marty loses confidence that she has in herself and in her ability to make responsible decisions. This causes her to avoid commitment in all phases of her life. This is clearly displayed with her romances throughout the book. She is unable to commit to each relationship and ends up unhappily single. This trait gets her fired from her job on the eve of closing a very promising deal, one that could grantee the
opening of her dream costume store in the future. However, her nerves add with her lack of confidence. She attempts to counteract this combination by adding liquid courage. In the end she drinks too much and embarrasses herself in front of clients and her boss. Marty loses her job, not because she has trouble holding her liquor, but because her mother took away any confidence she had in herself. This lack of confidence creates a vicious cycle of disappointment. Momma Wu’s eruption in Taiwan finally ends when she begs, “Why are you doing this to me? For once I can be proud of you, and now you want to take that away from me. Why are you so selfish?” (Lai 149). Again turning the attention on herself, Momma Wu explicitly says that Marty is making these decisions ‘to her’. She speaks as if they have a direct, negative impact on her life. Furthermore, she picks Marty up by rarely saying that she can be proud of her daughter. Although, however high Marty got from this she was soon returned to her usual place underneath her mother when Momma Wu calls her selfish. This tactic is commonly used by Momma Wu throughout the novel and frustrates Marty. She feels as though she is close to accomplishing her goal of being a desirable daughter only to be depreciated. She bottles all of this frustration up, careful not to unleash any of it in front of her mother whom she aims to impress. However, it is unleashed in her professional and personal lives. This is seen when Marty lashes out at both Jody and Ken, two of the most beloved people in her life. Marty falsely directs the anger she has for the way her mother treats her. This leads to relationships in her life being negatively affected. Again showing how detrimental Momma Wu’s influence on her daughter is. Overall, it may be said that Momma Wu’s shortcomings lead to the controlling of her daughter. Her authority causes Marty to fall short of her dreams and not be able to live the life she wants for herself. Marty gains lots of frustration from her mother which she bottles up and unleashes inappropriately on undeserving people. She also develops tentativeness and a fear of failure as well as a fear of commitment. All of these behaviors were instilled by Momma Wu, a woman who is unsatisfied with the way her life turned out. Her regrets and need of complete control push her to try to mold her daughter’s life and shape it to one that she wanted herself. Because of this, Marty sees her dreams spiral further out of reach as the novel progresses. At the end of the novel, her initial dream of opening a costume store in New York City seems implausible.
In his essay, “How Susie Bayer’s T-Shirt Ended up on Yusuf Mama’s Back”, George Packer points out an issue that has often been ignored in the society. People leave their used clothes outside the Salvation Army or church, but they do not know where the clothes will go eventually. George Packer did a lot of interviews and investigation into the used clothes trade. Based on this report, many cutural and gender issues have been raised. George Parker uses convincing data as well, since he followed closely the trail of one T-shirt to its final owner in Uganda.
Students are always taught about slavery, segregation, war, and immigration, but one of the least common topics is farm women in the 1930’s. Lou Ann Jones, author of Mama Learned Us to Work, portrayed a very clear and clean image to her readers as to what the forgotten farm-women during the 1930’s looked like. This book was very personal to me, as I have long listened to stories from my grandmother who vividly remembers times like these mentioned by Jones. In her book Mama Learned Us to Work, author Lou Ann Jones proves that farm women were a major part of Southern economy throughout the content by the ideology and existence of peddlers, the chicken business, and linen production.
It begins with a happy 9-year-old girl named Ling who lives in a hospital complex with her father, a very successful surgeon, and her mother, a well-known doctor. Her mother, known as Mrs. Chang, is very strict, always nagging Ling to act like a woman and to be perfect in almost every way. Ling believes it is because her mother never wanted to have a daughter. Father, on the other hand, Mr. Chang, spent much time with Ling, and got very close to her, teaching her reading and English lessons. He would
“Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested our strengths to establish realities”(5). In the book “The Woman Warrior,” Maxine Kingston is most interested in finding out about Chinese culture and history and relating them to her emerging American sense of self. One of the main ways she does so is listening to her mother’s talk-stories about the family’s Chinese past and applying them to her life.
Each Mother brought baggage with her across the pacific. They wanted to teach their daughters from all of their pain and suffering, but were never able to communicate the complexities of their life. Suyuan Woo struggles to explain herself to her daughter "'This feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions.' And she waited, year after year, for the day she could tell her daughter this in perfect American English"(3). The journey that brought Suyuan to America was long and full of hardship. From the Japanese invasion of Kweilin were she lost her husband and had to leave her daughters, to her assimilation in America. Suyuan wanted to teach her daughter about these hardships so that she could understand the extent of her potential. " My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in Ameri...
The complexitities of any mother-daughter relationship go much deeper then just their physical features that resemble one another. In Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, the stories of eight Chinese women are told. Together this group of women forms four sets of mother and daughter pairs. The trials and triumphs, similarities and differences, of each relationship with their daughter are described, exposing the inner makings of four perfectly matched pairs. Three generations of the Hsu family illustrate how both characteristics and values get passed on through generations, even with the obstacles of different cultures and language.
The story "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan is about a mother and daughter who have strong conflicting ideas about what it means to have a sense of self. This may be partly due to the mother growing up in China, which is a very different culture than the American culture where endless opportunities are available to anyone who wants to pursue them. Jing-mei's mother wants her daughter to be the best, a prodigy of sorts, and to have the kind of life, full of hopes and dreams that she did not have. In the beginning of the story Jing-mei liked the idea of becoming a prodigy however, the prodigy in her became impatient. "If you don't hurry up and get me out of here, I'm disappearing for good." It warned. "And then you'll always be nothing" (500). After disappointing her mother several times Jing-mei started to detest the idea of becoming a prodigy. The idea Jing-mei's mother had for her to become a prodigy was too much pressure for a small child and was something that Jing-mei was clearly not ready to be. As a result the pressure that her mother laid upon her only made Jing-mei rebel against her mother and she resisted in giving her best. Jing-mei did this because she only wanted her mother's love and acceptance for who she was not only what she could become. Furthermore, Jing-mei's point of view of being the kind of person that one can be proud of was very different from her mother's point of view.
Our mothers have played very valuable roles in making us who we are and what we have become of ourselves. They have been the shoulder we can lean on when there is no one else to turn to. They have been the ones we can count on when there is no one else. They have been the ones who love us for who we are and forgive us when no one else wouldn’t. In Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds,” the character Jing-mei experiences being raised by a mother who has overwhelming expectations for her daughter, which causes Jing-mei to struggle with who she wants to be.
The Chinese mothers, so concentrated on the cultures of their own, don't want to realize what is going on around them. They don't want to accept the fact that their daughters are growing up in a culture so different from their own. Lindo Jong, says to her daughter, Waverly- "I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents' promise. This means nothing to you because to you, promises mean nothing. A daughter can promise to come to dinner, but if she has a headache, a traffic jam, if she wants to watch a favorite movie on T.V., she no longer has a promise."(Tan 42) Ying Ying St.Clair remarks- "...because I remained quiet for so long, now my daughter does not hear me. She sits by her fancy swimming pool and hears only her Sony Walkman, her cordless phone, her big, important husband asking her why they have charcoal and no lighter fluid."(Tan 64)
For many of us growing up, our mothers have been a part of who we are. They have been there when our world was falling apart, when we fell ill to the flu, and most importantly, the one to love us when we needed it the most. In “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, it begins with a brief introduction to one mother’s interpretation of the American Dream. Losing her family in China, she now hopes to recapture part of her loss through her daughter. However, the young girl, Ni Kan, mimics her mother’s dreams and ultimately rebels against them.
Although Jing-mei fought so hard to not do anything Suyuan said, it was not because she did not like her mother. It was because she did not understand where she was coming from. It is always hard to understand someone when you do not understand any of the hardships that one has been through.
Some people say that the love between a mother and her daughter is forever; but what about the understanding? In the case of Waverly Jong and her mother in the story “Rules of the Game,” by Amy Tan, there is much miscommunication and misunderstanding. The story is set in mid-1950’s Chinatown and as the story opens, it is Christmas time. “Rules of the Game” is the telling of how a little girl learns to be more independent but falls into conflict with her mother along the way and becomes a type of trophy. Amy Tan uses elements such as character, symbolism, and setting to portray the themes of struggle between two cultures and independence perfectly in “Rules of the Game.”
In the novel Purple Hibiscus, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a character named Beatrice also known as Mama, has many dynamic traits. Mama is a religious woman who respects and highly prioritizes her family. Mama’s husband Eugene becomes more abusive toward her children and herself which causes her to lose her unborn baby. In Mama’s mind and heart, she knows she has to protect her children so she makes the decision to poison Eugene. Mama’s character changes throughout the book, as she first starts as a very quiet and caring character but as Eugene’s abusiveness increases, it develops her into becoming a perpetrator that caused her to be very depressed.
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston portrays the complicated relationship between her and her mother, while growing up as a Chinese female in an American environment. She was surrounded by expectations and ideals about the inferior role that her culture imposed on women. In an ongoing battle with herself and her heritage, Kingston struggles to escape limitations on women that Chinese culture set. However, she eventually learns to accept both cultures as part of who she is. I was able to related to her as a Chinese female born and raised in America. I have faced the stereotypes and expectations that she had encountered my whole life and I too, have learned to accept both my Chinese and American culture.
She sees the opportunities that America has to offer, and does not want to see her daughter throw those opportunities away. She wants the best for her daughter, and does not want Jing-Mei to ever let go of something she wants because it is too hard to achieve. "America is where all my mother's hopes lay. . .There were so many ways for ... ...