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Mother and daughter relationship in amy tan's two kinds
Mother and daughter relationship in amy tan's two kinds
Mother and daughter relationship in amy tan's two kinds
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Amy Tan is an American Born Chinese, daughter of immigrants, and her family shares many features with the families depicted in her novels. Tan's novels offer some glimpses of life in China while developing the themes of mother-daughter relations, cultural adaptation and "women with a past". Tan’s novels share many themes and elements, but this paper will focus mainly on two episodes of the novel The Joy Luck Club: "The Joy Luck Club" and "Waiting Between the Trees"; and will make references to The Kitchen's God Wife and The Hundred Secret Senses.
In the first place, mother-daughter relations between Chinese mothers and ABC daughters are not easy ones in Tan's novels. They are always problematic. Mothers want to bring up their children according to the Chinese ways, whereas daughters want to live their own life according to the "American Way of Life", despising Chinese habits and traditions, sometimes to the extent of being ashamed of their origins. Amy Tan herself confessed that, as a child, she used to put "a clothespin on her nose hoping to make it pert, to change its Asian shape."
In "Waiting Between the Trees," Lena St. Clair sees her mother, Ying-Ying as a weak-minded woman who needs constant help. This impression is aroused by Ying- Ying's traditional Chinese female education. In Ying- Ying's times, women used to be educated to be obedient, to honor one's parents, one's husband and to try to please him and his family. This education is based on Confucius's teachings: during her life a woman has to follow three persons during her whole life: at home, she has to follow her father; married, she has to follow her husband; and when her husband dies, she has to follow her son. Therefore a woman is not supp...
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...hers and daughters which have their source in a clash of cultures. In her novels, she reflects Chinese history, traditions, education and superstition, together with may experiences takes from her family history, all of which provides a convincing representation directly inspired in the real everyday life of the Chinese colony in the United States.
Works Cited
Tan, Amy (1989). The Joy Luck Club. New York: Ivy Books.
-- (1991). The Kitchen God's Wife. New York: Ivy Books.
-- (1995). The Hundred Secret Senses. New York: Ivy Books.
Ng, Mei (1998). Eating Chinese Food Naked. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Internet:
Liu, Ping (1997). Adjusting to a New Society: A Study of Educated Chinese Women: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~tdo/ea/chineseWomen.html
Interview with Amy Tan: The Joy Luck Club Lady: http://detnews.com/menu/stories/23098.htm
As the four women entered America, which is far from their motherland China, they experience a change of culture, the American culture, which was dominant than the Chinese. The Chinese mothers are faced with a difficult task of how to raise their American-born daughters with an understanding of their heritage. The daughters clearly show a gap in culture between the Chinese culture and American culture. The mothers wanted their daughter to follow the Chinese traditions, but the daughters followed the American traditions and even some of them got married to American men. The mothers tried to tell their daughters the story about the Chinese ancestors but the daughter could not follow them and the daughters thought their mothers were backwards and did not know what they are saying. As much as the mothers tried to show love to their daughters, the daughters usually responded negatively. They often saw their mothers’ attempts to guidance as a failure to understand the American culture. Being Chinese and living in America, both the mothers and the daughters struggle with many issues like identity, language, translation, and others. The mothers try to reconcile their Chinese pasts with their American presents; the daughters try to find a balance between independence and loyalty to their heritage
The mothers really struggle to transform their daughters, but the daughters finally realize that they want to be Chinese, not because it is cool, but because they come to understand who they really are. All four daughters are able to learn something from their mother that can be used to further their relationship and bond. Despite the differences first presented, the girls each find ways to bond with their mothers and make a happy connection between their American lifestyles, and their Chinese backgrounds.
What do one think of when they hear the words “Designer Babies”? A couple designing their own baby of course, and it’s become just that. Technology has made it possible for there to be a way for doctors to modify a babies characteristics and its health. Genetically altering human embryos is morally wrong, and can cause a disservice to the parents and the child its effecting.
During the 18th Century women in China continued to be subordinated and subjected to men. Their status was maintained by laws, official policies, cultural traditions, as well as philosophical concepts. The Confucian ideology of 'Thrice Following'; identified to whom a women must show allegiance and loyalty as she progressed throughout her life-cycle: as a daughter she was to follow her father, as a wife she was to follow her husband, and as a widow she was to follow her sons. Moreover, in the Confucian perception of the distinction between inner and outer, women were consigned to the inner domestic realm and excluded from the outer realm of examinations, politics and public life. For the most part, this ideology determined the reality of a woman's live during China's 'long eighteenth century?'; This is especially true for upper class women.
The second and third sections are about the daughters' lives, and the vignettes in each section trace their personality growth and development. Through the eyes of the daughters, we can also see the continuation of the mothers' stories, how they learned to cope in America. In these sections, Amy Tan explores the difficulties in growing up as a Chinese-American and the problems assimilating into modern society. The Chinese-American daughters try their best to become "Americanized," at the same time casting off their heritage while their mothers watch on, dismayed. Social pressures to become like everyone else, and not to be different are what motivate the daughters to resent their nationality. This was a greater problem for Chinese-American daughters that grew up in the 50's, when it was not well accepted to be of an "ethnic" background.
The Joy Luck Club is the telling of a tale of struggle by four mothers and their four daughters trying to understand the issue of gender identity, how they each discover or lose their sense of self and what they mean to one another. Throughout the book each of the mothers works hard at teaching their daughters the virtues of Chinese wisdom while allowing the opportunities of American life. They try passing on a piece of themselves despite the great barriers that are built between the women. Each of the stories gives a wonderful glimpse into the Chinese culture and heritage that the mothers are trying to reveal to their daughters through the use of festivals, food dishes, marriage ceremonies, and the raising of children, essentially their past experiences.
In today’s advanced world, modern technology has enabled humans to accomplish tasks once thought to be purely science fiction. We live in a world today where everything is instant and custom designed. Who would have ever thought that one day parents would be able to design their children? Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) is a “process [that] involves taking a 3day old embryo and pulling one of its six cells to test for genetic markers of disease.” (Edmonds0. Although this process is meant to help discover harmful diseases or complications like cancer, the idea of parents using this process to give their children what they consider “ideal traits” co0mes into question. Even though parents have a right to do what they think is best for their children, parents should not be allowed to genetically engineer their children because it can create new social and economic distinctions as well as destroy the idea that everyone is created equal no matter their differences.
People should not have access to genetically altering their children because of people’s views on God and their faith, the ethics involving humans, and the possible dangers in tampering with human genes. Although it is many parent’s dream to have the perfect child, or to create a child just the way they want, parents need to realize the reality in genetic engineering. Sometimes a dream should stay a figment of one’s imagination, so reality can go in without the chance of harming an innocent child’s life.
Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club In the Joy Luck Club, the author Amy Tan, focuses on mother-daughter relationships. She examines the lives of four women who emigrated from China, and the lives of four of their American-born daughters. The mothers: Suyuan Woo, An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-Ying St. Clair had all experienced some life-changing horror before coming to America, and this has forever tainted their perspective on how they want their children raised.
Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club describes the lives of first and second generation Chinese families, particularly mothers and daughters. Surprisingly The Joy Luck Club and, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts are very similar. They both talk of mothers and daughters in these books and try to find themselves culturally. Among the barriers that must be overcome are those of language, beliefs and customs.
Just as with her books, Tan’s focus in this essay is her mother. Tan considered her book, The Joy Luck Club, a success after her mother read it and exclaimed over how easy it was to read. However, the audience of this essay is not Tan’s mother, but rather it is anyone who can relate to this situation. Tan’s purpose was to bring to attention the fact that when the language spoken at home is different from that spoken by the general public, problems will arise for those caught in...
Is it fair to judge someone by their sex? In traditional Chinese culture, many judgments were made about a person just by observing their sex. The women was looked upon as an inferior being. They had little or no status in society, and little was expected from them. They were discriminated against when they tried to stand up for themselves. Chinese culture was customarily male dominated. The male was expected to do most of the work, and the woman was expected to stay at home with their mouth shut. This custom leaves an unwelcome feeling in a woman's heart. They feel like nobody cares, and it makes it much harder to live with an optimistic view on life.
...all Chinese, and the daughters are Chinese-American. The mothers grew up in a more strict environment and followed the rules by the book. They were taught by their mothers, how to act, who they were, and what being Chinese meant. The daughters in this story grew up in a more relaxed world, where being an individual was accepted and appreciated. No one was punished for being themselves in America. For the women in this novel, finding their true identity was one of the most important things. By using their cultural background and discovering who their mothers were, they were able to find their true selves in the end as well giving them a complete sense of identity.
Designer babies are defined by the Oxford dictionary as those whose genetic makeup has been artificially selected through genetic engineering, combined with the In Vitro Fertilization, to ensure that particular genes or characteristics are either included or excluded in the baby. This process involves the fertilization of the egg by the sperm in a test tube which is outside the womb of the mother and alteration of the genes (Masha, 2009). The process of selection of traits and characteristics of children is also referred to as Pre-implementation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD). The process involves checking the embryo for genetic deficiencies before it is returned to the womb of the mother. The purpose of the process is noble as it is generally aimed at eradicating genetic disorders and diseases (Yin, 2005). However, the question on when the human race will draw the line in regards to the alteration of the genes is a big issue. Who will stop the rich families, as this is an expensive procedure, from using this method to change their children’s genes and have them at an advantage against other children? The designer child debate is a raging debate with more concerns of sidestepping nature as to how it could change the society as we know it today (Ronald, 2007).
While it is your (our) job to create convinience and simplicity in the house design, you must