Throwaway daughter is written by Ting-xing Ye and her husband, William Bell and this novel tells the readers many truths about the chinese culture. This novel is about a Chinese girl call Grace who is adopted by a Canadian couple. Her adoptive parents do not hide anything that she is adopted and they want her to learn about her Chinese culture. Grace doesn’t want to know anythings about her birth family and her chinese roots. Over the years, she grows up, she decides to study the business in China and finds out who she is. Grace’s journey in the story reveals her self-discovery and self-acceptance of being Chinese-Canadian through the beginning, middle, and end of the story.
At the beginning of the story, Grace rejects her chinese root. She feels different from her adopted family. “At most of the tables, everyone in the family had the same complexion and colouring” (Ye 12). She realizes that there are many people that look at her in
…show more content…
the restaurant because In Milford, she is a minority among white people and in her family she is the only one who is chinese. She have hurt and anger froms her birth parent that she believes did not want her. “I hated my parents’ that narratives about a stranger” (Ye 5). Each time, when her parent talks about her birth parents with her, the only feeling that she get is hurt and anger. She doesn’t know what her birth parents look like, so her birth parents in her life just like an strangers. She hates her Chinese name Dong-mei. “Why didn’t this Chun-mei keep the baby and throw away the note” (Ye 5). Grace Chinese name Ding-mei is her birth mother give it to her. She hates her birth mother give her chinese name and still throway her, is not keeps her. Obviously，Grace resists to learn her Chinese culture because She is from China, but she is a Partner, a Canadian also she is angry that she was throw away by her birth mother who is Chinese. At the middle, Grace attitudes toward to China. Grace is worry about her birth mother and the people that her father tells her. “What about Chun-mei’’ (Ye 111). When Grace watches the Tiananmen square massacre, she is worry about her birth mother will be getting hurt from the Tiananmen square massacre. Grace get interested of China. “I wanted to know way it happened. Miss Mckerrow, my teacher, talked about it in class” (Ye 111). She trys know what happened in the Tiananmen square massacre and to helps them because this is the only thing she can do for the people in China. Grace has continued Mandarin class. “I took my lessons at the Hua Sheng- Voice of China-language school” (Ye 119). Grace accepts to learn Chinese, she is spent two years with Frank Wu to learn chinese, she doesn’t drop it. Now she could carry on conversation in Mandarin. Evidently, At the end, Grace change from someone who does not care at first to who wants to find out who she really is.
Grace know that she doesn't belong to this family. “A yellow face in a white family where freckles were the norm” (Ye 129). She feels lots of love from her adoptive family. When she being to know about “person of color”, the only thing that she know is she doesn’t fit it and she not belong to this family. Grace decides go to China to finds out her birth mother and who she is. “China is where I came from. This is what I am” (Ye 137). She accepts that the fact she is adopted, but she is questioning who she is and the way she starts imagining going to China and also determined to get answer about her background. Finally, Grace found out her birth mother. “I have met one hero in my life. Her name is Chun-mei, and she is my mother” (Ye 295). She meets her birth mother, discovers by many new things from her birth mother and she finds out the truth about her past also she understand her birth mother why she gave up her.
Obviously,
Family became an important aspect in Mah’s life. In the Chinese culture family is typically a vital part of the way of life. Mah may have been ashamed the way her first marriage ended and did not want the same with this man she met named Leon. Leon is a Chinese immigrant and family is his priority. Mah and Leon marry and have two girls, Ona and Nina. They form a family like connection more than ever before. Leon was a fairly stable man and loved his family. Mah and Leon were b...
In the short story "Waiting for Mr. Kim," the main female character Gracie understands what it means to be an Asian female, but she does question the meaning because of her sisters. Her sisters ran away from home and eloped before their marriage could be arranged. This is totally against Asian culture, and it causes Gracie to question her heritage and her Asian femininity.
In the story "A Pair of Tickets," by Amy Tan, a woman by the name of Jing-mei struggles with her identity as a Chinese female. Throughout her childhood, she "vigorously denied" (857) that she had any Chinese under her skin. Then her mother dies when Jing-Mei is in her 30's, and only three months after her father receives a letter from her twin daughters, Jing-Mei's half sisters. It is when Jing-mei hears her sisters are alive, that she and her dad take a trip overseas to meet her relatives and finally unites with her sisters. This story focuses on a woman's philosophical struggle to accept her true identity.
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.
“The minute our train leaves the Hong Kong border and enters Shenzhen, China, I feel different. I can feel the skin on my forehead tingling, my blood rushing through a new course, my bones aching with a familiar old pain. And I think, my mother was right. I am becoming Chinese. (179). In the story A Pair of Tickets by Amy Tan, the protagonist character, Jing-mei, finds herself in several difficult situations due to how her social and cultural upbringing has shaped her. She finds herself pulled between her Chinese DNA and her American background. While she was raised being told that she was Chinese and “it’s in her blood”, she does not identify as such, because she grew up in America and only sees herself as an American. After her mother’s passing,
Oftentimes the children of immigrants to the United States lose the sense of cultural background in which their parents had tried so desperately to instill within them. According to Walter Shear, “It is an unseen terror that runs through both the distinct social spectrum experienced by the mothers in China and the lack of such social definition in the daughters’ lives.” This “unseen terror” is portrayed in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club as four Chinese women and their American-born daughters struggle to understand one another’s culture and values. The second-generation women in The Joy Luck Club prove to lose their sense of Chinese values, becoming Americanized.
In the novel Secret Daughter, it is continuously proven that blood relations are not the only element that binds a family. The main character, Asha starts off as an immature and inconsiderate girl. After making the discovery of her biological parents, Asha feels extremely upset and disconcerted. Paradoxically, however, Asha later realizes the true meaning of family and develops into a mature and understanding individual. In Shilpi Somaya Gowda's Secret Daughter, Asha changes from an immature and inconsiderate character to a mature and understanding one, because of a major turning point, which forces her to be extremely upset and disconcerted.
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.
As the daughter mature, they begin to feel that their identities are incomplete and become interested in their Chinese heritage. One of Jing-mei’s greatest fears about her trip to China is not that others will recognize her as American, but that she herself will fail to recognize any Chinese elements within herself. Waverly speaks wishfully about blending in too well in China now that it’s in fashion, Waverly likes to think that being Chinese is part of her identity, and doesn’t appreciate it when her mom points out how American Waverly.
There is a special bond between parents and children, but there is always uncertainty, whether it’s with the parents having to let go or the children, now adults, reminiscing on the times they had with their parents. The poem “To a Daughter Leaving Home” by Linda Pastan is a very emotional poem about what you can assume: a daughter leaving home. Then the poem “Alzheimer 's" by Kelly Cherry is about the poet’s father, a former professional musician who develops the disease. These are only two examples that show the ambivalence between the parents and the children.
Throughout the centuries, regardless of race or age, there have been dilemmas that identify a family’s thru union. In “Hangzhou” (1925), author Lang Samantha Chang illustrates the story of a Japanese family whose mother is trapped in her beliefs. While Alice Walker in her story “Everyday Use” (1944) presents the readers with an African American family whose dilemma is mainly revolving around Dee’s ego, the narrator’s daughter. Although exibiting different ethnicity, the reader should meditate that both families commonly share the attachment of a legacy, a tradition and the adaptation to a new generation.
...look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished wish" (Tan 332). Each mother achieved her desire of implanting her Chinese spirit and wish into each American daughter.
A Pair of Tickets by Amy Tan tells about a daughter, June-May, who travels to China to meet her twin sisters and announce the death of their mother. The issue at hand is that June-May has never been to China, nor has she ever met her twin sisters. June-May worries of not fitting in and standing out as an American is China. She has lived her life under the impression that nothing other than her parent’s origin makes her Chinese. This all changes once she is in China. It is in China that she begins to realize the meaning of love and self identity. The true transformation begins to set in once she learns of her mother’s hardships and meets her family members in China for the first and the last time. By the end of the store, June-May has not only become her mother but has also become China.
...me Americans has been realized. Wong is multicultural and not Chinese. However, when she examines back to her childhood, she feels miserable. Her unhappiness is significant because this feeling shows us her present concept on her initial heritage. She can understand why her mother took them to the Chinese school at this issue. She could be an American and still having Chinese heritage. There are many All-Americans but she likes to be someone who is multicultural, and she had numerous possibilities to hold her Chinese culture. The reason for her unhappiness is that she missed these possibilities. She thought that maintaining more than one backgrounds is interesting. Through being an All-American Girl and departing her Chinese culture, she came to realise the importance of her original heritage and the factual significance of being multicultural.
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.