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Amy Tan

“Two Kinds” Identity, Culture, and Oppression Literature: Reading to Write. Amy Tan. Review. Hybridity : consisting of two or more cultures (i.e. Asian-American). Resistance to hybridity : taking control and power over one's identity and oppressor through language, naming, etc.

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Amy Tan

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  1. “Two Kinds” Identity, Culture, and Oppression Literature: Reading to Write Amy Tan

  2. Review • Hybridity: consisting of two or more cultures (i.e. Asian-American). • Resistance to hybridity: taking control and power over one's identity and oppressor through language, naming, etc. • Acculturation: the interchanging of artifacts, ideals, beliefs, etc between cultures. • Assimilation: being absorbed into the dominant culture through gradual or forced change in beliefs, customs, etc.

  3. A Voice from the Margins • Born February 19, 1952 in a Chinese family. She was first generation American and grew up with influences from both nationalities. • She writes about characters who struggle with finding a place in American culture. If they do assimilate, their Chinese heritage is usually obliterated. • Her family wasn't entirely conventional; of interesting note: she learned at a young age that her mother had another husband and children in China.

  4. Tan was educated in Switzerland, where she graduated high school; she would then attend numerous colleges before finally getting a Masters degree in Linguistics from San Jose State. • She is most known for her novel The Joy Luck Club (1989).

  5. Cultural Significance • Where Alice Walker (along with James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison before her) were responsible for opening publishing doors for African-American writers: • Tan is a part of the Asian-American writers movement that started in the 80s and continued throughout the 20th century (includes Maxine Hong Kingston and Wakako Yamauchi). • This movement sought to bring marginal voices into the forefront of the American literary world. • Previously, Asian-American writers were pushed to the side. • Her book The Joy Luck Club is responsible for opening doors for similar authors.

  6. Tan's Style • Tan is known for using a lot of flashbacks, mysticism, and storytelling in her works. • She may start off in the beginning with a parable that is meant to reflect the character's story being told. • Her stories aren't necessarily “Chinese” in focus. Instead, she focuses on generalized themes (gender issues, struggles between generations, etc).

  7. “Two Kinds” • Characters: Who is Jing-Mei? Who is her mother? Point to passages, lines, or words that illustrate what they are like. • Narrator: who is the narrator? How is this story's narration different from “Everyday Use?” • Where does this story take place (setting)? • What themes, metaphors, and symbols seem important to you? • Music (281) • The piano • Dresses and artifacts

  8. Plot • Here we have a mother-daughter story within a Chinese-American family. • Jing-Mei, a first generation Chinese-American, struggles with her Chinese mother to be everything her mother expects. Yet, her mother's standards are so high, they seem impossible—to be good at everything and be the next Shirley Temple, her mother's image of perfection. • Why might this seem like “perfection” to Jing-Mei's mother?

  9. Assimilation • The desire for Jin-Mei to be like Shirley Temple is a symbolic act of assimilation. • Shirley Temple was the “It” girl during Hollywood's “Golden Age” in the late 1940s and 1950s. • What's appealing about Ms. Temple? She's the American “sweetheart”, representative of the era's preference for the white upper-class (or upper middle-class); she's loved by all, and she's successful. • She's the the symbolic image of what everyone things being American is. To become like her for Jing-Mei and her family is to be American too.

  10. Taking Back Identity • Jing-Mei ultimately fails at her mother's dreams (278-9). • Like most forms of oppression, everything comes at the expense of happiness. • This is when Jing-Mei decides to be her own person. • “And after seeing my mother's disappointed face . . .” (275). • “And then I saw . . .” (275). • Her mother ignores her (279-80)

  11. What does it mean? • Emerging out from under the empire. • Jing-Mei's mother is caught up in the ideals forced upon the “other” by a dominant culture. To be considered “one of us”, her family must change and adhere to its values; this is forced assimilation. • While trying to be a proper Chinese family, to excel, while trying to also be American becomes impossible. • This is where Tan's stories usually end up; the first generation usually have to leave their heritage behind.

  12. Here we see the breaking point in this family: Jing-Mei stands up to her mother. • There are two kinds of offspring: those that listen to their parents and are obedient, and those that believe they alone are in control of their future. • Here we also see that Jing-Mei's mother reflects on the two children she lost in China, a symbolic moment of “casting off”. Her mother rather have a dead daughter than a disobedient one.

  13. After everything, why Jing-mei's mother give her the piano? What's the symbolic significance of this? • What other artifacts does Jing-Mei retrieve from her past/heritage? What is important about her finally possessing these? • (281) • What's Jing-Mei's final revelation at the end? How is this significant symbolically?

  14. Compare&Contrast • How is Amy Tan's story similar to Alice Walker's “Everyday Use” in terms of: • Narration, plot, style • Do you see similar themes being explored? Are the characters' struggles similar? If so, how? • How are the struggles faced by Jing-Mei and her family in “Two Kinds” different than Julian's in “Everyday Use?”

  15. Sources • “Amy Tan.” Voices from the Gaps. University of Minnesota. 3 December 2012. Web. 19 February 2014. • Tan, Amy. “Two Kinds.” Literature: Reading to Write. Ed. Elizabeth Howells. Illinois: Pearson, 2011. 274-281. Print. • Caesar, Judith. "Patriarchy, Imperialism, and Knowledge in The Kitchen God's Wife. " North Dakota Quarterly 62.4, (1994-1995): 164-74. Print. • Hawley, John C. "Assimilation and Resistance in Female Fiction of Immigration: Bharati Mukherjee, Amy Tan, and Christine Bell. " Rediscovering America 1492-1992: National, Cultural and Disciplinary Boundaries Re-Examined. ed. Leslie Bary, Janet Gold, Marketta Laurila, Arnulfo Ramirez, Joseph Ricapito, Jesus Torrecilla. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1992. 226-34. Print. • Heung, Marina. "Daughter-Text/Mother-Text: Matrilineage in Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club. " Feminist Studies 19.3 (1993): 597-616. Print • Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. "'Sugar Sisterhood': Situating the Amy Tan Phenomenon. " The Ethnic Canon: Histories, Institutions, and Interventions. ed. David Palumbo-Liu. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1995. 174-210. Print • Xu, Ben. "Memory and the Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. " ( Rpt. from MELUS. 1994 Spring; 19[1]. ) Memory, Narrative, and Identity: New Essays in Ethnic American Literatures. ed. Amritjit Singh, Joseph T. Skerrett, Jr, Robert E. Hogan. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1994. Print.

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