Robert Alan Aurthur wrote, “Cultural differences should not separate us from each other, but rather cultural diversity brings a collective strength that can benefit all of humanity.“ Authors Amy Tan and Sandra Cisneros have similar approaches to the idea of cultural differences.
Both writers are the children of immigrant parents, and both allow their unique experience with culture to guide their writing . The works of Cisneros and Tan, particularly The House on Mango Street and “Woman Hollering Creek” as well as ”Mother Tongue” and “Rules of The Game”, discuss the division cultural differences create to bridge the gap between cultures, creating a more accepting society. One of the divisions culture creates is that between those in the minority …show more content…
The main character lives on the border between America and Mexico, both physically and literally, and struggles to coincide the two cultures. The river in the story, Woman Hollering Creek, is a tangible border that separates her from society, and one that the narrator must cross. Teresa Fiore argues that the story bridges cultures, asserting that “Woman Hollering Creek is not only an eloquent account of a young Chicana’s dramatic experience as an abused woman but also, at the level of inventio, a narrative bridge connecting different cultural spaces and voices”. Cisneros helps lessen the chasm between cultures, working towards an achieving acceptance of differences within …show more content…
In doing so, they examine the divisions culture can create within the household as well. In her stories, Tan often coincides not only cultural but also generational differences. In “Rules of the Game”, a young girl and her mother, a Chinese immigrant argue over the rules to chess, and her mother says, "’This American rules,’ she concluded at last. ‘Every time people come out from foreign country, must know rules’”. The narrator’s mother is unfamiliar with the “American rules”, both to chess as well as to fitting in with society. Her mother’s obliviousness to American ways creates tension between her and her American born daughter. When the narrator begins to excel at chess, she says of her mother, “She sat proudly on the bench, telling my admirers with proper Chinese humility, ‘Is luck’”. Her mother’s Chinese values prevent her from being anything but modest when it comes to her daughter’s skills, and her daughter eventually becomes angry with her lack of acknowledgment. Shelley Thompson agrees that a primal theme of Tan’s writing is the “distance between mothers who were born in China... and their American-born daughters who must negotiate the twin burdens of their Chinese ancestry and American expectations for success”. Because of their different upbringings, there is often division between the children of immigrants
Both writers are the children of immigrant parents, and both allow their unique experience with culture to guide their writing . The works of Cisneros and Tan, particularly The House on Mango Street and “Woman Hollering Creek” as well as ”Mother Tongue” and “Rules of The Game”, discuss the division cultural differences create to bridge the gap between cultures, creating a more accepting society. One of the divisions culture creates is that between those in the minority …show more content…
The main character lives on the border between America and Mexico, both physically and literally, and struggles to coincide the two cultures. The river in the story, Woman Hollering Creek, is a tangible border that separates her from society, and one that the narrator must cross. Teresa Fiore argues that the story bridges cultures, asserting that “Woman Hollering Creek is not only an eloquent account of a young Chicana’s dramatic experience as an abused woman but also, at the level of inventio, a narrative bridge connecting different cultural spaces and voices”. Cisneros helps lessen the chasm between cultures, working towards an achieving acceptance of differences within …show more content…
In doing so, they examine the divisions culture can create within the household as well. In her stories, Tan often coincides not only cultural but also generational differences. In “Rules of the Game”, a young girl and her mother, a Chinese immigrant argue over the rules to chess, and her mother says, "’This American rules,’ she concluded at last. ‘Every time people come out from foreign country, must know rules’”. The narrator’s mother is unfamiliar with the “American rules”, both to chess as well as to fitting in with society. Her mother’s obliviousness to American ways creates tension between her and her American born daughter. When the narrator begins to excel at chess, she says of her mother, “She sat proudly on the bench, telling my admirers with proper Chinese humility, ‘Is luck’”. Her mother’s Chinese values prevent her from being anything but modest when it comes to her daughter’s skills, and her daughter eventually becomes angry with her lack of acknowledgment. Shelley Thompson agrees that a primal theme of Tan’s writing is the “distance between mothers who were born in China... and their American-born daughters who must negotiate the twin burdens of their Chinese ancestry and American expectations for success”. Because of their different upbringings, there is often division between the children of immigrants