All 7.28 billion (and counting) people of the world, from the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic and the Quechua in South America, to the Slavs of Eastern Europe and the Indochinese in Southeast Asia, identify themselves to at least one culture of some sort. The world teems with hundreds, if not thousands, of rich cultures, some of which date back to the Bronze Age and remain slightly changed, if at all, from the Age of Imperialism that saw the rise of empires covering a large chunk of the world under very few flags from faraway countries in distant lands but powerful armies capable of crushing any insurrection with relative ease. With today’s changing world, many cultures are in conflict with each other: people are taking Islam and turning it into
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When young Chinese-American girl Jing-mei’s mother first arrived to the United States in Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, she still retained some of her Chinese beliefs. Jing-mei wrote, “My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America,” (Tan 18), citing her mother as one of the few who still believed in America as a land of opportunity for all. Her mother’s belief in American opportunity forced Jing-mei to undergo various tests her mother made up in attempts of becoming a prodigy–a Chinese Shirley Temple, a child geographical genius, a balance-oriented girl, and then a Bible-commanding lady–but failed until her mother watched a Chinese girl mastering piano on the Ed Sullivan Show like how her mother expected Jing-mei to be. But alas, when she took piano lessons from a deaf teacher who could not distinguish anything from another, she sabotaged her own performance by playing badly, which her teacher praised, and destroyed her own performance at a church talent show. Jing-mei’s deliberate misplaying at practice shot her performance down, where she changed her mind and wanted to perform extremely well, and showed a contrast between the Western attitude of individualism and the Asian expectations of obedience–a clash of ideologies that molded into one volatile mass, where all it takes is one small jolt to set it
When young Chinese-American girl Jing-mei’s mother first arrived to the United States in Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, she still retained some of her Chinese beliefs. Jing-mei wrote, “My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America,” (Tan 18), citing her mother as one of the few who still believed in America as a land of opportunity for all. Her mother’s belief in American opportunity forced Jing-mei to undergo various tests her mother made up in attempts of becoming a prodigy–a Chinese Shirley Temple, a child geographical genius, a balance-oriented girl, and then a Bible-commanding lady–but failed until her mother watched a Chinese girl mastering piano on the Ed Sullivan Show like how her mother expected Jing-mei to be. But alas, when she took piano lessons from a deaf teacher who could not distinguish anything from another, she sabotaged her own performance by playing badly, which her teacher praised, and destroyed her own performance at a church talent show. Jing-mei’s deliberate misplaying at practice shot her performance down, where she changed her mind and wanted to perform extremely well, and showed a contrast between the Western attitude of individualism and the Asian expectations of obedience–a clash of ideologies that molded into one volatile mass, where all it takes is one small jolt to set it