Suyuan Character Analysis

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Tenacious-Actions

“tried to cultivate some hidden genius in me”- Tan 37
“she was trying all these years to find her daughters”- Tan 279

Suyuan is tenacious concerning two things: finding her daughter’s “hidden” natural talent and her twin daughters that she sadly had to abandon.

Suyuan’s first endeavor of turning her child,June, into a “prodigy” was by watching “Shirley’s old movies on TV as though they were training films”(Tan 132) with her in attempts of making her a “Chinese Shirley Temple”(Tan 132). Once the whole Shirley Temple trial fell thru, next were tests that got harder by the day. One of the tests was “finding the queen of hearts in a deck of cards”(Tan 134), another was “predicting the daily temperatures in Los Angeles, New York, and London”(Tan 134). The last endeavor was to make June a pianist, of course June underestimated her ability to do that considering they did not own a piano but Suyuan found a way like she always does. Suyuan “traded housecleaning services for weekly lessons and a piano...to practice on everyday”(Tan 136). This woman’s persistency is awe inspiring despite the internal and external doubts she
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If June were to have any other person for a mother, she probably would have gotten the radio transistor. Suyuan works as a housewife which makes her money saving attitude reasonable and also considering how much it would have cost at the time any levelheaded person would also deny June the radio. Suyuan’s words broach the matter of maternalism, in just one question she identifies one of the many problems with youth in 1949 and now which is “we want more and more.” The culture of youth then and now is centered on superficial aspects of life such as physical beauty instead of internal beauties. Her mentality of “if you never had it, then why do you need it now,” is a smart and responsible way to go through life, by contemplating the reasons and effects of one’s

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