Amy Eilberg

Literary devices are perhaps one of the most important elements used in writing. The journey of Suyuan in the historical fiction novel, The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, is characterized through the use of style, plot and motif by establishing tone, emphasizing motivation and characterizing relationships throughout the novel. Tan’s use of style is one of, if not the most, prevalent literary elements used in the selected passage. Style used in the given excerpt of, The Joy Luck Club, helps Tan to…

A chinese proverb once said, “Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.” Freedom was my definition of driving. Learning helps us move forward from the earliest to the last stage in life.As a reserved, young girl, I always dreamed with the idea of going out with friends and being able to get to places on my own. I knew that my parents weren’t always going to be able to be there when ever I needed them. The perception people gave of driving made me want to pursue that obstacle…

In one of the scenes, Glatzer and Westmoreland use a close up shot to present the main character Alice Howland to the viewers using her linguistic skill to widen her audience outlook on language. She says: "Most children speak and understand their mother tongue before the age of four, without lessons, homework, or much in the way feedback." This quote makes people think and actually makes them wonder how that is possible. They present her in a beige blouse to symbolize trust, loyalty, wisdom,…

daughters’ lives without thinking their daughters have other plans which differ from them. There are two stories that at some points have something in common between mothers and daughters relationship: “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid and “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan. Kincaid writes about the advices a mother gives to her daughter mainly emphasizing which are the things she needs…

In “The Struggle to be an American Girl,” Elizabeth Wong explores the journey to find an identity and a sense of belonging through the eyes of an immigrant child caught between two cultures. As a child, Wong rejects her cultural heritage in favor of attempting to blend in with the society around her, a decision that haunts her into adulthood. Wong’s desire to be American leads her to reject the traditions of her family, not realizing until she is older the significance of preserving those…

“Two Kinds” is a story based on a mother and daughter, and how they had their own opinions on how the daughter should be. The mother wanted the best for her daughter, but she also wanted her daughter become something she wasn’t, a child prodigy. The daughter tried to please her mother but in the end she just wanted to be herself, to stick to her own mindset, not her mother's. She tried everything in beginning that her mother wanted her to do, but later grew out of trying to please her mom…

The rhetorical devices tone and parallelism are used in both the memoir, Funny In Farsi, by Firoozeh Dumas, and the graphic novel, American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang in order to entertain readers and develop the over-arching theme of self-acceptance. Dumas uses colloquial and comic tones in Funny In Farsi in order to keep readers engaged and understate the impact of the hardships she faced on her road to self-acceptance. In the chapter “I Ran and I Ran and I Ran”, Dumas tells the story of…

Family are the friends we do not pick by ourselves, but are born into. “The dress” by Julia Darling is a short story about the sisters Rachel and Flora, and their mother. The story focuses on the deterioration of the sister’s relationship but also on their relationship to the mother. The story also focuses on what happens to a family when it is missing love and communication. Throughout the story, the main topic is a certain dress, and this leads to a dispute having immense consequences. In the…

Don’t Play Favorites (A Description on life lessons you can learn from Everyday Use, by Alice Walker) Do you know anybody that plays favorites? In this story is about a sibling rivalry between two daughters, Dee and Maggie. There is also a tense relation between the mom and the daughters. The mom tends to play favorites with one of the daughters, Dee, and she tends to get everything she wants, when she wants. “Let me say right here, right now--you're right, we are.” (Buck). Some people even…

Through various viewpoints, overlapping timelines and embellishments manifested by the author, Maxine Hong-Kingston is able to examine female roles and their assimilation into Chinese/Chinese-American society and culture; an extensive projection of Kingston’s intimate past and selfhood. Within this memoir, Kingston attempts to resolve the complexity of her own identity, being a Chinese-American, as she continuously discovers her cultural roots and sorts their placement within her own life. In…