Amy Poehler

Personal Narrative “May I help you?” said a shop assistant with fluent Mandarin as soon as my mom and I entered the store of Jurlique in Mongkok, Hong Kong. Although we replied that we only want to take a look, she insisted to follow us. Whenever we mentioned or pointed to a commodity that we were interested, she immediately took it out of the counter, held it like models in the advertisements, and introduced us its functions with flawless Mandarin. She passionately introduced us to a series…

In this essay, we will be focusing on the essential connections between the main characters of three books, and their relation to the course literature, ethnicity and immigration. The title of these books are: The Joy Luck Club, Things Fall Apart and Black Like Me. Let’s begin with the main character of The Joy Luck Club, Jing Mei. Who is Jing Mei? The daughter of Suyuan Woo, Mei is the youngest of her late mother’s three children. When Mei was a child living in China, life was pretty…

The American Dream means that with hard work and a little luck we can be anything we wanted to. Amy Tan, the author of “Two Kinds”, seems to say that although Jing-Mei’s mom can be bossy, she probably does this to help her daughter succeed. In this short story, “Two Kinds”, the main character, Jing-Mei Woo, also known as June, is forced by her mother, Mrs. Woo on learning how to play the piano and be the ultimate best. Mrs.Woo doesn’t really give Jing-Mei a choice, she wants to be able to brag…

Suyuan is a strong-minded woman, who finds and creates her own happiness even during the hardest times. The very first Joy Luck Club was founded by her in Kweilin, China in 1944. Suyuan and three other women used to gather once a week to play mahjong and to share food in order to cope with the Japanese invasion of China. Unfortunately, the circumstances get worse and worse as the Chinese army loses the war. When the Japanese army marches into the city, Suyun is forced to leave for her and her…

I felt very fortunate to have Ms. Bear as my piano teacher. When I heard my friends talk about their piano teacher, they complained how strict she was. Although I thought some of them were better piano players than me at the time, I did not relate to the pressure they felt when they had to do recitals or when they told stories of their piano teacher yelling at them when they did not play right. Ironically, those friends are the ones that ended up quitting earlier or to my knowledge no longer…

time where you might've thought to yourself, "I'm not enough," or "I will never be enough." With this mindset embedded into your brain, it's hard to believe that you will ever be proven wrong in these circumstances. In the short story, "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan, Jing-mei tries to fight off who she's not but is compelled by her mother to become the prodigy that she's always hoped for in her daughter. These two forces collide, causing conflict within their relationship where Jing-mei faces the tough…

Subject: This novel is a memoir of Hongyong Baek, who grew up in Korea and had to experience the repressed roles assigned to women within the society. It examines the gender, religious, and racially oppressed individual between world war II and the Korean Civil war. She left during the Japanese occupation and again during the korean civil war that now divides her family, but be becomes victorious and continues her successful ch’iryo practice in California. Occasion: Lee is the author of…

ways and customs. In the case of Amy Tan, her mother was affected by her inability to speak English as coherently as others. Her “broken English,” as Tan calls it, caused her to be treated unfairly in society. In “Mother Tongue,” Amy Tan discusses this phenomenon in American culture, and uses stories from her own life to develop a unique stance on the issue. Through the lens of personal anecdotes and other appeals to pathos, Amy Tan connects with…

Throughout both stories“Two kinds”, and Marigolds, feelings are shared between both major characters. Those feeling being epiphany, anger, and nothingness. The emotions that are shared show how the character really feels about the situations that they are in. Nikan feels that her mother is running her life and she can't be herself. Lizabeth is angry that everyone around her is happy and she isn't, why aren't they angry like she is. In “Two kinds” and in “Marigolds” both Lizabeth and Nikan…

but many times it is not seen the same way through the daughter's eyes. Amy Chua’s 2010 memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom and Amy Tan’s 1989 novel The Joy Luck Club recall their experiences of their own mother-daughter relationship. Amy Chua is narrating experiences she recalls having with her daughter learning to play the piano using a tone that is very tense, but she is only wanting the best for her daughter, Lulu. Amy Tan narrates experiences she, as the daughter, has with her mother trying…