Ode to Joy

How to Create Happy Children is an article by Amy Kim, written in 2011, published in The New Yorker. It details her experiences with raising children using Chinese methods of upbringing. Throughout the article, Amy Kim uses a very vivid language that appeals to the senses. This is particularly true towards the end of the article, where she recollects an episode involving one of her daughters. It is described how “She punched, thrashed and kicked, ” which gives the reader a very intimate look at…

Each culture passes down their own irrational traditions, regardless of the absurdity. Traditions alter and mold one’s core life decisions. For the Chinese, these practices range from a variety of superstitious beliefs such as a compatibility test between horoscopes and names or an oppressive belief such as foot binding. Bound Feet and Western Dress, written by Pang Mei Natasha Chang, is a memoir that exposes the effect these traditions have on the evolving Chinese population during the early…

In the novel The Joy Luck Club, Jing-mei believes that her mother, Suyuan, expects her to be a successful prodigy and do well in anything she does. Jing-mei feels that she has failed her mother by not achieving success in many areas throughout her life and blames Suyuan for her high expectations. Perceiving to have disappointed her mother, Jing-mei loses belief in herself while in reality, Suyuan still held high hopes for her and only wants Jing-mei to try her best. Therefore, Jing-mei’s future…

The Motifs of Amy Tan in “The Joy Luck Club” Often, Tan writes about struggling mother-daughter relationships and the Chinese- American experience. In Amy Tan’s novel “The Joy Luck Club,” she cultivates her life throughout the novel by illustrating connections between the characters in the novel and her own life. Equally important, Tan is the daughter of two Chinese immigrants, this is where her inspiration for writing about these differences comes into play. Tan and her own mother had…

According to Campbell, heroes ”recover what has been lost or [they] discover some life-giving elixir” (1). In the novel, The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, the character Jing-Mei Woo fits into the criteria of being a hero because efewfhydwfe. After her mother Suyuan passes away, Jing-Mei is asked to take her mother’s spot in the Joy Luck Club. During one of the meeting of the Joy Luck Club, Jing-Mei faces her call to adventure when her mother’s friends tell her that…

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 illustrate the tone and mood of the story. One element…

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…