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Amy Tan (born February 19, 1952) is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships and the Chinese-American experience. Her novel The Joy Luck Club was adapted into a film in 1993 by director Wayne Wang. “A Pair of Tickets” of Amy Tan is a very emotional story that is about a reunion of a Chinese family. It also tells us the true value of family love. And analyzing this story by the technique “setting”, the backdrop against which the action of story takes place can help us to understand this value clearly.
Summary—Lindo Jong: “Double Face”
How can she think she can blend in? Onlyher skin and her hair are Chinese. Inside—she is all American-made.
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Lindo Jong discusses her daughter Waverly, who is planningher wedding and honeymoon to China with Rich. To Lindo, Waverly hasexpressed her fear that she will blend in so well with the Chinese thatshe won’t be allowed to return to America. When Lindo replies thatthe Chinese will know Waverly is American before she even opensher mouth, Waverly is disappointed. Lindo reproaches herself forhaving tried to make her daughter half Chinese and half American,when such a combination is impossible. She regrets not having taughtWaverly enough about her Chinese heritage.
Before her wedding, Waverly takes Lindo to her fashionablehair stylist, Mr. Rory. Lindo believes that Waverly does so becauseshe is ashamed of her mother. While Mr. Rory and Waverly discussher as though she were not there, Lindo wears her “American face”—the facethe Americans think is Chinese. But inside she is ashamed, becauseshe is proud of Waverly, but Waverly is not proud of her. When Mr.Rory notes that Lindo and Waverly resemble one another, Lindo smilesher true smile, wearing her “Chinese face.” When Mr. Rory hurriesaway, Lindo ponders the resemblance in the mirror, thinking aboutthe internal qualities that both women also share. She remembersseeing herself and her own mother back in China, comparing theirfeatures then. Her mother told her that she could read her fortunein her face. She had told Lindo that she was fortunate to have astraight nose, because a girl with a bent nose is “bound for misfortune. . . always following the wrong things, the wrong people, the worstluck.”
Lindo talks about the difficulties of keeping one’s “Chineseface” in America. When she first came to San Francisco, she workedin a fortune-cookie factory, where she met An-mei Hsu. An-mei introducedher to Tin Jong, who would become Lindo’s husband. While pregnantwith Waverly, Lindo bumped her nose on the bus, making it crooked.She suspects that the crooked nose damaged her thinking, for whenWaverly was born, Lindo saw how closely she resembled her and suddenlyfeared that Waverly’s life path would resemble her own. She thusnamed her Waverly, after the street they lived on, to let her knowthat America, San Francisco in particular, was where she belonged.She knew that by naming her daughter after their street, she wastaking the first step in making her wholly American, and thus alienatingher daughter from herself.
In the beauty parlor mirror, Lindo notices that Waverly’snose is crooked like her own, even though Lindo’s nose is crookeddue to an accident, not her genes. Lindo urges her daughter to getcosmetic surgery, but Waverly laughs because she is pleased to sharethis feature with Lindo. She says she thinks it makes them look“devious”: people know they are two-faced, but they cannot alwaystell what they are thinking. Lindo thinks about the two faces bothwomen share, and wonders which is American and which is Chinese.When Lindo visited China, she wore Chinese clothing and used localcurrency, but people still knew that she was an American—she wonders whatshe has lost.
Summary—Jing-mei Woo: “A Pair of Tickets”
In the final story of The Joy Luck Club, Jing-meidiscusses her trip to China to meet her half-sisters, and she finishesthe story of her mother’s life. When Jing-mei was a teenager, althoughshe knew she looked Chinese, she denied that she possessed any inner,essential Chinese nature below the surface. Suyuan had insistedthat once one is born Chinese, one cannot help but feel and thinkChinese. Now that she is in China for the first time, Jing-mei feelsthat there was truth in her mother’s assertions—something in herdoes feel at home in China. Yet, she realizes that she has neverknown precisely what it means to be Chinese.
Jing-mei now thinks back to the origins of her trip. Notwanting to deceive or disappoint her sisters Chwun Yu and ChwunHwa, she persuaded Lindo Jong to write to them about their mother’sdeath. Jing-mei and her sisters are the only known living relativesof Suyuan, as Suyuan’s entire family died when a Japanese bomb landedon their house, killing several generations in an instant.