Transcript Document 7349970

Introduction to Literature
Lesson Seven: Amy tan
Family Relationships
Margarette Connor
Contents
• Amy Tan biography
• “Two Kinds” discussion
Amy Tan
• Joy Luck Club
• (喜福會)
• One of the most highly acclaimed
writers of our day.
• “No one will deny the pleasure of Tan's
seductive prose”
Tan and Immigrant Family
• Her parents escaped from Shanghai.
• Her Main Topics: Generational Conflicts, War
between the sexes, assimilation.
• Told by an Chinese-American narrator, who tries
to find a balance between her Chinese culture and
what the American society expects of her.
• This happened to my Egyptian students, too. They
had to find a balance between their Egyptian
culture and Geneva society.
• Asian-Americans face pressures also because they
look different; they are seen as ethnic others.
Early Life
• Born February 19, 1952 in
Oakland, California.
• Grew up in the San Francisco Bay
Area, Her family lived in several
communities in Northern California
before settling in Santa Clara.
Parents
• Father, John, an electrical engineer
and Baptist minister from Beijing who
fled the country for the US.
• Mother, Daisy, who had been in an
arranged marriage, was trying to flee
with John.
– Captured, raped and thrown into jail
before she was able to escape.
– Had to leave her daughters with their
father.
Early success, early tragedy
• 8 years old became a published
author
– wrote an essay on the public library
that was published in a local paper.
• Father and oldest brother both died
of brain tumors within a year of
each other when she was in high
school.
Move to Switzerland
• Mrs. Tan moved her two surviving
children to Switzerland, where Amy
finished high school, graduated from
high school in Montreux, Switzerland.
• During this period much friction
between mother and daughter.
– Amy Tan talks about how this was her very
rebellious period
University
• Originally attended Baptist college in Oregon
– chosen by mother
• Left and followed her boyfriend to San Jose City
College (California)
• Mother and daughter did not speak for six
months
• Further defied her mother by abandoning the
pre-med course mother wanted in order to study
English and linguistics.
• Received her bachelor's and master's degrees in
these fields at San Jose State University.
Marriage
• 1974, married “the boyfriend” Louis
DeMattei, to whom she’s still married.
• Now live in
San Francisco
and New York.
Tan and her husband
Earlier careers
• Studied for a doctorate in linguistics, first
at the U of California-Santa Cruz, later
at Berkeley.
– Left in 1976 without taking a degree
• Worked with developmentally disabled
people
• With a partner, started a business
writing firm, providing speeches for
salesmen and executives for large
corporations.
Professional writer
• During the early 1980s became a
full-time freelance writer, often
using non-Chinese-sounding
pseudonyms in her work.
• Very successful, but soon found
herself living the life of a
workaholic
Relief in creative efforts
• Studied jazz piano
– hoping to channel the musical
training forced on her by her parents
in childhood into a more personal
expression.
• Also began to write fiction.
Immediate success
• First story "Endgame," won her admission to
the Squaw Valley writer's workshop taught by
novelist Oakley Hall.
• 1985 story appeared in FM, literary magazine,
and was reprinted in Seventeen.
• A literary agent was impressed enough with
Tan's second story "Waiting Between the
Trees," to take her on as a client and
encouraged her to write an entire volume
Mother falls ill
• Promised herself that if her mother recovered
would take her to China to see the daughter
who had been left behind almost forty years
before.
• Mrs. Tan regained her health
– departed for China in 1987.
• A “revelation” for Tan.
– gave her a new perspective on her oftendifficult relationship with her mother
– inspired her to complete the book of stories
she had promised her agent.
Relationship with mother
improves
Tan has said
that the trip
to China and
learning
about her
mother’s
past have
helped to
heal their
relationship.
Joy Luck Club
• The book that was promised to the
agent was The Joy Luck Club.
• The rest is history.
Major works
• Joy Luck Club 1989, also made
into a film
• Kitchen God’s Wife 1991
• The Hundred Secret Senses 1995
• The Bonesetter’s Daughter 2001
Children’s works
• The Moon Lady 1992
• Sagwa,The Chinese Siamese Cat
1994
Magazine contributor
• Essay "Mother Tongue" was published in
The Threepenny Review and was
selected for the 1991 edition of Best
American Essays.
• Stories have appeared in
– The Atlantic,
– Grand Street,
– Lear's,
– McCall's, and others
Rock Bottom Remainders
• Sings in the charity in a rock band, with other
bestselling writers, including Stephen King,
Carl Hiaasen and, until recently, Barbara
Kingsolver.
“Geek Chic” The band’s
original line-up. Fuzzy but
funny.
"Nobody on the bus asks, 'Where
do you get your ideas?'"
• Touring once a year as a leather-clad
dominatrix belting out These Boots Are Made
for Walking and Leader
of the Pack satisfies
a need,she says, to be
a teenager again.
Tan with the band
With other Asian-American writers
• As a writer, she is often grouped
with other Asian-American writers
including
• Maxine Hong Kingston (The
Woman Warrior)
• Wakako Yamauchi (Songs My
Mother Taught Me).
Tan’s contributions
• She is so popular, bringing the AsianAmerican voice to the mainstream society.
• In the Ethnic Roots Search trend: Writing at
a time when the people (e.g. second-or-third
generation ethnics) in the States started to
look for their roots.
Lots of “two kinds”
Work together
• Of daughters: “Those who are obedient
and those who follow their own mind!”
• Jing-Mei and Waverly Jong, her “rival” at
perfection
• Chinese (obedience) vs. American
(independence) and stereotypes of both;
• Living daughters, dead daughters
• “Pleading Child” and “Perfectly
Contented”
Our Sympathy for both Jingmei
and her Mother
• At first, we are sympathetic with Jingmei,
because we all experience parental
expectations;
• Then our sympathy shifts to the mother.
• Towards the end, both win our sympathy.
Mother’s American Dream
• “My mother believe you can be anything
you want to be.”
• The American Dream – of being a selfmade man getting rich, but not a “prodigy”;
• Mother’s background: optimistic though she
has experienced a lot of difficulties;
Images for /Efforts on the
daughter
• Shirley Temple-- curly blonde hair with bangs
and blue eyes; can sing and dance;
• The hair episode: hair permed and becomes
kinky black fuss like that of a black cut very
short like Peter Pan, or called pixy cut;
• Fairy tale and religious images (ballerina, Christ
child, Cinderella) : the child’s unrealistic
expectation matched with that of the mother’s.
• The child’s motivation: wants the parents’
adoration and approval.
A List of Prodigy Talents
• Knowing capitals of the States; multiplying
numbers in her head; etc.
• Funny;
• It’s not the way to find a child’s talent.
The Mother’s Disappointment
• Something in her starts to die;
• She looks at the mirror, realizes that she will
always be ordinary, and then she starts to
cry.
• Angry face  she senses the power on this
face.
• “I won’t be what I’m not.”  She won’t be
what she is.
Battle of the Wills
1. The mother seems to give up;
2. Ed Sullivan Show (Sunday Night; shows stars
and talent shows):
–
–
the mother tries very hard to get the TV set to work;
a Chinese girl “proudly modest” on the show, which
entrances the mother; a Chinese Shirley Temple;
– “She’s pretty good; at least, she’s been trying hard.”
3.  the piano lesson starts.  “Why don’t you
like me for what I am?”  “Who asks you to be
the genius? .. .”
• The mother may not know what “prodigy”
means; she just wants Jingmei to be the best she
can be.
Mr. Chong
• He was deaf, old and balding.
• Mrs. Chong: “She had a peculiar smell, like a
baby that had done something in its pants, and
her fingers felt like a dead person's, like an
old peach I once found in the back of the
refrigerator: its skin just slid off the flesh
when I picked it up.”
• I just kept playing in rhythm. play lazy.
(Maybe I never gave myself a fair chance--an
adult point of view.)
Immigrants’ Children
• Wanting to fit in, they may feel ashamed of
their parents who don’t speak the language
well.
Between the Two Mothers
• Auntie Lindo: "All day she [Waverly] play
chess. All day I have no time do nothing but
dust off her winnings."
• Although she complains about her own
daughter, actually what she does is hinting
that Jingmei is not a talent.
Turning Point: Talent Show
• Jingmei daydreams but she does not work.
• “The part I liked to practice best was the fancy
curtsy: right foot out, touch the rose on the carpet
with a pointed foot, sweep to the side, bend left
leg, look up, and smile.”
• She is preoccupied by how pretty she is (foolish
pride); but she is now worried about her
performance (actually “the sour notes staying with
me all the way”).
Aftermath
• Old Chong’s bravo;
• Auntie Lindo’s mild criticism; the father’s
humor;
• Waverly’s rude remark: "You aren't a genius
like me.“
• The mother – looks hurt.
Climax: Rebellion
• The daughter: not your kind;
• The mother: “"Only two kinds of daughters," she
shouted in Chinese. "Those who are obedient and
those who follow their own mind! Only one kind
of daughter can live in this house. Obedient
daughter!"”
• "Then I wish I weren't your daughter, I wish you
weren't my mother," I shouted.
•  Here our sympathy is with the mother.
Ending:
after a sequence of failures
• The mother seems to have given up;
• The mother’s gesture of making up: Age 30,
the mother offers to give her the piano.
Jingmei starts to play the piano again.
• ‘"Pleading Child" was shorter but slower;
"Perfectly Contented" was longer but
faster.’