Chinese and American Cultures Essay -- Culture Cultural Tan Jen Essays

Chinese and American CulturesChinese-Americans authors Amy Tan and Gish Jen take a leak both grappled with the idea of mixed identity in America. For them, a generational problem develops over time, and cultural version occurs as family lines expand. While this is not the problem in and of itself, indeed, it is natural for current culture to gain footing over distant culture, it serves as the backdrop for the disorientation that occurs between generations. In their novels, Tan and Jen pinpoint the cause of this unbalance in the active vent of Chinese mothers by their Chinese-American children. In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan calls abutting attention to the idea of unrealization and forgetfulness. Through these two factors, Tan attempts to explain displacement on the other(prenominal)s of both mothers and daughters. The daughters, we find, are lost and wandering, and the mothers themselves seem paralyzed by secret pasts of pain and sacrifice. For them, the past is a tenuous, ghostl y thing that goes ununderstood for some time. For many of them, it is not ever talked about. The death of Suyuan Woo is attributed to this She had a new idea in her head, said my father. But before it could issue forth out of her mouth, the thought grew too big and burst. It must have been a very bad idea.The doctor said she died of a cerebral aneurysm. And her friends at the Joy Luck Club said she died just like a rabbit quickly and with undressed business left shadow (Tan 19).Suyuan had a secret that she had kept from her daughter, Jing-Mei her constitutional life two sisters that had been left behind while she fled from mainland China. While it cannot be said that this was what caused her to have an aneurysm, the symbolism of having unfinished business, and ... ...er granddaughter eating the Chinese side. Addie in Just Wait is withdrawn from her entire family because she simply does not fit in and is placed, with a weak struggle, in the same category as her unwell brother. Duncan in Duncan in China cannot accept the China he visits because he only has images of the regal past in his head. Both novel and short story collection debate the fear of a past being unexplored and left behind. They comport deep concern about a lost generation of Chinese-Americans and control desperately for the ignored, shut out past as a result. deeds CitedJen, Gish. Whos Irish? crude York Alfred A Knopf, 1999.Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York G.P. Putnams Sons, 1989.Xu, Ben. Memory and the Ethnic Self Reading Amy Tans Joy Luck Club in Memory, Narrative, and Identity New Essays in Ethnic American Literatures. 261-77.