Introduction to Literature

1
Introduction to Literature

• Lesson Seven Amy tan
• Family Relationships

Margarette Connor
2
Contents

• Amy Tan biography
• Two Kinds discussion

3
Amy Tan

• Joy Luck Club
• (???)
• One of the most highly acclaimed writers of our
  day.
• No one will deny the pleasure of Tan's seductive
  prose

4
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.

5
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.

6
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.

7
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.

8
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

9
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.

10
Marriage

• 1974, married the boyfriend Louis DeMattei, to
  whom shes still married.
• Now live in San Francisco and New York.

Tan and her husband
11
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.

12
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

13
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.

14
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

15
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 often-difficult
  relationship with her mother
• inspired her to complete the book of stories she
  had promised her agent.

16
Relationship with mother improves
Tan has said that the trip to China and learning
about her mothers past have helped to heal their
relationship.
17
Joy Luck Club

• The book that was promised to the agent was The
  Joy Luck Club.
• The rest is history.

18
Major works

• Joy Luck Club 1989, also made into a film
• Kitchen Gods Wife 1991
• The Hundred Secret Senses 1995
• The Bonesetters Daughter 2001

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Childrens works

• The Moon Lady 1992
• Sagwa,The Chinese Siamese Cat 1994

20
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

21
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 bands original line-up. Fuzzy
but funny.
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"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
23
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).

24
Tans contributions

• She is so popular, bringing the Asian-American
  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.

25
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

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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.

27
Mothers American Dream

• My mother believe you can be anything you want
  to be.
• The American Dream of being a self-made man
  getting rich, but not a prodigy
• Mothers background optimistic though she has
  experienced a lot of difficulties

28
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 childs
  unrealistic expectation matched with that of the
  mothers.
• The childs motivation wants the parents
  adoration and approval.

29
A List of Prodigy Talents

• Knowing capitals of the States multiplying
  numbers in her head etc.
• Funny
• Its not the way to find a childs talent.

30
The Mothers 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 wont be what Im not. ? She wont be what
  she is.

31
Battle of the Wills

• The mother seems to give up
• 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
• Shes pretty good at least, shes been trying
  hard.
• ? the piano lesson starts. ? Why dont 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.

32
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.)

33
Immigrants Children

• Wanting to fit in, they may feel ashamed of their
  parents who dont speak the language well.

34
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.

35
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).

36
Aftermath

• Old Chongs bravo
• Auntie Lindos mild criticism the fathers
  humor
• Waverlys rude remark "You aren't a genius like
  me.
• The mother looks hurt.

37
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.

38
Ending after a sequence of failures

• The mother seems to have given up
• The mothers 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.