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 (喜福會)
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 she’s 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 mother’s 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 God’s Wife 1991
The Hundred Secret Senses 1995
The Bonesetter’s Daughter 2001

19. Children’s 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 band’s original line-up. Fuzzy but funny.

22. "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. Tan’s 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”

26. 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. Mother’s 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”;
Mother’s 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 child’s unrealistic expectation matched with that of the mother’s.
The child’s 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;
It’s not the way to find a child’s talent.

30. 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.

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;
“She’s pretty good; at least, she’s been trying hard.”
 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.

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 don’t 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 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.

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 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.’