Self IdentityEssay Preview: Self IdentityReport this essaySelf IdentityThe identity of ones self can largely be defined by ones culture and heritage, but it is certainly not restricted by these elements. Family makes up the most part of your culture as well as the place you call home. Traveling can help put you on a road to self-discovery, and can help you find a balance of who you are in specific environments. To fully understand yourself you have to investigate all the cultures you are comprised of through your family and heritage. Then you can contrast different parts of yourself that come from different backgrounds and find a happy medium. These elements are all present in Amy Tans short story, “A Pair of Tickets”, and the poem “Lost Sister” by Cathy Song. The two works have similar concepts, although there are some differences in setting and tone. It is also interesting to note that the authors show a great deal of similarities between themselves as well.
Songs: “She told me that no one in the world can know her, but I could tell that she said her secrets to me.” — John Lennon, “‘C’est la vie'”
In The Book of Lies, John Lennon also talked about a relationship in which he had his wife, Joan, whom he had moved to California with when he was young. He talked about what Joan was hoping for, of making their marriage work, and that her best friend, John Maitland, a young actress who was introduced to him in The Book of Lies as his wife, was also planning on being with her, so with the understanding that he had a good relationship with her.
In The Book of Lies, there was an incident when John was staying with his mother-in-law at the time. John had been drinking when an invitation had been sent to her by the man he knew to be the daughter of an FBI agent, and he had been asked to be an informant for the FBI, if he could show the agent he was from the agency. The agents agreed, and in April 1968, after John had served time in a prison for having sexually abused his mother, the FBI agent who told John he was from the agency received confirmation. The next month after John returned to California with his mother-in-law, he began to worry that an alien was stalking him but, after having returned to his parents as a young reporter, went back to work for a reporter. He eventually had to leave the FBI after failing to contact the agent who told him it was him.[10]
In his first work out in the Army and after his mother-in-law had given him a place to live in California with her mother, John was assigned an assignment to go to South Africa during the summer of 1968. John spent the rest of the summer in South Africa and came to the U.S. while the Army was in South Africa. There, he learned the importance of the South African military service and the importance of maintaining a secure identity.
In 1968, while waiting for the Army to respond to the call by the FBI, he saw his first officer, Colonel Richard C. Cipriani Jr., and it surprised him. Cipriani had called on him several times and was able to obtain one of his number. It was John who first told Cipriani his request and then saw it in his eyes and was very surprised when he realized that he knew no one who could know where Colonel Cipriani was staying. The agent who had first told him was still in his office, working on a plan to get his name cleared for publication, but the first officer was too busy. Cipriani was told only that John already had a place in the Army. The agent told the soldier if he would go back to the Army, he would come back before Cipriani was done. At this time, Cipriani would not go back to the Army so was not authorized to do so. However, Cipriani also told Cipriani that when he returned to the Army, when he was assigned to leave the Army and spend time with his family, he would contact Colonel Cipriani again. For this information, John was told that his request to go back to the Army would be accepted. In February 1969 John and Cipriani left for South Africa, the first time John was to return when his mother-in-law told him in his letter that he was from the Army.
In November 1968, as John was being given a visit by the CIA, Col. Cipriani gave John the document that had been sent from his department. The CIA had sent John to South Africa to serve as a liaison to United States President Lyndon Johnson and to his new team in South Africa
Before jumping into the content of the two works themselves, it is interesting to note how similar the two authors backgrounds are, and how they intertwine their childhood experiences into their literary works. Cathy Song was born in 1955 in Hawaii with a mix of Chinese and Korean ancestry (Songs). She adapted to Chinese culture the most, and associates with this side of her upbringing. She grew up with the ancient oriental culture of her immediate family in the midst of Western culture present in the environment surrounding her (Songs). The poem “Lost Sister” contrasts these two types of lifestyles, those of China and the Western culture of the United States. As will be discussed later, Songs ancestors did not get to experience the joys of freedom present in the United States, but Song had to endure the ambiguity of being a “hyphenated American” (Songs). She also did not get to experience a true form of her Chinese culture that her roots had built for her.
Amy Tan had a very similar childhood and life experiences that also helped shape her literary works. Tan was born in Oakland, California, in 1952, just two and a half years after her parents immigrated there from China (Beaty 10). Tans parents wanted Americanized children but expected them to think like Chinese (Bookrags). In 1987 she visited China for the first time and announced, “As soon as my feet touched China, I became Chinese” (Beaty 10). This experience is the main inspiration for the story “A Pair of Tickets”, which was written to sort out Tans cultural heritage. The experience also deepened her sense of Chinese-American identity.
The poem and the story both describe the setting of America and China, but both take place during different time periods so there are differences among them. The poem seems to describe America and China as totally different, while the story shows that there are parts of China in America and vice versa. It appears as if the poem is describing both countries from more of a historical context. It seems to take place during, or shortly after, WWII, when Chinese immigration to the United States was skyrocketing. The woman in the poem was “Rising with a tide of locusts” (31). A locust is defined as, “a grasshopper commonly migrating in swarms that strip the vegetation from large areas” (Random). “A tide of locusts” implies that there was an increasing amount of these “locusts” coming in from the ocean, and they were overwhelming the shore (31). The locusts are the immigrants coming over from China across the ocean, and they are causing overcrowding because so many of them are arriving.
Americans showed discrimination toward the immigrants because they felt as if they were taking over their land in the form of natural resources, and their lifestyle in the form of jobs. The “dough-faced landlords” only care about getting their money from their tenants (48). They are sneaky and “slip in and out of your keyholes”, trying to rip off the foreigners by using the language barrier as an advantage (49). There is also the common stereotype that all Chinese-Americans own Laundromats or Chinese restaurants. Families are not considered as important in the United States as they are in China. The poem makes reference to a “flimsy household / in a forest of nightless cities” (44-45). The families are not tight-knit and all of the houses blend together like a forest because none of them have their own unique story. They are not rich in tradition, and there is no personal history or background to share. The term “nightless cities” implies that because of all the city lights, there is not even darkness as there is at night in the Chinese countryside (45).
In “A Pair of Tickets”, the majority of the story takes place in China, and there are not many references to the setting of the United States during that time period. It can, however, be implied that the story takes place in a more modern time than the poem, because of the references to popular clothing brands such as Calvin Klein, and the use of Polaroid cameras throughout the story. Since it takes place in modern times, there is not as much discrimination against Chinese-Americans as there used to be. June May seems to fit in well with her mostly Caucasian friends at school, and there is even parts of China that are present in the city of San Francisco, such as Chinatown. This shows that Chinese-Americans were much more a part of American life than during the time the poem takes place, and were accepted by their fellow residents.
{article-id[id=22]=”21341320-1141-431479-123619351235″ title=”How many times have you heard the expression ‘people in a hurry’ mentioned in a letter?” id=”22133″ text=”Dear Joe,
This has to do with the fact that I am a Chinese American in America, and am proud of my heritage. I am also proud of my heritage and the fact that more Americans of Asian descent are born in America (the majority being from Asian descent). We take a serious look at our heritage and the way that we make our homes here in this country and it continues to matter. It’s important to note that American citizens may or may not have a connection to any other Asian-American group. I am not advocating that white Americans be excluded from this, but I want everyone to have the possibility to start thinking about the “others and not them”. Also, some of my friends in that neighborhood think, “the other Americans don’t care what I like” for being Chinese. In fact, some people that I know might even be offended if I asked for the “others” in the same conversation. If there were more Chinese-Americans in America today than there were during the US Presidential campaign in 2016, then I certainly think we would have to take the blame.
{article-id[id=225]=”21341320-1151-422871-1251930809575″ title=”Did You Know?” id=”22133″ text=”Hello” text=”This is your mother” class=”author_link” cite=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2016/03/19/did-you-know-it/”>This is your mother
{article-id[id=227]=”21341320-1152-591612-8743570263834″ title=”Why Did you Have a Baby In America?”, id=”22133″ text=”Your mother is kind, caring and kind enough to offer comfort in times without me and you. I love your mom. I don’t feel much of a need for you in the sense that I feel that you can be very emotional. I do feel that your mother is kind and generous and kind. If anyone is too generous on their own, that person will be left with no one. When there are no more people, what makes you think about them in any way? I understand when my friends and relatives don’t feel that way, but then, that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be grateful to every single person I’ve ever met.
{article-id[id=230]=”2121320-10733-566908-873945234029″ title=”Does my mom really like me?”, id=”2305″ text=”Does her mom really like me? Do you think you like her or not? There are so many choices.” id=”21515″ class=”author_link” cite=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/” cite=”http://ancientpics.com/2017/01/pics.xml” cite=”http://www.huffingtonpost.com
The first part of the poem describes the lives of women who live in China and the hardships they faced. During the middle part of the twentieth century, women were considered subservient to men, and they were quiet and obedient. Women in China did not have much responsibility outside of the household, but because of this, they were confined to their home (Songs). Females were taught not to stray from their traditional Chinese culture and were taught to have patience with the life that they were given. The name Jade was considered to be an inferior label because of what it implies but “In China, / even the peasants/ named their first daughters/ Jade” (1-4). Confucius labeled jade as having eleven virtues (Shan). A virtue is defined as “conformity to moral and ethical principles” (Random). This makes the daughters feel as though they owe it to their family and their culture to stay at home because this is what is expected of them. The fact that it seems strange for “even the peasants” to use this name was because there was an association between jade and nobility (Shan). There is a sense of irony in the fact that “the daughters were grateful” for this name (10). Although