Family History Connections

After reading numerous stories of my classmates, I found that the social and educational ways and conditions of different families were quite similar in the past, regardless of the country. From Carly's family history about many of her relatives, John's story about his great-grandparents, and Camal's history about his parents, I noticed that the neighborhoods of their elders did not have high education, were poor, and/or the children had to become responsible and take on jobs at a young age.

She gave herself the responsibility of raising her siblings, from when they were babies to adults..."Everyone was equally poor.” The entire country suffered from poverty...the children in the family mostly had elementary school education. (Carly)

Carly's grandma had to take the responsibility of raising her younger siblings at a young age, and as a result, became more like a motherly figure in her family. During the Mao period, everyone was poor, and the entire country suffered from poverty. They didn't have much to eat for meals, and the main meal everyday was always dinner. The children there also did not have a high education, with most children having an elementary school education.

My grandmother's grandparents...where two school teachers who had about a 12th grade education. At that time in Texas for African American people that was considered to be rather high. (John)

John's great-grandparents were different from others in their neighborhood, and had an education around twelfth grade, which was considered to be high. Many of the African Americans in Texas then did not have an education as high as their's.

Not a lot of money flowed in and out of this area so the income level was real low. As a kid, my dad was already given huge responsibilities. (Camal)

Camal's parents lived in poverty in Yemen, and his father had to take on large responsibilities as a child. He would take on many tasks on the family farm to make sure thieves didn't steal and that the farm and cattle were fine by watering and watching them.

Cycle of Jewelry

In The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, she incorporated many cyclical elements into the novel. There's other hidden cyclical elements in the story that don't involve the structure of the book, how it is written from the view point of the mothers, then from the daughters views, their views again, then the mothers again, or how the daughters had difficulties with their mothers, or how most of them married a white husband (eg. Ted, Harold, Rich, and one of the mothers married Clifford, also white).

The mothers in The Joy Luck Club gave their daughters jewelry, ranging from gems to gold to jade. When they gave their daughters the jewelry, it was often as a symbol of love, to prove to them that they were special, and worthy and mature enough to receive the precious keepsakes.

In The Red Candle, told from Lindo Jong, a mother's point of view, her mother gave her a necklace before she left her with Huang Taitai.

"The dowry was enough, more than enough, said my father. But he could not stop my mother from giving me her chang, a necklace made out of a tablet of red jade" (53).

Lindo's mother left her the necklace as a last token and symbol of her love for her, and to give her the necklace, somewhat as a placeholder for her mother's presence in her life, even though she had to leave her.

Rose Hsu Jordan watched her mother give away her ring to Bing in Half and Half, when he drowned in the sea, and she could not find him. After hours of searching, the mother slowly came to the realization that they would not be able to find Bing, and threw the ring into the water.

"...she opened her fist. In her palm was a ring of watery blue sapphire, a gift from her mother, who had died many years before...She threw the ring into the water" (129).

 After Bing fell and drowned in the water, never to be found, An-Mei Hsu threw the sapphires as an offering, believing that the ring would make the Coiling Dragon forget Bing.

In Best Quality, Jing-Mei Woo tells of the time when her mother gave her a jade pendant on a gold chain after a crab dinner celebrating Chinese New Year. The meal had not gone as well as expected, and after, when Jing-Mei was talking to her mother, Suyan, when she gave her the jade necklace.

"...she unhooked the clasp of her gold necklace and took it off, wadding the chain and the jade pendant in her palm. She grabbed my hand and put the necklace in my palm, then shut my fingers around it...I looked at the necklace, the pendant with the light green jade" (208).

Suyan wanted to give the necklace to Jing-Mei, because she had waited a long time before she gave her the necklace, wanting to give it to her for a long time, and when she gave it to her, she understood that Jing-Mei wound understand her meaning, as the necklace was her "life's importance." She wanted to show Jing-Mei that she loved her, and supported her, regardless of the mean, degrading and insulting comments that Waverly said.

In the last story, A Pair of Tickets, told from Jing-Mei Woo's point of view again, but speaking namely about her mothers past experience with her first two daughters, she speaks of the recollection of her father telling her  the story of how her mother left her two daughters along the road with jewelry, money, and photos.

"When the road grew quiet, she tore open the lining of her dress, and stuffed jewelry under the shirt of one baby, and money under the other" (282).

Suyan Woo, the mother, put jewelry into the shirt of one baby, because she loved them, and although she had to leave them since she had lost all strength to carry them any farther, she left the money and jewelry as a symbol of her love, and for whoever who found the two daughters to use to raise them, and hopefully cover some costs.

Family Stories: My Grandparents, things even I never knew about them

This family story is about my grandparents on my mom's side (her parents), and how they met.(:


My grandpa was an energetic, clever and smart person, who risked things occasionally.  For college final exams, he studied the night before the exams, and still managed to pass.  He was an engineer who never took no for an answer if he believed it. He loved to go out and socialize with friends. My grandma was his opposite; she was quiet, knew manners, raised her family with family values, and cared about her family all the time, and gave her full effort to her two children. Her children were her whole world. She was a outstanding, diligent, hard-working woman, who worked her hardest, to be able to get a job at a pretty good hospital, as a nurse.  


She worked there with my mom's aunt, who thought that my grandma and grandpa were worth introducing to each other, since she felt like she was a woman who was special and seemed compatible with her brother, so she talked to my grandpa about it. He walked there, and as my mom says, "he must've worked on something very hard that morning..." and he pretended to visit my grandaunt, and met my grandma while he was there. They chatted for a while, and decided to leave to go back to work. As soon as he walked to the gates of the hospital, he felt something wrong with his lungs, and his lung collapsed.

He managed to calmly walk back to the hospital, and as soon as he got to the room where my grandma treated patients, he collapsed right in front of her door. "Of course, the hero saved the beauty, but in this case, she saved him"(my mom:). She saved him from many situations, even after they married.

When he was caught trying to escape from China, he was forced to an isolated area, with hopes that isolation and hard work would be the way to correct his thinking. She moved there with him, and became doctor in the village, and acted as a midwife to a lot of families.  Because she was the nurse, and the people of the village highly appreciated her, they gave my grandpa not as intensive labor, and he managed to stay inside of the house most of the time. She therefore "saved" him from all the hard work, that was forced on the many people that were forced to work in difficult jobs in crops.

After all the experiences that they had with each other, they learned to understand the other better, and when their children were born, they continued to pass on their cunning and clever genes to the next generation, and built a strong family together, despite hardships they had (many people lived on a small food supply, food was distributed strictly, and if they finished the amount they received, they wouldn't get anymore, and starved.).



My mom has told me this story a few times, well only parts of it. Mostly just the part about my grandpa meeting my mom at the hospital, calmly walking back, collapsing at her door (I actually thought it was at her feet, but I stand corrected), and her saving his life. Other details, like my great-aunt working there (one of my favorite cousin's grandma), and about my grandpa being exiled for trying to escape China, and what my grandma did, to join him in the village as a doctor and midwife. I never knew that my grandpa was an engineer (even though I grew up with him under the same roof), and never known my grandmother, but I knew she was a nurse. I never forgot about my grandpa procrastinating his studying for his finals, and still managing to pass, and my mom tells me not to follow his example, and to actually study for college finals, instead of procrastinating, because if I procrastinate, I most definitely wouldn't do as well as my grandpa did.


From this, I realize that my personality is like my grandma and grandpa. I like to risk things sometimes, but in the past, I used to not be as big of a risk taker as I am now. It probably isn't that good that I take risks so much, since I won't be very likely to succeed at taking a risk like studying for college finals, or any finals for that matter the night before the final. And like my grandpa, I can be stubborn, and stick firmly to whatever I believe in, but oftentimes, it's not necessarily something that I believe in, but if I see something that I think looks nice or I like, even if I am presented with other options, I most often do not change my mind, and stick with whatever caught my eye first. I like my grandpa too, like to socialize, but at times, I am also like my grandma, and prefer being alone, in silence (with a book or quiet music). If I want to, I work my hardest like my grandma was known to do, and am able to succeed if I really do try hard enough, and put my full, honest effort into it. 


In some ways, I can kind of see my brother and I both reflected as my grandparents. Some characteristics, he  is like my grandpa, others like my grandma.  Others, the opposites, connect me to my grandparents. My brother, if he's really willing to learn about something, or to try to do something, he can do it, like my grandma, and me at times. My brother can also be very clever and social at times, always getting into a group, often becoming the center of attention, while I prefer standing along the sidelines, watching and observing. 


When I was younger, I went to these after school programs, and all the people who worked there to watch the children remembered me for my energy and outgoingness, but after my brother started going there, they no longer knew me as Amber. I became "Robert's sister." If he ever saw me when he was at the program, he would always yell to me, bragging to the people around him how I was his sister. Now that I think about it, I feel like after my brother was born, I became less "out there" with my defiant attitude, and stopped arguing with others to get what I wanted, I just let things slide, and go as they did, whether I liked it or not, and didn't do much to change it. I became more like my grandma, thoughtful and quiet.

Mother-Daughter Relationships (Amy Chua & Amy Tan)

In Amy Chua's "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior," excerpted from "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," she compares and contrasts the different way Chinese parents raise and restrict their children from the way Western parents do.  

 I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years.(Chua).

To make sure that her daughter learned a piece for a piano recital, Chua threatened her daughter with no food, presents, or parties.  Her daughter wanted to give up on the piano piece and stomped off, but Chua still ordered and forced her to get back to the piano and practice the piece until it was perfect by the next day.  Her parenting technique was to threaten and order her daughter to do what she wanted her to do, or else there would be a consequence that the daughter would not want.  She uses words to make her daughter do things, rather than physical force.

In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, in the second section, "The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates," she explores the topic of mother-daughter relationships, and the way they raise their daughters and things they often do to influence them.  In "Rules of the Game," written from Waverly Jong's perspective, her mother tells her family, 

"We not concerning this girl.  This girl not have concerning for us."

 after Waverly came home at night after running away from her mother because she was angry at her mother for always using her to show off.  Her mother understood it differently, and thought that she was embarrassed to be her mother.  When she got home, her family was sitting at the dinner table, with the remains of a fish on the table, and the mother spoke these words to make Waverly feel guilt through her words, and she chose her words to strike Waverly's emotions, to ensure that something similar wouldn't be likely to happen again.  Because Waverly's mother felt like Waverly didn't care for her family, she told her family to ignore her, since Waverly was so careless towards them, and did not care about them as she should.

The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates Purpose

In the introductory piece to the second section of The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, "The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates" a mother told her daughter to not ride her bicycle around the corner, since it was outside the protection of their house, and in a book, The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates, all the bad things that could happen out of the protection of the house is written.  The girl doesn't believe her mom and requests to see it, but her mom tells her she cannot read it, since it is in Chinese, and the mom does not tell her daughter the bad things, so she bikes off, and fell before she reached the corner.  The story portrays a complex mother-daughter relationship, and the cultural differences they had between them.

In "Rules of the Game," written from Waverly Jong's character, she encounters a large cultural gap between her and her mother, and both have a strained relationship, the mother having different opinions from her daughter, and trouble communicating with each other clearly.   Waverly's "mother's eyes turned into dangerous black slits.  She had no words for me, just sharp silence" (pg.99) when Waverly told her mother that if she wanted to show off, then she should learn to play chess herself.  Their relationship becomes more difficult when Waverly runs away from her mother, and comes back home late at night.  Her mother tells the family, ""We not concerning this girl.  This girl not have concerning for us'" (pg.100).  Because Waverly did not show that she considered her family and her mother's feelings as much as she cared about her own feelings and opinions, Lindo (her mother) tells her family to not show concern for her, like she did to them.

In "The Voice from the Wall," written by Lena St. Clair, the mother and daughter have cultural differences that divide them.  Lena "could understand the words [her mother said] perfectly, but not the meanings" (pg.106).  Because Lena's mother, Ying-Ying, spoke Mandarin and a little bit of English, she had trouble communicating with her, since she grew up in an American environment with her father, "who spoke only a few canned Chinese expressions" (pg.106)