A Woman Finding Her Cultural Identity: “A Pair of Tickets” (Tan, 263-277)
Who am I? What kind of history did I come from? Those
are questions that seem to be prevalent in Jing-mei’s story. As a child, it is difficult to understand
culture, family values and why and how a person is the way they are. This story is based upon a woman’s own
psychological conflict with her cultural background. Liu (Liu, 97) describes cultural
identification as “the extent to which group members accept the values and
norms of a culture”. Jing-mei battles
with herself and her family, mostly her mother, with identifying with their Chinese
culture. This story is about a woman and
her family. She and her elder father are
on a trip with “A pair of tickets” to China.
Her mother has recently died and she wants to meet her extended family. She finds out that she has two step sisters
that she has never met. As she is
traveling she goes back to times spent with her mother and how her mother had
always told her that “Once you are born Chinese, you cannot help but feel and
think Chinese” (Tan, 263 par. 2).
In this story the reader would expect some form of adventure or travel. Just going off of the title alone, the reader expects the author to describe some form of a journey. This story is about a woman’s journey, but it is not necessarily about the trip alone. This story is about a woman’s self-discovery on her trip. One would expect this story to be a sort of tragedy, but in turn it was a story of inspiration of a woman finding herself and identifying with her family’s culture through her long lost family.
Jing-mei has never really felt Chinese, being born and raised in the United States of America. She has never really identified with her family’s culture. Her mother used to express their families culture to Jing-mei, but Jing-mei never shared an interest in knowing about her family’s cultural background. After her mother dies, and only after she begins this adventure does she begin to realize what her mother meant by those words. Her mother seems to know that Jing-mei will one day open her eyes and realize what it truly means to be Chinese.
“A Pair of Tickets” is narrated in first-person narration. The author is writing as an internal narrator. Towards the end of the story though, the author uses first-person plural when referring to her family and their journey together. Jing-mei is the author, writing this story as a memoir or journal writing. She tells her true life story and shares her personal journey of self and discovery in finally understanding her family’s culture.
The main character is Jing-mei. She is a dynamic character. She goes through a change of heart when on her journey of self-discovery. Her father is a large part of the story as well. Jing-mei’s father would be considered a foil character. Without his help and explanations of different aspects of her family’s culture and life story, Jing-mei would have never found her cultural identity. Her family in China would also be consider slight foil characters as well. They all helped her through her journey of understanding what it is meant to be Chinese.
This story originally takes place on a train in China. Jing-mei and her father travel through many different cities in China, visiting family and ultimately looking for long lost sisters. It is a sort of vacation for Jing-mei and her father, but it becomes so much more than a vacation, it becomes a journey that the two of them are able to share together. The two pair of tickets are to Shanghai, “In my hand I’m clutching a pair of tickets to Shanghai” (Tan, 276 par. 135). Shanghai is symbolic to Jing-mei’s family because it is the true setting of the foundation of her cultural identity.
The story is written almost as a documentary or a journal. She describes her trials, her frustrations, fears and her happiness in this story. She learns so much from talking with her father about her mother and the decisions that her mother made when she left China many years ago. Her father opens up to her and gives her information that comforts, confuses, saddens and frustrates Jing-mei. She never really felt like an outcast being bi-cultural, but she just never really embraced her Chinese culture. Traveling through China she is able to embrace her second culture and her family’s values and traditions. She learns to open up herself to look at herself and her relationships with her mother and her family and hopefully her future family.
This story refers to the strength of a bi-cultural woman and her self-discovery. Jing-mei wants to learn her family’s history and what it is meant to be Chinese. Until this trip, she never really understood what her family’s culture and beliefs meant. And, even when she begins to realize her different background, she still may not understand a lot of the culture, but she is finally able to open up to learning about it. At the end of the story, it even shows that not only does she begin to learn about it, even better, she is able to just trust her cultural identity. She discovers what her mother meant by being Chinese. “And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood. After all these years, it can finally be let go” (Tan, 276 par. 142). The theme is family and the bond that a family has through sharing the same cultural identity.
In conclusion, Jing-mei goes through internal conflict over her bi-cultural background. She has denied her Chinese culture for most of her life. She understood that she was Chinese, but never really had the opportunity to embrace it. Her parents tried to express their culture to her since she was a child, but she never showed an interest. It took “a pair of tickets” to finally understand and trust in her true culture. She opened up to not only new family members that she never knew, but she was also able to embrace a whole new, culture, that she is able to just trust in, even without knowing the full value of their culture.
Works Cited
Tan, Amy (1952). “A Pair of Tickets.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. 11th Edition. 2013. 263-277.
Liu, P. H. (2006). “A study of the relationship between adjustment behavior of primary indigenous students and their cultural identification, and achievement in self-regulated learning [In Chinese].” Doctoral dissertation, National PingTung University of Education, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC.
Picture provided by: theexpathub.com web. 27 April, 2014.
In this story the reader would expect some form of adventure or travel. Just going off of the title alone, the reader expects the author to describe some form of a journey. This story is about a woman’s journey, but it is not necessarily about the trip alone. This story is about a woman’s self-discovery on her trip. One would expect this story to be a sort of tragedy, but in turn it was a story of inspiration of a woman finding herself and identifying with her family’s culture through her long lost family.
Jing-mei has never really felt Chinese, being born and raised in the United States of America. She has never really identified with her family’s culture. Her mother used to express their families culture to Jing-mei, but Jing-mei never shared an interest in knowing about her family’s cultural background. After her mother dies, and only after she begins this adventure does she begin to realize what her mother meant by those words. Her mother seems to know that Jing-mei will one day open her eyes and realize what it truly means to be Chinese.
“A Pair of Tickets” is narrated in first-person narration. The author is writing as an internal narrator. Towards the end of the story though, the author uses first-person plural when referring to her family and their journey together. Jing-mei is the author, writing this story as a memoir or journal writing. She tells her true life story and shares her personal journey of self and discovery in finally understanding her family’s culture.
The main character is Jing-mei. She is a dynamic character. She goes through a change of heart when on her journey of self-discovery. Her father is a large part of the story as well. Jing-mei’s father would be considered a foil character. Without his help and explanations of different aspects of her family’s culture and life story, Jing-mei would have never found her cultural identity. Her family in China would also be consider slight foil characters as well. They all helped her through her journey of understanding what it is meant to be Chinese.
This story originally takes place on a train in China. Jing-mei and her father travel through many different cities in China, visiting family and ultimately looking for long lost sisters. It is a sort of vacation for Jing-mei and her father, but it becomes so much more than a vacation, it becomes a journey that the two of them are able to share together. The two pair of tickets are to Shanghai, “In my hand I’m clutching a pair of tickets to Shanghai” (Tan, 276 par. 135). Shanghai is symbolic to Jing-mei’s family because it is the true setting of the foundation of her cultural identity.
The story is written almost as a documentary or a journal. She describes her trials, her frustrations, fears and her happiness in this story. She learns so much from talking with her father about her mother and the decisions that her mother made when she left China many years ago. Her father opens up to her and gives her information that comforts, confuses, saddens and frustrates Jing-mei. She never really felt like an outcast being bi-cultural, but she just never really embraced her Chinese culture. Traveling through China she is able to embrace her second culture and her family’s values and traditions. She learns to open up herself to look at herself and her relationships with her mother and her family and hopefully her future family.
This story refers to the strength of a bi-cultural woman and her self-discovery. Jing-mei wants to learn her family’s history and what it is meant to be Chinese. Until this trip, she never really understood what her family’s culture and beliefs meant. And, even when she begins to realize her different background, she still may not understand a lot of the culture, but she is finally able to open up to learning about it. At the end of the story, it even shows that not only does she begin to learn about it, even better, she is able to just trust her cultural identity. She discovers what her mother meant by being Chinese. “And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood. After all these years, it can finally be let go” (Tan, 276 par. 142). The theme is family and the bond that a family has through sharing the same cultural identity.
In conclusion, Jing-mei goes through internal conflict over her bi-cultural background. She has denied her Chinese culture for most of her life. She understood that she was Chinese, but never really had the opportunity to embrace it. Her parents tried to express their culture to her since she was a child, but she never showed an interest. It took “a pair of tickets” to finally understand and trust in her true culture. She opened up to not only new family members that she never knew, but she was also able to embrace a whole new, culture, that she is able to just trust in, even without knowing the full value of their culture.
Works Cited
Tan, Amy (1952). “A Pair of Tickets.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. 11th Edition. 2013. 263-277.
Liu, P. H. (2006). “A study of the relationship between adjustment behavior of primary indigenous students and their cultural identification, and achievement in self-regulated learning [In Chinese].” Doctoral dissertation, National PingTung University of Education, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC.
Picture provided by: theexpathub.com web. 27 April, 2014.