Waverly Jong's 'Rules Of The Game'

Throughout her childhood life her mother, Suyuan, was continuously pushing her to be her best. Jing-Mei purposely tried to fail at everything to prover to her mother that she could never become a great and famous person. Then after a piano recital that went horridly wrong, her and her mother had an argument and their relationship was never the same. Many years later Suyuan tried to give Jing-mei the piano that she had as a child. She refused the offer, but than a year later her mother died and Jing-Mei was cleaning out her mother’s house and decided to play the piano and she was surprised that she still knew how.

This quote from the text stands out to me because it shows that Waverly’s mom cares more about herself than her community. Every Saturday, Waverly and her mom would go to the market. Not to purchase anything, but for Waverly’s mom to show off her daughter who became a national chess champion. Instead of focusing on how her family felt about Waverly’s sudden success and helping them cope with Waverly’s busy schedule, the mother chose to flaunt Waverly and boast about her accomplishments.

For example, Kellie Schmitt describes one of her Chinese neighbors as a “burly second-floor mom” (Schmitt 108) and another neighbor as “one of the underwear men” (Schmitt 108). Later in the narrative, Schmitt expresses her vivid thoughts and memories of a Chinese funeral experience she observed. Her initial description of the foreign experience was of “trumpets and saxophones...

"The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" by Jamie Ford is a captivating coming-of-age story that follows the life of Henry Lee, a Chinese-American boy growing up in Seattle during World War II. Throughout the novel, Henry experiences profound personal growth and self-discovery as he navigates the complexities of racial tensions, family expectations, and first love. This essay will explore how four quotes from the book exemplify the transformative journey of Henry's coming of age. Paragraph 1: In the early stages of the novel, a young Henry grapples with his dual identity as an American-born Chinese.

Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club is an amazing representation of what Chinese immigrants and their families face. The broad spectrum of the mothers’ and daughters’ stories all connect back to a couple of constantly recurring patterns. These patterns are used to show that how the mothers and daughters were so differently raised affected their relationships with each other, for better and for worse. To begin with, the ever-present pattern of disconnect between the two groups of women is used to show how drastically differently they were raised.

The Game of Badminton In her short story, “The Embassy of Cambodia”, author Zadie Smith explores the complex mind of a domestic servant named Fatou, and how she finds happiness despite personal experience with abuse, suffering, and death. “The Embassy of Cambodia” manages to address a wide spectrum of societal and cultural problems and also has the ability to connect with individual readers on a deeper level. Smith uses many intertwining techniques to ultimately demonstrate how routine, faith, and relationships can help navigate a life that is filled with pain and uncertainty. In order to create a sense of structure and certainty in her life, Fatou sets aside specific amounts of time on certain days to ensure relaxation and happiness.

One day, Waverly’s mother took interest in her passion for chess so she decides she would go and see her play. “My mother joined the crowd during the outdoor exhibition games. She sat proudly on the bench, telling my admirers with proper Chinese humility” (Tan, “Rules of the Game”). Waverly’s mother is finally supporting Waverlys dream of playing chess after much persuasion. Likewise in a similar scene, an old man suggested that Waverly’s mother allow her to play with him.

“Jing-mei Woo … becomes the frame narrator linking the two generations of American Chinese, who are separated by age and cultural gaps and yet bound together by family ties and a continuity of ethnic heritage.” (Xu, 108).

Tan expresses the life experiences of Chinese immigrants to the United States and attempts to depict the relationship of a mother and daughter through her significant piece of writing ‘The Joy Club’. Therefore, all these authors somehow portrayed their early struggles and their view point towards life from their literary

The characterization of Waverly Jong in Amy Tan’s “Rules of the Game” delineates the importance of foresight and the ability to anticipate the outcome of situations, especially in the case of her mother. In analyzing Waverly’s acknowledgement, “I learned why it is essential in the endgame to have foresight...all weaknesses and advantages become evident to a strong adversary and are obscured to a tiring opponent..for the whole game one must gather invisible strengths and see the endgame before the game begins.” (3), the reader is able to decipher how Waverly’s thoughts work to elicit a greater meaning

Throughout the entire novel, the mothers and daughters face inner struggles, family conflict, and societal collision. The divergence of cultures produces tension and miscommunication, which effectively causes the collision of American morals, beliefs, and priorities with Chinese culture which

Mother knows best. And yet so many daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club feel slighted by what the matriarchal figures in their lives have in mind for them, or rather, what they believe their mothers have in mind for them. A perfect storm of expectation, true and false, about love, about success, about being Chinese. The souring of mother-daughter relationships in The Joy Luck Club stem from unrealistic or ill conceived expectations that both parties hold for the other.

The Woman Warrior is a “memoir of a girlhood among ghosts” in which Maxine Hong Kingston recounts her experiences as a second generation immigrant. She tells the story of her childhood by intertwining Chinese talk-story and personal experience, filling in the gaps in her memory with assumptions. The Woman Warrior dismantles the archetype of the typical mother-daughter relationship by suggesting that diaspora redefines archetypes by combining conflicting societal norms. A mother’s typical role in a mother-daughter relationship is one of guidance and leadership. Parents are responsible for teaching a child right from wrong and good from evil.

This lesson proves pivotal in Jongs spectacular chess expeditions that saw her crowned national champion and also defined her relationship with her mother whom she considered as an opponent. Jongs

Numerous influences throughout my life sparked growth in me as a character. Among sixteen years of constant change, the philosophy of the East seemed to stick with me. Like Sun Wukong’s journey to the West, I embarked on my own journey to the East. It was a journey to the beliefs and ideas of Asia which changed my views of life and society completely. As the son of two Vietnamese immigrants who came to America after the Vietnam War, the Asian mindset persisted in my household despite their assimilation thirty years ago.