"A Pair of Ticket"

The short story 'A Pair of Tickets' is a component of a novel 'The Joy Luck Club' by Amy

Tan which focuses on a woman fulfilling the lifelong wish of her mother. The title symbolizes the

discovery of the narrator's identity, and the soul of her emotional nature and feelings towards her

mother. The setting in this story changes the soul of the narrator as she begins to discover things

about herself and her two different cultures. As the story progresses, she begins to question things

in her life, her identity, her mother's life, and the lives of her newly discovered twin sisters. She

wants to fulfill her mother's wish of seeing the twin daughters once again. At the beginning of the

story, she denies her Chinese culture, but through the trip to China, she matures and begins to realize

her true self.

When the narrator leaves the Hong Kong border to China, she feels the 'familiar old pain'

aching in her bones.

United States

United States

Chinese Brush for Writing Calligraphy

This pain comes form her internal conflict between two different culture, her

denial of being Chinese, and the missed opportunity for her to truly know her mother. According

to Stanley L. Fong, ' As Chinese become progressively removed from their ancestral culture and in

greater contact with the dominant American culture, they will show an concurrent increase in their

assimilation-orientation and in their internalization of American cultural norms' (39). As the

narrator was born in America, goes to an American school, and makes friends with Caucasians, she

starts to become part American. She wants to be more associated with her Caucasian friends, and

because she is educated under an American culture, she thinks in an American way. She doesn't

want to be an outsider in a foreign country, she wants to be...