Analysis: Joy Luck Club – Chapter 16: “A Pair of Tickets”

In “A Pair of Tickets,” the last chapter in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club concludes the author’s self-revelation of her personal feelings about being American and Chinese. She makes a clear statement that DNA will overstep assimilation, which demands that a person’s biological distinction disappear. Jing Mei (June) despite an earlier assumption she could never be Chinese, finally realizes when she takes a trip to China, she can no longer deny this part of her identity. To embrace the essence of who she was born to give her a sense of wholeness and attachment to her inner self.

Jing-Mei’s self-revelation was a process; it did not just happen when she took the trip to China and employed a method of accommodation. Her mother Suyuan knew a time would come that Jing-Mei would realize her Chinese self. She told her, “Someday you will see,” said my mother. “It is in your blood, waiting to be let go” (Tan 154). This book is about cultures merging and learning to understand that it is acceptable to be both American and Chinese culture; being both is part of being oneself. The American culture is advertised as being superior and having the best, and being the best at everything. The commercialization of the perfect picture of beauty, American, Anglo Saxon, blond hair, has been glamorized and is the sought after prize. As a teenager, Jing-Mei thought of herself as completely American, and so did the other Chinese American daughters in this novel. However, as they become older they realize the past is important and perhaps there are things to learn about their Chinese culture that will prove to be life-changing.

The parable reads: “For a long time now the woman had wanted to give her daughter the single swan feather and tell her, ‘This feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions.’ And she waited, year after year, for the day she could tell her daughter this in perfect American English” (Tan, 3). This parable in the novel is symbolic and sets the stage for the mother-daughter nuances and misunderstandings. Many people leave the past behind and with it certain rules and traditions that they gladly want to abandon. An old wives' tale says “Make sure you don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” (unknown). When leaving the old, do not discard it completely. The parable doesn’t discard the past, but instead, the mother keeps it in a sacred place because she wants to release elements of the past from the alabaster box, but she would rather wait until the timing is perfect; but as most know the timing is almost never perfect.

In “A Pair of Tickets,” Jing-Mei says that she does not know her mother and she does not know what it means to be Chinese and assimilate back into Chinese society. However, one must believe that part of this is her insecurity about taking a trip to her mother’s home and being unsure of what to expect. She does not need to be Chinese, but just herself. When Jing-Mei and her father meet his aunt and extended family, Jing-Mei thought, “I feel as if I were in the United Nations and the translators had run amok” (Tan 158). This happened in response to her father speaking Mandarin to his aunt, while the husband, wives, and grandchildren are speaking Cantonese, with an occasional explanation spoken in English as they all converse together. The things discussed are ordinary things: who died, Jing-Mei being older than they thought, how one day is not enough time for a visit after so long, and the bonding between Jing-Mei and her third cousin, who was about 10 years old – very typical of a family reunited. At the end of the visit when everyone had to say good-bye, Jing-Mei, now emotionally invested, understands that this is most likely the last time they would see one another, and the parting is bittersweet.

In this setting, a hotel room in China, Jing-Mei begins to understand who her mother is; thereby, she understands who she is. In the hotel room, her father Canning Woo, after he has put all the pieces together of why Suyuan abandoned her two twin daughters, tells his daughter the heart-wrenching story. She finally comes to the realization of who her mother was as a person and the difficult position she was put in, at a horrible unstable time in China. She thinks, as she is saying goodbye to her father’s relatives at the airport in Gangzhou, “Finding my mother in my father’s story and saying good-bye before I have a chance to know her better” (Tan 165). She found her mother and regretted that she had not found her before she died. People have many sides, and usually, no one reveals all of their true sides or true selves to any one person. To Jing-Mei, Suyuan revealed only a portion of who she was, a Chinese mother. To her husband Canning, she revealed herself as a devoted and respectful wife, and then to her friends, those ladies who shared the same beginnings, she revealed yet another side to. Only after Suyuan’s death was it revealed to Canning, and now to Jing-Mei, the full complexities of her character.

“I think about what my mother said, about activating my genes and become Chinese. And I wonder what she meant” (Tan 166). This thought is a surprise because by this time Jing-Mei has seemingly connected with her Chinese heritage. But perhaps she is considering the final act in the play, meeting her two twin sisters. When Jing-Mei steps off the plane and sees her sisters, she sees her mother. All of her insecurities about what she will say and how she will respond to them is lost in long moments of finally fulfilling her mother’s dream. Jing-Mei finally digests that her family, her blood-line, is what makes her Chinese. The last image in the story is the symbolic merging of two cultures, Chinese and American.

Work Cited

Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1989. Print.