“A Pair of Tickets” is the final chapter of Amy Tan’s book The Joy Luck Club in which the author shows readers the importance of self-identification and reunion. This chapter is a reflection of the personal experience of Amy Tan, who, like Jing-Mei Woo, an immigrant girl who traveled to China to find her identity. Using the parallelism, the author describes the protagonist’s inner journey to her roots through Jing-Mei’s pilgrimage to China.
In the beginning, Jing-Mei doubts her roots: “All my Caucasian friends agreed: I was about as Chinese, as they were” (Tan 267). However, the narrator’s mother claims it is impossible to deny her identity: “Once you are born Chinese, you cannot help but feel and think Chinese” (Tan 267). Initially, Jing-Mei tries to create an American identity by using the name June to feel American. The Chinese name Jing-Mei, meaning “little sister” as a reference to the sisters that her mother had to abandon in China, does not allow Jing-Mei to escape her Chinese identity.
Another example of parallelism in the story is Jing-Mei’s journey. As she travels across China, Jing-Mei begins to understand herself better. First, Jing-Mei denies her Chinese roots and assumes that her sisters will perceive her as a disappointment (Tan 271). However, Jing-Mei finds her identity after a warm meeting with sisters who were very similar to their mother, as did China, which, despite changing names for the sake of modernity and a mixture of traditional, communist, and Western cultures, remains original.
Identity is a crucial aspect of human life, which helps humans to determine their place in the world. Tang reveals the problem of generations of immigrants torn from their roots and a sense of uncertainty between the identity of the country of origin and the country in which they were raised. The second generation of immigrants can feel their identity and stay connected to their roots only through personal experience.
Work Cited
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club: A Novel. Penguin Books, 2006.