She had no confidence in her mother growing up, and saw her as a “limit” and an “embarrassment”. Later in Tan’s life, she found several surveys which led her to realize that she was not alone; there were other Asian-Americans who may have shared the same struggles as her. Tan creates a symbolic diction through the use of words like “broken”, “limited”, and “fractured”. She is very repetitive with her use of these words, although she explains how she hated when people described her mother’s english that way. Although Tan knows that the way her and her mother converse is not grammatically correct, she has grown to love it.
An Author to Her Book Explication Anne Bradstreet’s poem “An Author to Her Book” is the narrative story of an author’s struggles and tribulations with a piece that he or she has created. The complex emotional connection that an author feels for his or her work is displayed through Bradstreet’s use of metaphor. Anne Bradstreet is also able to draw up similarities between being an author and being a parent through the use of personification and comparison. Bradstreet portrays the struggles, difficulties, and fears that a mother experiences as those that a mother would experience when creating and releasing a new work. Bradstreet’s use of metaphor allows her to relate the complex relationships of being a parent to being an author.
Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” is a short story about heritage. A thriller in which heritage is seen in different ways. In “Everyday Use”, Walker tells a story about the conflict between a daughter and her family. Even though, the character of Mama is poorly educated, she still knows the meaning of love of her heritage. She wishes to teach this to her two daughters but times have changed and her daughters have difference views of what they think heritage is.
From the beginning when we were first introduced to Dee, we find that she has changed her name to Wangero saying that Dee is “dead” because she didn’t think her name, Dicie, had any cultural significance and so she choice a name she felt suited her more. She says she couldn’t bear being named after people who oppress her. She has no connection or respect with her family. This is sad because she doesn’t like who she once was. Although she has learned a lot from her schooling and has a better knowledge than her mom & sister, I feel she possesses this know-it-all attitude about what heritage really is.
Even though the narrator admits to partial responsibility for her part in Emily’s unhappy childhood, at the same time she excuses herself of full responsibility because of environmental and social circumstances. She looks at her daughter's future, fearful that it will be a desolate, miserable existence resulting from a childhood where there was not sufficient money or time for emotional nourishment. Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” introduces a mother-daughter relationship where the mother faces internal conflict regarding her daughter Emily as she narrates her neglect for her daughter, the lack of love the child experiences during her life, and ability to discover comedy during tragic situations, and the cruelty of being a dark little girl in a world that appreciates beauty. Several times throughout Emily’s life she experiences separation from those she cares about. The narrator confesses how she was absent from her daughter’s life during most of Emily’s development.
Motherhood Raising a child is not easy especially when a mother is subjected to racial discrimination, poor socioeconomic conditions, daily scrutiny or ethical questions. Two well-known authors, Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks, poetically express some of these struggles that surround the theme of motherhood. Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son” reveals that this mother (Mother 1) is a caring individual who has to gently remind her son that “Life…ain’t…no crystal stair” (Pg.1254). Life is not going to be easy for the mother or child, but having the gift and opportunity of life is something that many people take for granted. In contrast, Gwendolyn Brooks’ “the mother” exposes the reality and un-motherly act of abortion.
Elements of criticism, judgment, and pettiness are all made apparent. The mother tells the readers that after returning from school as a young woman, Dee looked down upon her family for being uneducated and tried to force her viewpoints upon them. This is seen clearly when the mother states, “She used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folk’s habits,
Maggie was very uneasy around her sister; her mother tells her anxiousness in regard to Dee’s visitation: “Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe” (119). Dee undermines her sister, not always knowing what type of impact she impresses upon Maggie. Dee does not appreciate her sister or her mother, both of which is barely educated and lives in a poor, dilapidated home. In fact, Dee had her own way of making this noticeable in one instance when she stood off in the distance while their first home burned down with her mother and sister inside (121). She does not feel comfortable taking on the old fashioned lifestyle her mother and sister do.
They are not brought up in the same loving and child-friendly society we have today. Forster shocks the modern reader with Lilia’s feelings towards her own daughter, Irma: ‘She caught sight of her little daughter Irma, and felt that a touch of maternal solemnity was required.’ Forster uses ‘required’ to show an example of Lilia’s own hypocrisy, as if she only thinks of her daughter because it is the right thing for a mother to do. This ‘required’ mother and daughter relationship is mirrored between Lilia and her own mother as well. The phrase ‘even Mrs Theobald’ implies that there is some reason she would not have come to do what seems a natural and expected thing: ‘bid her only daughter goodbye.’ Later in the novel Forster
Her psychological trauma begins with the brutality of the way her first daughter was taken away to die. “She was not prepared for what happened last time… Kavita felt her budding joy give away to confusion. She tried to speak, to articulate something from her thoughts swirling in her head” (page 6-7). This quote shows that she was at first happy with the birth of her first child, but her confusion of the moment left her with no response. She could only admire her child and she could not understand why her husband could not see