Essay Of Your Story

Rules of the Game

   Amy Tan is a Chinese-American novelist who wrote the New York Times-bestselling novel The Joy Luck Club. She was born on February 19, 1952 in Oakland, California. In 1985, she wrote the story "Rules of the Game," which was the foundation for her first novel The Joy Luck Club. The book explored the relationship between Chinese women and their Chinese-American daughters. It received the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was translated into 25 languages. Amy grew up in Northern California, but when her father and older brother both died from brain tumors in 1966, she moved with her mother and younger brother to Europe, where she attended high school in Montreux, Switzerland. She returned to the United States for college, attending Linfield College in Oregon, San Jose City College, San Jose State University, the University of California at Santa Cruz and the University of California at Berkeley. After college, she worked as a language development consultant and as a corporate freelance writer. Amy Tan has been married to her husband, Lou DeMattei, for over twenty years. They live in San Francisco and New York.

  The story Rules of the Game is about a girl named Waverly who lives in San Francisco Chinatown with her mom and two brothers in a apartment. They had a happy childhood. Her brother Vincent receives a chess set from the Chinese Santa Claus and Waverly got introduce to the game of chess since then. Soon she is really good at chess, so much that she goes to the old man in the park and challenges him to a game. He beats her, but also sees her potential and teaches her how to play. Then Waverly starts to win championships and her mom starts telling people that Waverly's just lucky. Her mom was always pushing Waverly to do better. Waverly kept improving, and soon became a winner. Then she realizes that she's lost out on a lot of cool childhood activities because she has to come home and practice chess every day. Then her mom starts to show her off  to people and Waverly got sick of that so one day at a market she stood up for herself and told his mother to stop doing that. Then she runs away from her angry mother. When she comes home after having nowhere else to go, she sees that her mother gave her back and she had no dinner. Then she gets into her room and imagines her mother as an unbeatable chess opponent and begins to think about her next move.

  This was a good story, easy to read and I liked it. I learn a little about the Chinese culture. They are really believing people and for them family and culture are really important. From Waverly’s mother we can see that in our moms because every mom is caring and they always want us to give more of ourselves. A lot of people these days are living like the characters in this story not only Chinese but around the world. People are moving to other countries trying to keep their culture and this story shows a little bit of what is like to have that conflict. 

Bowling to Find a Lost Father

  This is the story of a son that misses his dad once he went to college and shares the memories of his childhood. When his dad was close to him and showed things to him and how they worked but we can now that the relationship is different because his dad has put a wall between him and his brother and sisters. Apparently what it affected the relationship was moving out to another country and growing up being strict with them. I guess all parents are like that. As we are growing up they become more protective and we have to love them and show them respect.

  The son also remember a day where they all went bowling and they had to teach his father how to play. He felt odd by showing his father how to play because he felt that it was the other way around. His father was the one supposed to show him things but he learned that it isn’t always like that. We also have to show our parents things. A relationship is between two and those two learn from each other. That is how the relationship works. Our parents show us things as we grow up but we also show them things as we grow up.

    These days we can see that technology is evolving and our parents can learn how to use the electronics devices but first we are the ones that teach them how they work. When we have kids is going to be the same thing. We are going to learn from them just how they are going to learn from us.