A Pair of Tickets

Let me first start off by saying, this was the longest short-story, I ever have read. While I understand this was an excerpt from a longer story, I find it incredible that is still ran on as long as it did. I understood that the author, Amy Tan, was trying to create emotion and paint a background for the reader when she wrote about how her mother had to give up the baby. However, it seemed like for a short story it dragged on longer than it needed to. The main idea of a desperate mother could have been made in a few sentences.

June-May’s struggle to identify with her Chinese roots is what the story is centered on. She declares that ”even without makeup, I could never pass for true Chinese.” While her journey to discover that she actually was Chinese took 14 pages, she eventually sees the connection, not through her mother, but through her estranged sisters. The pair of tickets is symbolic in that she is paired with her sisters, or Chinese roots, no matter what she thought previously. And at the end, she declares, “It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood. After all these years, it can finally be let go.” Finally accepting her heritage.