How Amy Tan Taught Me To Embrace Multicultural Identity

Ryland Louvierre

Jeris Swanhorst

LIT 100

27 June 2026

How Amy Tan Taught Me to Embrace Multicultural Identity

The text I connected with most was “Two Pairs of Tickets,” by Amy Tan. I chose this text because I deeply relate to it, struggling with my own identity until I took a trip to Lafayette, Louisiana. This text reveals this experience through setting, symbolism, and point of view (POV). Amy Tan’s use of setting (the travel from America to China), symbolism (the use of geography as a metaphor), and Point of view (Jing-mei’s conflicted self-identity) creates a visible cultural awakening in Jing-mei. These elements allow us to see identity not as something abstract, but as something revealed from memory, family, and place.

By using setting as a mechanism to explore the cultural transition from denial to recognition, Amy Tan creates a story that moves fluidly through place. We see this in the opening paragraph, when Jing-mei first enters Shenzhen, China, and thinks “I am becoming Chinese.” (pg. 746) Crossing the border triggered a real sense of connection to her heritage. Jing-mei realizes her mother’s prediction coming true – setting initiates identity. Amy Tan shows that the physical movement from America to China (to Hong Kong, then Shenzhen, then Guangzhou, finally to Shanghai) reflects Jing-mei’s internal motion toward embracing her Chinese heritage. Geography isn’t just an engine for her transformation; it’s also symbolic.

The landscape becomes a metaphor, taking shape as Jing-mei moves toward embracing her multicultural identity. Each location becomes a symbol of this motion, with Hong Kong (with its Western influences) mirroring her Americanized identity. It’s the “starting point”. As Jing-mei and her father move further inland toward Shenzhen, she becomes more aware of her mother’s presence. Shenzhen becomes symbolic of her transition – the inciting incident of her identity awareness. They then travel to Guangzhou, where the chaos and crowds reflect her emotional confusion: “and then we are caught in a stream of people rushing, shoving, pushing us along”. (pg. 749) When describing the city of Guangzhou and how each apartment floor is cluttered with laundry baskets, Jing-mei is reminded of an American city and thinks: “Oh, would OSHA have a field day here.” (pg. 752) These symbolic meanings exist only because we experience China through Jing-mei’s first-person narration; her conflicted identity shapes how she interprets each city, turning geography into a reflection of her emotional state. In Shanghai, her identity becomes whole when Jing-mei meets her twin sisters and fulfills their mother’s “long-cherished wish”. (pg. 759) By presenting setting as both a mechanism and a metaphor through Jing-mei’s point of view, Tan shows how her changing voice shapes the symbolic meaning of each place. By experiencing China for the first time with Jing-mei, we’re given an intimate look at her conflicted self-identity and how it becomes whole.

First-person narration is the only way this story works because we’re experiencing it through her eyes – her resistance, recognition, and finally, her emotional transformation. Her voice alone becomes another symbol of her changing identity. When Jing-mei arrives in Shenzhen, she describes situations coldly. She thinks: “My mother is dead and I am on a train, carrying with me her dreams of coming home.” (pg. 746) This almost sounds like a teenager annoyed at the fact they have to travel to China. But when she moves further inland, her voice changes. Midway, her voice is reflective and curious, thinking: “I had meant to take a picture of my father and his aunt the moment they met. It’s not too late.” (pg. 750) By the end of the story, Jing-mei’s first-person narration is connected and warm. She’s thinking of her mother when she sees her twin sisters and then narrates that “I see her again, two of her …” (pg. 759). As Jing-mei’s voice evolves from detached to warm, the symbolic geography evolves with it, showing how her shifting perspective reshapes the meaning of each place she encounters. The setting, symbolism, and point of view in this short story weave together one larger theme.

Ultimately, “A Pair of Tickets” shows that embracing a multicultural identity is not a single moment of realization but a layered process shaped by place, memory, and perspective. Through Jing-mei’s physical movement across China, Tan uses setting to mirror the emotional journey from uncertainty to recognition, while the symbolic geography transforms each location into a marker of her growing cultural awareness. The first-person point of view lets us experience this transformation from within, revealing how her voice shifts as she begins to understand her mother’s past and her own heritage. Together, these literary elements demonstrate that identity is not inherited passively—it is discovered through lived experience, through the stories we carry, and through the places that remind us who we are. Tan’s story affirms that multicultural identity becomes whole only when we allow ourselves to move toward it, just as Jing-mei does, step by step, city by city, memory by memory.

Works Cited

Tan, A. (2026). A Pair of Tickets. In The Norton Introduction to Literature (15th ed., pp. 746759). Short story, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.