15-2 Amy Tan

Amy’s parents emigrated from China to California. Amy was born in California and has spent most of her life there. She graduated from college in 1973. She spends three years in postgraduate study and then worked as a reporter, then an editor and as a technical writer for computer companies. She published “The Joy Luck Club” in 1989. I remember this! I think it was a series when I was a child that I read after buying it at the book store at school. These were stories of Chinese women and their Chinese American daughters.

The story Half and Half” by Amy Tan is the story of a Chinese girl, Rose, who lived in America with her mother, father and her six siblings, four brothers and two sisters. Her parents had moved to America from China and had done very well for themselves. Since being in The US they had managed to buy a house in the Sunset district and had been blessed with seven children. Mrs. Hsu, the mother, was a religious person. She attended First Chinese Baptist Church every Sunday, but a day at the beach with her family changed all of her feelings about faith. The entire Hsu family went to the beach to play in the water, fish and just have a wonderful time. The fun filled day turned tragic when Rose, who was responsible for watching her youngest brother, Bing, took her eyes of him for one second and he fell into the ocean and drown. That was the day Mrs. Hsu lost her faith, she and Rose went back to the beach the next day, where she talked to God and threw her mother’s ring in to the water as payment trying to get Bing back. She felt she had been faithful and good and she wanted God to return her son for her servitude to him. When Bing did not return she lost faith sticking her bible under the table leg in her kitchen. This is the day that Rose learned about fate. Twenty years later Rose is sitting in her mother’s house and she going to tell her that she and her American husband Ted, the dermatologist, are going to get a divorce. During their marriage Ted has always taken the lead, and Rose just agreed to whatever he wanted to do. I don’t think she ever forgave herself for her brother’s death, she felt as though she didn’t make a good decision on the beach that day and she is ok with Ted making all the moves and her following his lead in their marriage.
Ted has a patient who has a bad experience after a medical procedure and the patient sues him, the wind is knocked out of his sails, he no longer believes in himself. Ted wants Rose to now make the decisions in their marriage and this has cause an unbelievable strain in the relationship. Her mother tells her that she has been told what the problem in the marriage is and now she must fix it. She must start thinking for herself!! She realizes that fate is shaped by half expectation, and half by inattention. She gets her mother’s bible out from under the table leg, in the section where you list Deaths in the family she sees Bing Hsu in erasable ink.