Jing-Mei Woo
On Stockton Street, we wandered from one fish store to another, looking for the liveliest crabs.
'Don't get a dead one,' warned my mother in Chinese. 'Even a beggar won't eat a dead one.'
If a crab gabbed on, I lifted it out and into a plastic sack. I lifted one crab this way, only to find one of its legs had been clamped onto by another crab. In the brief tug-of-war, my crab lost a limb.
'Put it back,' whispered my mother. 'A missing leg is a bad sign on Chinese New Year.' (Tan, 200).
An-Mei Hsu
I know this, because I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, to eat my own bitterness.
And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way (Tan, 215).
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Penguin Books, 2014, pp. 197-288.
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