A Pair of Tickets

In Amy Tan’s “A Pair of Tickets” the theme of identity and self-awareness are used through out the story as a Chinese- American girl who goes to China and meets her family after the death of her mother. The story is bit long because the narrator, Jing- mei, spends the beginning just meeting family members in China. Not until Jing-mei’s father tells the story of why her mother left her twin daughters in China does the reader really understand that Jing-mei’s identifying her self with her family was her mother dream. Trough out the story you hear about Jing-mei’s mother and how much she cared about her family that it seems difficult to understand how she could leave her twin daughters on the side of the road. After Jing-mei hears her father tell the story she understands all the sacrifices her mother has made and how important it was too meet her family and assume her identity; not as a Chinese- American student in San Francisco, but a Chinese woman.
Jing –mei makes many references to her lack of identity at the beginning of the story when she says “ all my Caucasian friends agreed: I was about as Chinese as they were”(158). She is unable to identify her self with her family in China until she meets her two sisters that had been abandoned by her mother. At that point she says “ together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long cherished wish” (171). Finally Jing-mei’s questions about her mother are answered which allows her to fully accept who she is and what she has become.