Short Stories

Rules of the Game by Amy Tan

"Rules of the Game" is one of the interconnected tales in Tan's publication, The Joy Luck Club. At the starting of this story, the narrator, Waverly Jong, interprets how her mother educated her the art of unseen power when she was six years vintage, saying that it is a scheme for triumphant contentions, esteem, and chess sport, whereas she was ignorant of the last one at the time she wise the art.

Most of the individual characteristics in "Rules of the Game" are Chinese Americans, and much of the confrontation is drawn from Waverly's try to navigate both the customary Chinese heritage and the divergent melding heritage of Chinese's Americans. When she is junior, Waverly is mostly in feel with her Chinese side. She inhabits over a little Chinese bakery in Chinatown, where "by daybreak, our flat was hefty with the odor of deep-fried sesame globes and sugary curried pullet crescents (Tan 45)." Outside her dwelling, Waverly is drawn to other Chinese establishments, like the Ping Yuen Fish Market, with its "doomed fish and turtles" and a signal that reports visitors, "Within this shop, is all for nourishment, not for pet."

As with the other tales in The Joy Luck Club, "Rules of the Game" is narrated from the viewpoint of one of the major characters. In this case, Waverly Jong presents her issue of outlook about the part of her childhood where she became a chess champion. Waverly narrates the story from her childhood viewpoint, and does not mention to any thing that occurred to her as an mature individual as a outcome of the events in the story, or give her mature individual viewpoint about the events—as some mature individual narrators do when conversing about their childhoods.

To Room Nineteen by Doris Lessing

The story starts ...