Rules of the Game

Like Waverly, author Amy Tan grew up in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1950s. That city’s Chinatown neighborhood represents three clear facets of multicultural experience: ethnic, linguistic, and national. The local fish market displays a sign for “tourists” clarifying that the live seafood is for eating and not for pets, even though these “tourists” might well live in the same city. Hong Sing’s, a café in Chinatown, does not interest “tourists” because the menu is only in Chinese. Sequestered in a section of the American city of San Francisco, Chinatown feels more Chinese than American, from the style of its buildings to the food offerings. Yet, it is governed by American laws and American influence.

Waverly’s mother hints at the difficulty of navigating the American immigration system when she tells her children that they “must know rules” to survive in a foreign country, and if they do not, they will be told “too bad, go back” (Paragraph 27). America’s commodification of Christmas bleeds into the story in a scene with a Chinese Santa. Waverly observes that “the only children who thought he was the real thing were too young to know that Santa Claus was not Chinese” (Paragraph 14).

These examples of two cultures coexisting in the same space reflect an aspect of Waverly’s internal conflict. How can she be both Chinese and American when the two cultures are juxtaposed rather than blended in the world around her? The examples exhibit a guarded toleration between the two cultures rather than an open acceptance. Yet they both exist within Waverly, contributing to her constant struggle with identity.