Setting, Student Writing sample, and Amy Tan's "A Pair of Tickets"

Stories are embedded with a setting-time & place.
The setting may by mythical, futuristic, have a limited time span, be of a historic event, a cultural expression....there seem to be as many types as settings as the imagination allows! These settings help the reader visualize the characters do what they do and often even set an emotional overtone. As an example, a setting of war can create conflict within the reader and even some fear for "what's gonna happen here?" The stories rely on their setting in varying degrees and different ways, but it is the setting which lends the "canvas" for the story.

GIVE SUBSTANCE TO THE ELEMENTS OF FICTION

"A Pair of Tickets" by Amy Tan

The story of this American-raised Chinese lady was wonderfully descriptive of the characters in the story, the personalities they each had, the architecture, and even the social interaction between all the family members. I did see the film version, I think; "The Joy Luck Club" a few years back. But the film had a few more dramas going around the whole "going to meet the half-sisters" trip to China. The story documents how a woman discovers she has twin sisters back in China. There is much ado about how to properly inform them of their mother's recent death and how the young lady who grew up in the U.S. isn't feeling Chinese...yet some of her heritage and "Chinese" emerges during her trip to China.
I so enjoyed the fact that when the young lady and her father check into their luxurious hotel, that she feels for sure that they can't afford it! "Is this Communist China?"...I think she says under her breath. Then, with some local relatives who had met them as they arrived in China, they order Hamburgers and French Fries to eat...even though June May (Jing-mei) really was looking forward to some real Chinese food!
As she lays her eyes upon her twin sisters for the first time, she is taken aback by how much they look like a younger version of their mother. Then, upon closer inspection and greeting, they are a bit different. With a Polaroid snapshot, the greeting is forever recorded. The author writes "Together we look like our mother."
And, the story ends there, which left me to my own devices to complete their visit in my own mind....perhaps that real Chinese food June May so desired....and even a return trip home with the twins along to San Francisco. I can almost see their mother smiling down from heaven. Jeez...now I am starting to cry...
Yes, I took my mother for granted too....