A Pair of Tickets

“A Pair of Tickets” is the final story in Amy Tan’s 1989 novel, The Joy Luck Club. This guide refers to the edition of the story published in the Norton Introduction to Literature, 13th Shorter Edition (2019).

The book tells 16 interlocking stories about four Chinese immigrant mothers and their four US-born daughters. One of the mothers, Suyuan, left her twin daughters in China when she fled the country after World War II. After she arrived in the US, Suyuan had another daughter, June May, with her second husband, Canning Woo. Over the years, Suyuan sent letters back to China looking for her daughters, but she was unsuccessful. After she died, however, an old classmate of Suyuan’s located them.

When “A Pair of Tickets” opens, June May is traveling with her father to Guangzhou (Canton) to meet Canning’s aunt before continuing to Shanghai to meet June May’s twin half-sisters from her mother’s first marriage. June May has conflicted feelings in part because a family friend of the Woo’s, Auntie Lindo, wrote to the twins pretending to be their mother and saying that she would come to visit them. June May feels uncomfortable with this lie and implores Auntie Lindo to write a new letter explaining to the twins that their mother has died, but their half sister is coming to meet them.