Adeline Yen Mah's Chinese Cinderella

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In her autobiography, ‘Chinese Cinderella’, Adeline Yen Mah recounts painful memories of a childhood of neglect. The main themes explored in the text are family, abandonment, and self-esteem. Yen Mah’s portrayal of difficult situations in her home life, encourages readers to sympathise with her difficulty, although it is Adeline’s tenacious will to never give up as a child, despite trying circumstances, that enables readers to also like her as a character and hope that she will ultimately succeed in her goal to be recognised by her father. Yen Mah’s first person account of her tragic childhood encourages the audience to see the value of resilience in the face of adversity and reveals that with a positive attitude and belief in your own abilities, …show more content…

Her big sister, Lydia, treats her poorly, as shown when she accuses her of thinking she’s better than her, and being a show off, ‘suddenly, she grabbed my medal and jerked it, becoming enraged because I was pushing her away. “Take that medal winner! Teachers pet! Who do you think you are? Showing off week after week!” Big sister cried as she slapped me with her strong right hand.’ The combination of Big sister’s accusatory tone and violent actions further estranges Adeline from her family as she is once again made to feel that she not wanted and that being smart is not good. The audience is positioned to feel anger towards big sister for her lack of compassion towards Adeline, which reinforces her feelings of isolation from her family. Adeline’s fractured relationship with her family is further revealed through her reflections about school, as she is contrasting about how her classmates treat her differently from her family, ‘I loved everything about my school...my classmates made me feel like I belonged. Unlike my siblings, nobody looked down on me.’ In this text she is contrasting about how her friends makes her feel like she belonged, unlike her family, excluding her and not caring about her. The audience is positioned to feel sympathetic towards Adeline because her family should be the place where she belongs, she’s appreciated, and …show more content…

Readers are positioned to sympathise with Adeline, who struggles to maintain staying with her family and not leaving. Her stepmother, Niang diminishes more and more of her thought of running away, as she is putting her down that she can’t even have fun and celebrate a good friend’s birthday, ‘her face suffused with rage, she slapped me. I felt dizzy and my ears hummed...girls like you should be set away. You don’t belong in this house!’ The combination of being slapped and hearing ‘you don't belong in this house’, further diminishes her thought of running away as she is being called to leave creates a feeling that she doesn't belong. The audience is positioned to feel anger towards Niang for her lack of compassion towards Adeline, which reinforces her feelings of not belonging in her family. Adeline’s continual abandonment can be attributed to her family, which evokes feelings of anger in the audience, who forgot about Adeline and left her at school, ‘one by one they were greeted and led away by their anxiously hovering mothers. Eventually, I was the only one left. Nobody had come for me.’ The juxtaposition of the ‘anxiously hovering’ mothers with the absence of her own loving family emphasises her feeling of abandonment and evokes sadness in the audience who are confronted with the dire reality of her situation. The audience is positioned to feel anger towards Adeline’s family

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