During the Best Quality chapter interoperated by Jing-Mei Woo (June) a lot happens. The chapter starts off in the present where June is wearing the Jade pendant. June does not know what the Jade necklace means, besides ‘life’s importance’, so when she see someone else wearing a similar necklace she asks them what the story is behind it. June does not get an answer. The chapter then turns into a flashback. June and her mother were preparing for the Chinese New Year’s dinner. They got coerced into buying an eleventh crab with a broken leg, a sign of bad luck. While shopping June’s mother tells her about how the tenant’s annoying cat was missing and the tenants believed her mother had poisoned it, and June assumes her mother had poisoned the cat as well. During dinner Waverly gives her daughter a crab, meaning someone had to get the crab with the broken leg. June tries to take it, but is stopped by her mother. Dinner turns into a fight between Waverly and June; June, who is embarrassed, then leaves the table to go clean up. Her mother then comes into the kitchen and talks to June. She gives June the Jade pendant explaining that it represents “life’s importance”, and that Waverly is like the crab, without the leg and walks sideways. The chapter …show more content…
ends with June preparing her father dinner, and her seeing the cat. June does the same thing her mother did, shoo the cat away. During Magpies An-Mei Hsu, Rose’s mother, in this chapter realizes that her daughter is letting her marriage do to waste. Rose saw her marriage falling apart but would not do anything about it, and in this An-Mei saw herself. The chapter moves into a flashback. An-Mei is eight years old her Popo had just passed away, and she decided to go with her mother despite what everyone told her about her mother. Her mother perceives a happy mask, but when they get back to Tientsin An-Mei sees her mother’s unhappiness. Her mother tells her to swallow her tears because each time you cry it feeds someone’s happiness. An-Mei mother is the fourth wife and learns that fourth and die sound similar when said. Second wife is constantly controlling everything, and threats to commit suicide and haunt Wo Tsing unless she gets what she wants. Second wife also made An-Mei’s mother conceive a baby and give the baby to second wife to raise as her own. An-Mei’s mother is very unhappy with her life, and overdoses on opium. Scared that Second wife will haunt him Wo Tsing promises to raise An-Mei as his own. Wo Tsing honors his children, and second wife loses her power. An-Mei does realizes her mother could not say anything, but her daughter has the ability to say something and should. Marriage is the basis for Ying-Ying St.
Clair’s chapter titled Waiting between the trees. Ying-Ying at a young age meets a bad man. She knows she will marry this man. Eventually she does. She finds out she is pregnant, only to find her husband had cheated on her, and that this was not the first time. Very angry she aborts the child and decides to work as a shop girl in Shanghai. Being a tiger she is very good at persuasion and she is pretty. Clifford St. Clair courts her for four years. She lures Clifford into marrying after her first husband dies. Clifford and Ying-Ying move to the United States. . Along the way she lost her spirit, and became a ghost. She wants to pass on her spirit to her daughter Lena, who is also a
tiger. Double face starts out with Waverly telling her mother that she wants to go to China for her second honeymoon, and asks if she will fit in too well. Lindo then says that she will not even have to talk for them to know she is foreign. Waverly then gets offended by her mother saying this. It used to be uncool to be Chinese and Waverly distanced herself, and now it is in style and wants to embrace it again. Lindo wishes her daughter had both American circumstances and Chinese character. Waverly and Lindo are at the hair salon; Lindo is getting her hair cut for Waverly and Rich’s wedding. Waverly notices her and her mother have the same cheeks. Lindo then says she can see Waverly’s character and personality. This causes Lindo to think her and Waverly will have the same fortunes and downfalls. This leads into a flashback. In this flashback of her mother telling her she would be a good mother, wife, and daughter in-law because of her straight nose and broad forehead. Lindo realizes her facial features have changed and her mother never saw the changes. She then recalls when she was preparing for American immigration, and how she hid her true motive for coming to the U.S. She works in a Chinese fortune cookie factory. She meets An-Mei, and An-Mei says how they control people’s futures. She then finds the perfect fortune to give to Tin to hint that they should get married. She took control of her future, and realized that she had lost her Chinese character along the way. This makes her realize when she went to China the year before; they knew she was not a true Chinese person anymore. The last chapter is in June’s perspective, A Pair of Tickets, June and her father (Canning) arrive in China and are feeling nostalgic. June feels more Chinese in China. June recalls how she found out about her step-sisters. After Suyuan passes away Canning gets a letter from the twins in China, and Canning asks the Joy Luck ladies to write back. The women write back posing as Suyuan, and tell June how she should fulfill her mother’s wish and tell them the news about their mother passing away in person. June and Canning meet Canning’s aunt and the rest of their family. They decide to have the family spend the night with them at the hotel; they order room but the family wants to eat American food: hamburgers, fries, and pies. In the middle of the night June wakes up to her father telling his aunt about how Suyuan never told him about her desire to find the twins. June asks what her name means and learns that her name represents the essence of her older sisters. Canning’s aunt wakes up again and asks why Suyuan abandoned her babies. This leads into a flashback where the reader learns Suyuan did not want to leave her daughters, but leaves them because she thinks she is dying, and even leaves instructions on how to find her and some jewelry. The girls later find out from their ‘mom’ about their true past, and their mom thinks they deserve better ad helps them try and relocate their mother. The flashback ends when the twins return to Suyuan’s house only to see that it had been destroyed. Suyuan was constantly looking for them, and had recently wanted to go back to China to find the girls, but said it was too late. Canning had assumed she had meant too late to travel, but realizes she probably meant it was too late to meet the twins, and that this was the taught that killed her. June and her father then go to Shanghai to meet the twins. They find the twins and take a picture, and realize they look like their mother, Suyuan.
The novel “The Jade Peony” is narrated by three different characters throughout the story as it progresses. In part one of the book, it is narrated by a character named “Jook Liang” but usually just called Liang while in conversation. The reader is told the setting and time of the plot, which is in Vancouver, BC and in the time of the Great Depression (In the 1930s). We also learn the names of all the members in Liang’s family. An important figure in Liang’s portion of the story is a man named Wong-Suk. Wong-Suk and Liang become great friends, he occasionally tells her tales from the past. While Poh-Poh was helping Liang tie a ribbon for her tap dance shoes, we learn about her childhood. Poh-Poh was considered disfigured and her mom sold her to a family, where she
The Hollow Hope examines the following research question: when can judicial processes be used to produce social change? (Rosenberg 1). Rosenberg starts out the book by describing the two different theories of the courts. The first theory, the Dynamic Court view, views the court as being powerful, vigorous, and potent proponents of change (Rosenberg 1). The second theory, the Constrained Court view, views the court in the complete opposite way. With this view the court is seen as weak, ineffective, and powerless (Rosenberg 3). In this view there are three different constraints that restrict the courts from producing effective political and social change. These constraints include: limited nature of constitutional rights, lack of judicial independence, and the lack of tools the courts need (Rosenberg 35). Even though there are constraints on the court there are conditions where the court is able to overcome the constraints.
One day an old man comes to join the family for supper-- he new Poh-Poh from Old China... the man is odd looking and Liang thinks him to be "the Monkey Man" from the ghost stories her grams is always telling. Regardless Liang and this man she comes to call Wong-Suk become great friends. They go to the movies together and get jeered at (I'm not sure if this is beacause 'Beauty and the Beast' or because they are Chinese); he tells her stories; and she dances for him.
Grace know that she doesn't belong to this family. “A yellow face in a white family where freckles were the norm” (Ye 129). She feels lots of love from her adoptive family. When she being to know about “person of color”, the only thing that she know is she doesn’t fit it and she not belong to this family. Grace decides go to China to finds out her birth mother and who she is. “China is where I came from. This is what I am” (Ye 137). She accepts that the fact she is adopted, but she is questioning who she is and the way she starts imagining going to China and also determined to get answer about her background. Finally, Grace found out her birth mother. “I have met one hero in my life. Her name is Chun-mei, and she is my mother” (Ye 295). She meets her birth mother, discovers by many new things from her birth mother and she finds out the truth about her past also she understand her birth mother why she gave up her.
Chinese culture has many interpretations ghosts. One way they are seen as is people who have disgraced their family or country. An example of this in the novel is Maxine's aunt. She is considered a ghost because she disgraced her family by having a baby outside of marriage. They call her "Ghost! Dead ghost! Ghost! You have never been born." (Kinston 14) She drowns herself in the well to become one of the most feared ghost, the Shui Gui or watery ghost. These ghosts are said to be waiting for their victims, to pull them into the water to take the drowned ones place. In the novel another example of what the Chinese consider ghosts are American people. Sometimes they feel haunted by this unfamiliar culture, just as a ghost would haunt. "But America has been full of machines and ghosts- Taxi Ghosts, Bus Ghosts, Police Ghosts, Fire Ghosts, Meter Reader Ghosts, Tree Trimming Ghosts, Five-and-Dime Ghosts." (Kong 96) These examples are American people of any ethnicity. They are called ghosts because the Chinese are not familiar with the culture. Another example of the unfamiliarity is when, "Her husband looked like one of the ghosts passing the car wind...
Perhaps one of the biggest issues foreigners will come upon is to maintain a strong identity within the temptations and traditions from other cultures. Novelist Frank Delaney’s image of the search for identity is one of the best, quoting that one must “understand and reconnect with our stories, the stories of the ancestors . . . to build our identities”. For one, to maintain a firm identity, elderly characters often implement Chinese traditions to avoid younger generations veering toward different traditions, such as the Western culture. As well, the Chinese-Canadians of the novel sustain a superior identity because of their own cultural village in Vancouver, known as Chinatown, to implement firm beliefs, heritage, and pride. Thus in Wayson Choy’s, The Jade Peony, the novel discusses the challenge for different characters to maintain a firm and sole identity in the midst of a new environment with different temptations and influences. Ultimately, the characters of this novel rely upon different influences to form an identity, one of which being a strong and wide elderly personal
Consequently at this same time Jeremy is also beginning to discover his relationship has had a severe change which he realizes when China calls him and ask--"I want to see it," she sobbed. "I want to see our daughter's grave."(623)" The mere utterance of this statement seemed to freeze interpretation.
It begins with a happy 9-year-old girl named Ling who lives in a hospital complex with her father, a very successful surgeon, and her mother, a well-known doctor. Her mother, known as Mrs. Chang, is very strict, always nagging Ling to act like a woman and to be perfect in almost every way. Ling believes it is because her mother never wanted to have a daughter. Father, on the other hand, Mr. Chang, spent much time with Ling, and got very close to her, teaching her reading and English lessons. He would
The girl with Ghost eyes, by M.H. Boroson is a science fictional book. This book takes place in the nineteenth century in San Francisco Chinatown. The main character is Li-lin who became a widow at a young age. She had many chances to love again but decided to stay and mourn her husband as the years passed by. Most people would think it’s all terrible but despite all the bad things about being a widow, she as described in the book has an advantage of going through the two worlds of the living and the spirit world also the ability to see spirits in the living world. She is a young strong lady, she’s very determined, is very self conscious about her feelings and always tries way too much to make her father proud. Her father,Zhengying a Daoshi exorcist, one of the best is described as a wise, strong and powerful man. What I like most about this character is that he would show his daughter that he really doesn’t care about her but his actions he does for her is a whole different thing, he risks his life for her while she thinks he doesn’t love her as much.
Chapter Four gives a developmental perspective of addiction. There are multiple developmental theories that are used to understand the stages of life and how addiction is perceived in each stage.
Initially, Wharton uses the red pickle dish to represent what is left of the love and vitality in Ethan and Zeena’s marriage; but after the dish has been broken by the cat, it symbolizes the destruction of their marriage. The cat destroying the dish is also significant because the cat represents Zeena's constant, foreboding presence inside the house. The cat being the one to blame for the breaking of the dish also means Zeena being the blame for the failure of the marriage, but in reality Ethan is to blame for the dish falling as the cat likely would not have knocked over the dish if his hand had not lingered on top of Mattie’s. Ethan’s feelings also begin to grow stronger for Mattie after the dish breaks because not only did it represent the marriage’s failure, but diminished the morals that come along with marriage. Eventually, Zeena finds the broken pieces of the dish that Ethan had hidden and though “her lips were twitching with anger” there was also “a flush of excitement on her sallow face” (109). Zeena expresses excitement because now it is not only her contributing to the failure of the marriage. But her anger shines through in the end despite her dissatisfaction in the relationship, because society’s reaction to the end of her marriage would be far more devastating than the emotional pain. The red pickle dish in itself represents t...
Chang Yu-i grows up in a family of twelve children in a small county outside Shanghai, China. Born into changing times, the struggle for finding herself is perhaps even harder and more confusing than it would be for people born today. Yu-i is born into a time when China is torn between holding on to the old traditions and adopting the ways of the western world. Throughout the early 1900s, China was in political turmoil. China had to deal with the Boxer Rebellion, the revolution against the Manchu dyna...
If we take a look at the different symbols used throughout the play, I think that the most important one when it comes to escape is the fire escape. It is in the center from the very beginning, when Tom makes his opening addressing to the audience from it. To understand the role of the fire escape one has to see that it serves a different purpose for each of the characters. In general we can say that it represents the borderline between freedom and imprisonment. Apart from this, the different characters see it in different ways. For Tom, the fire escape is an opportunity to get away from the apartment and his nagging mother. For Amanda, on the other hand, it's a door through which gentleman callers for Laura can come into their apartment / into their world. For Laura, even though she's been outside, it's the border between the safe and the dangerous, between the known and the unknown.
The ghost, however, loses little time in effecting a more solid manifestation, as a young woman runaway whom Sethe shelters, and by whom she comes to be dominated. She gives up her job to be with Beloved and while the girl ghost thrives, she and Denver are reduced to near starvation. It is only when Denver dares to come out of her isolation and invoke the help of the rest of her black community that Beloved can be sent back to her grave and Sethe and Paul D. reunited.
Around the world, values are expressed differently. Some people think that life is about the little things that make them happy. Others feel the opposite way and that expenses are the way to live. In Guy de Maupassant’s short story, “The Necklace”, he develops a character, Madame Loisel, who illustrates her different style of assessments. Madame Loisel, a beautiful woman, lives in a wonderful home with all the necessary supplies needed to live. However, she is very unhappy with her life. She feels she deserves a much more expensive and materialistic life than what she has. After pitying herself for not being the richest of her friends, she goes out and borrows a beautiful necklace from an ally. But as she misplaces the closest thing she has to the life she dreams of and not telling her friend about the mishap, she could have set herself aside from ten years of work. Through many literary devices, de Maupassant sends a message to value less substance articles so life can be spent wisely.