In Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone, we are told the story of Chinese-American family that immigrated to the United States. The story deals with the loss of family, grief and the American Dream while also addressing the narrator’s ethnic background. But the one detail that really sticks out in the book is that it goes backwards in time, starting from when Leila is numb to the death of her sister to the moments after and before it happens. While this choice did stray from the normal conventions of stories, it was necessary in order to captivate the reader’s attention. The first page of the book tells us about the climax of the book, the death of Ona. But Leila seems unphased by this event at this point in time when she says, “Mah and Leon are still married, …show more content…
Having the event or Ona’s death closer towards the end of the book leaves the reader in anticipation of when it will happen, keeping the reader turning the pages and reading. Had the book been in chronological order, the climax of the book would be the at the start and the reader would not feel as compelled to turn each page afterward. While the reader is curious about what caused the death of Ona, the book does not purely focus on that event. The book talks a lot about Leon and Mah’s relationship as well as Leila’s relationship with Mason. In addition to this, it deals a lot with Chinese culture, the American dream and other aspects of immigrant life. Because of how the book works backwards, we get to hear the other aspects of Leila and her family's life before the climax of the book, which allows us to gain different perspective on the climax of the …show more content…
Knowing about the death of Ona from the start of the book adds to the meaning of certain moments in the book. One place where Ng uses irony is on page 85, when Leila recalls Ona being forward-looking and always excited about the next day. Because we know about Ona’s death from the start of the book, this leaves us with more questions like why she jumped. Another moment where Ng uses irony is on page 142, where Leila says, “We’d bury Ona; we’d mourn On. And then what?” Well, because the book starts from the end, we actually know what happens next and how they deal with the suicide. This sentence has a lot more meaning to the reader and allows them to see the emotional progression of the story. Had the order of the book been flipped, these sentences would have a completely different effect, one that has much less meaning for the reader than they do now. While the book has only two chapters that cover events before Ona’s death, we learn a fair bit about the store Leon runs with Luciano and the fight that Leon has with Ona. The last moment before chapter eleven (the chapter Ona dies), has Leon watching Ona “as if he was watching everything he’d ever hoped for disappear” (Ng 172). This event gives the reader a different perspective on Ona’s death because of how we learn about Ona’s death before we learn about the Ong and Leong laundry business. If the book was flipped, we wouldn’t understand at that
The Latehomecommer by Kao Kalia Yang is a beautifully crafted memoir. Yang’s distinct prose style is captivating combined with her powerful narrative about the Hmong immigrant experience in America creates an unforgettable and insightful piece. She masterfully captures not only her story as an immigrant, but that of her whole family and to some extent the entire culture. Yang’s use of voice, particularly her use of a distinctly different more child-like voice when depicting her younger self, is a large contributing factor to what makes this memoir so unique and engaging. In The Latehomecomer, Yang captures the voice of herself as a child in a way that is so effective that it inspired me to go back through my memoir and attempt to do the same.
Jonathan D. Spence weaves together fact and fiction in his book The Death of Woman Wang. Approaching history through the eyes of those who lived it, he tells a story of those affected by history rather than solely recounting the historical events themselves. By incorporating factual evidence, contextualizing the scene, and introducing individual accounts, he chronicles events and experiences in a person’s life rather than episodes in history. Spence pulls together the narrative from a factual local history of T’an-ch’eng by scholar Fenge K’o-ts’an, the memoir of magistrate Huang Liu-hung, and fictional stories by writer P’u Sung-ling. The book closely resembles an historical fiction while still maintaining the integrity of an historical reconstruction.
Thru-out the centuries, regardless of race or age, there has been dilemmas that identify a family’s thru union. In “Hangzhou” (1925), author Lang Samantha Chang illustrates the story of a Japanese family whose mother is trapped in her believes. While Alice Walker in her story of “Everyday Use” (1944) presents the readers with an African American family whose dilemma is mainly rotating around Dee’s ego, the narrator’s daughter. Although differing ethnicity, both families commonly share the attachment of a legacy, a tradition and the adaptation to a new generation. In desperation of surviving as a united family there are changes that they must submit to.
A Pair of Tickets”, by Amy Tan, is a brief narrative about the conscience and reminiscence of a young Chinese American woman, Jing-Mei, who is on a trip to China to meet her two half-sisters for the first time in her life. Amy Tan is an author who uses the theme of Chinese-American life, converging primarily on mother-daughter relationships, where the mother is an emigrant from China and the daughter is fully Americanized --yellow on the surface and white underneath. In this story, the mother tries to communicate rich Chinese history and legacy to her daughter, but she is completely ignorant of their heritage. At the opening of the story "A Pair of Tickets" Jandale Woo and her father are on a train, the are destined for China. Their first stop will be Guangzhou, China where father will reunite with his long lost aunt. After visiting with her for a day they plan to take a plane to Shanghai, China where Jandale meets her two half-sisters for the first time. It is both a joyful time and yet a time of contrition, Jandale has come to China to find her Chinese roots that her mother told ...
I enjoy reading Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone. I find her novel easy to read and understand. Although she included some phrases the Chinese use, I find no difficulty in understanding them, as I’m Chinese myself. The novel Bone is written in a circular narrative form, in which the story doesn’t follow the linear format where the suspense slowly builds up and finally reaches a climax stage. Rather the story’s time sequence is thrown back and forth. I find this format of writing brings greater suspense and mystery to the reader. When I read the book, my mind was always wondering what reasons or causes made Ona commit suicide, and this made me want to continue reading the book to know the outcome. The happenings in the story do portray reality of the lives of Chinese immigrants in America, their hardship and difficulty in adapting American lifestyle and culture. For the younger generations, adapting the American culture and lifestyle is much easier than for the older generations. This is shown in the book and it also happens in reality, which is another reason why I like this book. This is a fiction novel, but the story told is like a non-fiction book; giving readers a sense of realism. As a Chinese reading Bone, I understand the narrator’s feelings and predicaments. Although she is an Asian, her thinking lies more on the American side. Leila wants to move out to stay with Mason but yet she fears leaving her mother alone and also of what her mother might say in r...
“The minute our train leaves the Hong Kong border and enters Shenzhen, China, I feel different. I can feel the skin on my forehead tingling, my blood rushing through a new course, my bones aching with a familiar old pain. And I think, my mother was right. I am becoming Chinese. (179). In the story A Pair of Tickets by Amy Tan, the protagonist character, Jing-mei, finds herself in several difficult situations due to how her social and cultural upbringing has shaped her. She finds herself pulled between her Chinese DNA and her American background. While she was raised being told that she was Chinese and “it’s in her blood”, she does not identify as such, because she grew up in America and only sees herself as an American. After her mother’s passing,
Over the summer, after taking a break from reading a novel just for entertainment, I sat down to read How to Read Literature like a Professor and it was the exact novel to refresh and supplement my dusty analysis skills. After reading and applying Foster’s novel, How to Read Literature like a Professor, towards The Bonesetter’s Daughter I found a previously elusive and individualized insight towards literature. Although, The Bonesetter’s Daughter is full of cryptic messages and a theme that is universal, I was able to implement an individual perspective on comprehending the novel’s universal literary devices, and coming upon the unique inference that Precious Auntie is the main protagonist of the novel.
The culmination of the novel is when Maya describes her eighth grade graduation. Angelou, her classmates, and parents listen to the condescending and racist manner in which the guest speaker talks. After listening to his insults, Maya realizes "she is the master of her fate" which was expressed in the valedictory address given by her classmate. Maya becomes a single parent at the age of eighteen, bu...
June-May fulfills her mother’s name and life goal, her long-cherished wish. She finally meets her twin sisters and in an essence fulfills and reunites her mother with her daughter through her. For when they are all together they are one; they are their mother. It is here that June-May fulfills the family portion of her Chinese culture of family. In addition, she fully embraces herself as Chinese. She realizes that family is made out of love and that family is the key to being Chinese. “And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.” (Tan 159). Finally, her mother’s life burden is lifted and June-May’s doubts of being Chinese are set aside or as she says “After all these years, it can finally be let go,” (Tan 159).
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down tells the story of a young Hmong girl stricken with epilepsy, her family, her doctors, and how misunderstandings between cultures can lead to tragedy. The title comes from the Hmong term for epilepsy, which translated, is “the spirit catches you and you fall down”. Anne Fadiman alternates between chapters on Hmong history or culture and chapters on the Lees, and specifically Lia. The condensed history of the Hmong portrayed here starts at their beginning, and traces their heritage, their movements, and why they do what they do as they flee from enemies to country to country. This record allows the reader to better understand the Lees and their situation without bogging him down with details that may
Oftentimes the children of immigrants to the United States lose the sense of cultural background in which their parents had tried so desperately to instill within them. According to Walter Shear, “It is an unseen terror that runs through both the distinct social spectrum experienced by the mothers in China and the lack of such social definition in the daughters’ lives.” This “unseen terror” is portrayed in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club as four Chinese women and their American-born daughters struggle to understand one another’s culture and values. The second-generation women in The Joy Luck Club prove to lose their sense of Chinese values, becoming Americanized.
America was not everything the mothers had expected for their daughters. The mothers always wanted to give their daughters the feather to tell of their hardships, but they never could. They wanted to wait until the day that they could speak perfect American English. However, they never learned to speak their language, which prevented them from communicating with their daughters. All the mothers in The Joy Luck Club had so much hope for their daughters in America, but instead their lives ended up mirroring their mother’s life in China. All the relationships had many hardships because of miscommunication from their different cultures. As they grew older the children realized that their ...
Based on Deconstruction theory, Lan Cao’s novel Monkey Bridge depicts the mother-daughter relationship before and after living in exile in terms of language, familial roles and deception.
“Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested our strengths to establish realities”(5). In the book “The Woman Warrior,” Maxine Kingston is most interested in finding out about Chinese culture and history and relating them to her emerging American sense of self. One of the main ways she does so is listening to her mother’s talk-stories about the family’s Chinese past and applying them to her life.
Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club describes the lives of first and second generation Chinese families, particularly mothers and daughters. Surprisingly The Joy Luck Club and, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts are very similar. They both talk of mothers and daughters in these books and try to find themselves culturally. Among the barriers that must be overcome are those of language, beliefs and customs.