Adeline Yen Mah's Chinese Cinderella

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In the book, Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah, Adeline herself tells her first hand story about how family can affect relationships with other people, and self-esteem. She also talks about how loneliness and abandonment as a child can affect a person's life to a great extent with emotional and trust issues. However, at the end of the book she shows that if she teaches people that if someone have positive encouragement they can do anything, even with negative things that might be happening in their life, you can become a successful human being with a successful future. In the book, Adelines birth caused her mother to pass away and in the Chinese culture you are looked at as bad luck for this. Because of this many of her family members …show more content…

Her stepmother's name was Niang, Niang treated Adeline very poorly. She treated her like nothing better than a rag. Niang even treated her dog better than she treated Adeline, the dog got fed better too. This led Adeline to feel lonely, she even said, ¨They tossed me aside like a piece of garbage.¨ (143) They would also often forget about her, on the first day she lived with her father and Niang after several months of not living with them, they forgot that she needed a ride to school and left her at home by herself, which for her was a big deal because the other thing she had going for her at this point was doing well in school. They also forgot to pick her up on the same day and still did not realise that she was missing until she called several hours later. With all these things happening her self-esteem was not great for many reasons, she did not feel valued, she did not feel wanted, and she did not trust anyone so she had all these emotions bottled up inside of her. She expressed what she thought of herself when she said, ¨I am nothing. Less than nothing. A piece of garbage to be thrown out.¨ (207) That is just a little glimpse on her life day and day out trying to get her family's acceptance and find self

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