The way we see ourselves is often a reflection of how others see us and what they think of us. Therefore, negative words, especially when they come out of the mouth’s of friends or family, can destroy a child’s self worth. In the book Chinese Cinderella, a memoir, by Adeline Yen Mah, this is exactly what happens to Adeline, ever since her mother died while giving birth to her, Adeline’s family sees her as a curse or bad luck, making her feel unloved or unwanted. Especially Adeline’s stepmother, Niang, who shows her hatred for Adeline very strongly, and her father, who acts most of the time as if she doesn’t exist.
Niang constantly verbally and physically abuses Adeline, like when Adeline wins the class election and her friends follow her home so they can congratulate her. Niang becomes very upset because not only is Adeline not allowed to invite people over, but Niang thinks that Adeline invited them to show off her house and how rich her family is. When Niang calls Adeline up to yell at her, Adeline explains the situation, but Niang ignores and slaps her. As Adeline goes to tell her friends to leave, she sees blood on
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Parents play a big role in that, if an individual’s parents are supporting and loving, it’s easier for that person to accept who they are and to learn to love themselves no matter what. But, if an individual’s parents constantly criticize and put them down for who they are, for example by calling them ugly, or telling them that nobody will love them if they look or act a certain way, they’ll grow up hating themselves, and constantly worrying about what others think.
So no wonder Adeline sees herself that way, because pretty much her whole life she’s treated like garbage by her parents, the people who should love her the most and accept her for who she is. Cruel words and actions really do have an effect on children
The children also argue with their mother often. The children think that their mother, with no doubt, will be perfect. They idealize their mothers as angel who will save them from all their problems, which the mothers actually never do. The children get angry at their false hopes and realize that their mothers aren’t going to...
Hey You!Yes you...you know...the one reading this o.O?Today(What?Your'e not gonna read it today cause your reading it now),you'll be reading a book report about the memoir/auto-biography/non-fiction,Red Scarf Girl.No it's ok,yeah I know,book reports are boring,and the title and genre of this book makes it even sound more boring,but WAIT,before you throw this in the fire,remember the phrase:
Shanghai Girls was written by Lisa See in 2009. In the beginning of the novel, the setting of the story is Shanghai and as the story goes on it moves to the United States. When the story shifts Shanghai to America it also impacts the character’s life and culture. Each culture has its own beliefs, clothing style, food and may more. Chines culture is different from other cultures, their clothing style, female beauty standards, and Chines zodiac. Chines zodiac is another name for a horoscope. One character is Pearl, she is the protagonist, another character is May is also the protagonist of the story. Lisa See starts this novel by showing the strong bond between two sister Pearl and May. Although, the goal of this novel was to explore the Chines
Young people always want to be older and mature because they want to experience all of the benefits of being older. Although this may be true, in Dai Sijie’s novel, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, which focuses on the growth of three main characters in a remote village during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Dai expresses the idea that achieving full maturity isn’t a smooth road towards benefits, but it is one with bumps and potholes. Maturity can’t be obtained easily, it’s obtaining through experience the necessary amount to mature even more. Dai implements many writing strategies by using his own experiences with the Chinese Culture that he grew up with to convey this message. Dai’s repeated mentioning of the number “three” represents
The play “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry has many interesting characters. In my opinion, the most fascinating character is Ruth because of her many emotions and captivating personality. She goes through extreme emotions in the play such as happiness, sadness, anger, stress, and confusion. Ruth is very independent, firm, kind, witty, and loving.
Similarly, the relationship expectations in Chinese customs and traditions were strongly held onto. The daughters of the Chinese family were considered as a shame for the family. The sons of the family were given more honour than the daughters. In addition, some daughters were even discriminated. The only daughter in the family, Liang had to hear her grandmothers taunt: “If you want a place in this world [...] do not be born as a girl child” (Choy 27). The girls from the Chinese family were considered useless. They were always looked down upon in the family; they felt as if the girls cannot provide a family with wealth, this attitude would really affect the parents from Chinese family preferred boys as they thought; boys could work and provide the family income. Due to Chinese culture preference to having boys, girls often did not have the right to live. In the Chinese ethnicity, the family always obeyed the elder’s decision. When the family was trying to adapt to the new country and they were trying to learn th...
In Truman Capote’s short story, “A Christmas Memory”, Capote shows his true admiration for Sook by illustrating her loving character. Throughout the story Capote explains the ways Sook was an extraordinarily loving person to Buddy. For example, Sook giving Buddy ten cents every Saturday for him to see a picture show, she tries to sell her own valuables to purchase Buddy a gift for Christmas, and she spends most of her time with Buddy. Sook was a loving person to everyone she met, but she was most loving to her best friend Buddy.
Maxine, being of the first generation of her family to be born in America, only knows about China from what she hears in her mother’s “talk-stories.” These stories are told to act as lessons on how the Chinese people were and should be, and are often vary critical. In “No Name Woman,” the tale of Maxine’s aunt who was shunned from her family for having an affair shows how careful young women must be when growing up in Chinese culture. “My aunt haunts me—her ghost drawn to me because now, after fifty years of neglect, I alone devoted pages to her…” (17). Maxine feels remorse and can relate to her aunt because she too feels a sense of alienation from her traditional Chinese and seemingly narrow-minded heritage.
A woman has always been told to act like a lady, to be proper, and to show manners. The history of women is being told through the books, actions, and through history. The role a woman is usually portrayed as pure and very welcoming. Will Cather created this character of Marian Forrester in her book “A Lost Lady” as a very high end woman that leaves an impression on anyone that meets Mrs. Forrester. Since in the pioneer day’s women where divided into to social classes like the upper division called the aristocrats, and then there was the lower division woman that did all the labor work. A lady is meant to be a wife and stand behind her husband and not question their role that a wife plays. The gender role played a key factor throughout the development of the identity of Mrs. Forrester. The way Mrs. Forrester
As children, the daughters in this book are ashamed of their mothers and don't take them very seriously, dismissing them as quirky and odd. "I could never tell my father . . . How could I tell him my mother was crazy?" (p. 117). They don't try to comprehend their culture, which is a big part of understanding their traditional Chinese mothers. On page 6, one of the daughters states, "I can never remember things I don't understand in the first place," referring to Chinese expressions her mother used. When their mothers show pride in them, the girls only show their embarrassment. One daughter shows her shame when she says to her mother, "I wish you wouldn't do that, telling everyone I'm your daughter" (p. 101). The girls cannot relate to their mothers because they were raised in a different world. No matter how much the mothers care for them or how much they sacrifice to make their girls' lives better, the daughters are blind to their mothers' pain and feelings.
Adeline Yen Mah’s literary skills explain comprehensively how Niang’s flawed personality cause great agony for Adeline. However, it is being mistreated by Niang that ultimately fuels her to undertake the seemingly impossible task of trying to succeed in life. Adeline’s great accomplishments in life were the result of her unfaltering determination in the face of injustice. Niang inadvertently helped her achieve that.
In the essay: “ ‘Cinderella’: A Story of Sibling Rivalry and Oedipal Conflicts”’, Bruno Bettelheim discusses how Cinderella is a story about the difficulties of sibling rivalry and the degraded heroine ending up on top of the siblings that oppressed her. Bettelheim argues that sibling rivalry is created when a child feels that they cannot win their parents love and esteem in comparison to his brothers or sisters. In addition he argues that every child feels that they deserve to be degraded at some point in their life. The concept of Oedipal guilt, his last point, has some intriguing details included in it, concepts of which could be disputed. However, the main focus of this essay is on how children justify the idea that they should be degraded, and because of the hardships they have faced, risen up and exalted like Cinderella was. He states that Cinderella relates very closely to the youth because they feel like they can relate to her situation more than the majority of people could.
As a girl, she had an extremely difficult childhood as an orphan and was passed around from orphanage to orphanage. The author has absolute admiration for how his mother overcame her upbringing. He opens the third chapter by saying, “She was whatever the opposite of a juvenile delinquent is, and this was not due to her upbringing in a Catholic orphanage, since whatever it was in her that was the opposite of a juvenile delinquent was too strong to have been due to the effect of any environment…the life where life had thrown her was deep and dirty” (40). By saying that she was ‘the opposite of a juvenile delinquent’, he makes her appear as almost a saintly figure, as he looks up to her with profound admiration. He defends his views on his mother’s saintly status as not being an effect of being in a Catholic orphanage, rather, due to her own strong will. O’Connor acknowledges to the extent that her childhood was difficult through his diction of life ‘throwing’ her rather than her being in control of it. As a result, she ended up in unsanitary and uncomfortable orphanages, a ‘deep and dirty’ circumstance that was out of her control. Because of this, the author recognizes that although his childhood was troublesome, his mother’s was much worse. She was still able to overcome it, and because of it, he can overcome
The Narrator’s family treats her like a monster by resenting and neglecting her, faking her death, and locking her in her room all day. The Narrator’s family resents her, proof of this is found when the Narrator states “[My mother] came and went as quickly as she could.
I read this story a few times, to truly grasp an understanding of what the main conflict presented—as the prompt mentioned. I could choose multiple main points depending on how I interpreted the story. Initially I wanted to state that the main conflict I found was on how the half sisters of Jing-Mei would find out about their mother’s recent death in conjunction with the meeting of Jing-Mei for the first time. Each time I read the passage, I followed a different issue that I could assume to be the ‘conflict’ but slowly begin to realize that each conflict I was finding was only further developing what I believe to be the true conflict: Jing-Mei was unsure of her identity. Through various parts of the story, Jing-Mei references who she is in