Monday, October 6, 2008
Reality
Ms. Ng is a very reliable author. What she writes in her story is a reality in many people of Chinese descent. Of course, not including the suicide of a sister, but the culture and the way the Chinese people live is all very true. She portrays a Chinese family very accurately. Nina is very Americanized. Leon is the China man who wanted to make it big but never did. America was said to have streets made of gold and to be the land of opportunities, but to Leon, everything and everyone failed him. Lei tries to be the tie between two different generations. Mah is stuck living in the past, unhappy with the events in her life. The daughters, like most Chinese children, are very obedient to their parents up to a certain point. Like Nina, she wanted to live a life of her own after a while and wanted nothing to do with her Chinese culture or family issues.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
i think the disappointments that Laya's parents felt mirror the expriances of a lot of people who immigrant to the us. They call it the land of opportunity but coming here from another country and starting from scratch is not easy. for some reason people came to the US convinced that it was easy to make a living here when in reality its as hard to make a living here as any other place in the world. and new immigrants face a lot of discrimination on top of that hardship.
Even though immigrating isn't easy and there are alot of hardships faced as the previous two bloggers expressed, i feel that the author wrote this book in a very negative view of the immigrant experience. Though, it is hard and full of troubles, i would have liked reading it better if she did have one of the characters have a success story. She gives a sense that Ona's suicide will just play a negative constant effect on the rest of the family members and they will never be happy again.
Post a Comment