If I Was Adeline

She overcame this “terror” with different methods. In the beginning of Adeline’s schooldays, Dai Dai (Father) made a joke about Adeline. “Is this medal for leading your class?” (11) he questioned. Adeline nodded in pride. Being little, she remembered this moment and treasured it next to her heart. When Adeline was turned on by Dai Dai and Niang, she tried to remember the one time Father was proud of her excellence in school. This proves Dai Dai was actually following the evil intentions of Niang, not turning on adeline out of the supposed coldness of his heart. When Adeline receives new friends at Sacred Heart boarding school and orphanage, they motivate Adeline with an inspirational pep talk. “We must get away, stand on our own feet and create our own destiny.” (176). Although similar to what Ye Ye said, Adeline takes this advice from the few friends she had and used it against the emotional pain of Niang’s taunts and torture. This proves Adeline has used all of her advice and information to “defeat” Niang and go to college in England. She has broken free from the bonds of torment and restriction, free to go and roam the

Adel is a character in the story that we get to know quite well by Danny's descriptions of her. Physically Adel was very pretty. "The girls black hair fell to her shoulders, making a frame for her face. She looked tired, but her dace was tanned and her mouth was a warm red. Her cheeks were pink from the wind." And "In spite of her clothing, Adel w as attractive. Her hair was as black as he had remembered it and it hung in loose, natural waves. Here eyes were a dark blue. Underneath the too-large sweater, her breasts were made soft, noticeable mounds." Mentally, Adel is very shy. She rarely talked and when she did it was in a timid voice barely noticeable to hear. She didn't seem very confident with herself either if she was always wearing large, baggy clothing. Not to say that girls who wear baggy clothing are unconfident, but it just showed that she wasn't comfortable with herself. Even when Danny was living with her she was shy from him. It takes her a while to adjust to certain people, it seems. Before she can get comfortable with them.

Ng-Chan begins to notice the growing intimacy between her father and her half sister, who represents an invasion of the relationship between her father and herself. Consequently, Ng-Chan, who has always considered herself an “only child,” displays jealousy. Her bitterness is compared to “the taste of something sharp and grey...like a tiny piece of rock…[she can] break her teeth on” if she is not careful. Thus, “somewhere along the way, [she stops] looking forward to Saturdays.” This results in a deviation in her perspective: an experience that was once enjoyable is no longer worthwhile. These changes, however, remain unnoticed by her father because she is reluctant to assert her feelings, unwilling to potentially harm their relationship. This is evident when she feels “sad about … how [her father’s] face changed” after she has expressed her unwillingness to go out with him. For this reason, she seems “go into an automatic cheer whenever [she] sees him,” and their “Saturday rituals [continue]... until the time she leaves for university.” The father’s ignorance about the transformations in her daughter’s attitude, coupled with the daughter’s inability to express her feelings, results in in an awkward deadlock in their relationship whereby neither of them can express an incentive to find a

Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter!” Ni Kan goes in to a rage and rebels. “Then I wish I 'd never been born!” Ni Kan shouted. “I wish I were dead! Like them.” Referring to the twin baby girls her mother had lost in China. This was Ni Kan’s mother braking point and Ni Kan knew it, she saw it in her mother’s face.

In the story chinese cinderella the main character Adeline faces a lot of adversity throughout the book. She faces the most her adversity at home with her parents and siblings being unfairly cruel toward her. She has a lot of courage for going through with all this pain and still staying optimistic about everything.

Furthermore, the author explores the tone of the novel by providing specific details. In An-mei's childhood story, the author chooses to describe the pain An-mei feels as the soup pours over her by providing details of the twinge. She describes it as "the kind of pain [specially] terrible that a little child should never remember it" and how it still remains "in [An-mei's] skin's memory" (Tan 39). By depicting these details of the pain, Tan expresses the feeling of misery An-mei feels, which appends to the melancholy tone. Additionally, in the story of Ying-ying's first marriage, the author presents explicit details of the emptiness Ying-ying feels by portraying details of her as "a tiger that neither pounce[s] nor lay[s] waiting between the trees" and "an unseen spirit" (Tan 285). This emptiness Ying-ying feels seems to indicate the melancholy tone that appears noticeable in the novel. Clearly, the details Amy Tan chooses to describe in the novel seem to specify the somber tone.

Tan’s attitude towards her mother throughout the essay can be described as understanding yet embarrassed. Tan is understanding of her mother throughout the essay because she constantly says that her English differs when talking to her mom versus when talking to others. She does this because she knows her mom is not as well-spoken as others, but Tan still wants her mom to be comfortable speaking English with everyone. Tan even changes many things in later writings because she envisions her mother reading it, and wants to know that her mother will understand everything she puts into the writing even though she speaks “broken English.” Tan was also embarrassed of her mother in the essay because she speaks of times when Tan blamed her own mother

What makes a child determine at such a young age to defy her mom on every hand for the rest of their life? The sad realization that Ni’Kan would rather see her mother angry at her than disappointed in her became her revelation.

She would have had to drastically compromise her standards so that she could successfully run a household. Seeing as she was so young, that would have meant that she would have had to become mature and strict very fast, so that she could become a parental influence for the children. Adeline criticises her for her strict rules which she gives to the children when she says things such as “For a few hours I had been a normal little girl attending a birthday. This was strictly prohibited, and I had broken Niang’s rules. If she found out, the consequences would be disastrous.” . However, what Adeline doesn’t see, is that it’s not unreasonable that Niang set out many rules when trying to care for such a large number of people. Since there were so many of them, it would be hard to try and keep track of each child, especially since they have show to be troublesome in the past. “Silently but swiftly, Big Brother suddenly approached Ye Ye and carefully pinched the nasal hair between his forefinger and thumb.” Many of the rules which Niang put in place were there to protect them and keep them from making trouble. What Adeline fails to recognise is the importance of these rules and instead used them as a way of putting a negative twist on the

Throughout her early childhood, she ignores her father's drunken escapades, and thinks of him as a loving father and excellent teacher of the wild. It isn't until her junior year of high school that she realizes the indisputable flaws her father has. She resents Dad's drinking and how he constantly lets her and the rest of the family down yet never openly admits it or allows his flaws to be discussed. Jeannette also begins to resent her mother, whom she’s never been close to. Some cause of her resentment includes her mom’s refusal to hold down a job long enough to provide her kids with a stable food supply, especially since Rex won’t be providing like he says he will. This resentment eventually motivates her to move away from her parents and Welch. She ends up in New York City with her sister Lori in which she focuses on her studies and becomes a successful journalist. Jeannette is a natural forgiver and it shows even when she moves away from her parents, but this doesn’t stop her from being haunted by her past and with her transition from poverty into the upper-middle class. By the end of the novel, Jeannette is a symbol of the resilience and

Reading Addie’s section of the novel, the reader discovers several innermost thoughts and secrets the mother is

Throughout the story she shows signs of being self centered and a liar when she brings the cat after being told not to, tries to get her son to go to Tennessee instead of Florida so that she can visit some people, and her efforts not to get herself shot and killed despite her family

But the main problem between mothers and daughters in Amy Tan's novels is the lack of communication. As will be discussed below, mothers usually have some terrible hidden secret, something that even her closest relatives ignore. In "The Joy Luck Club" is the fact that Suyuan Woo had been formerly married and had two lost children in China in The Kitchen's God Wife, we have the same again; and, finally, in The Hundred Secret Senses, the father is the one who had a secret past life, but here also the relationship between mother and daughter are somewhat problematic. Olivia is not very close to her mother, who used to care more about finding an exotic partner than for her children.

In the book Chinese Cinderella it is apparent that Niang has had a positive and also a negative impact on Yen Mah. In the book Chinese Cinderella Niang makes the narrator feel a mixture of negative emotions such as neglect, foreignness, and also a feeling no one should feel, insignificance and humiliation. This is shown when the narrator writes “Niang predicted a hopeless future for me.” (Page 124). This had a very pronounced effect on Yen Mah. Therefore as a result of Niang suppressing her, the narrator was able to aim for something greater and also bring recognition to herself. Niang also affected the narrator’s mental stand point because Yen Mah was treated as a servant when compared to Niang’s own children. In which the way Adeline Yen Mah was treated was very immoral because it gave Yen Mah the feeling of being not as wanted as Niang’s own children. If Niang did not treat the narrator the way she did Adeline Yen Mah may not be the person she is – one that aspires to succeed and also one that sees something beyond her circumstances. In Chinese Cinderella,

The plot and structure in this autobiography makes the story of Adeline’s childhood flow better. The orientation started by Niang marrying Adeline’s father. At Adeline’s birth her mother died so Adeline was treated badly and unfairly. In the complication, Adeline was unwanted from the start. She was sent away to an orphanage because she was wanted by no one. In the resolution Adeline decided after winning the playwriting competition that she wanted to be a writer. She studied medicine at Oxford University with Third Brother. The reflection is that no matter what your conditions are you can achieve anything like Adeline did. In the story Adeline read a newspaper article that said “It was announced