Fam Story ((Blogger wasn't posting for me, i woke up just now, 2:37 and posted))

            “As a child, I was never treated the same as my brothers and sisters. I’m the middle of five children and my older and younger brothers and sisters were favored so much more than me. I didn’t know why. It was mostly my dad, but my mom followed him because that’s just who she is. She doesn’t know how to start things herself and feels like she needs the support of my dad. I could understand.

            Let me tell you some things that happened at home. My brothers and sisters and parents all lived in the larger portion of my house in Taiwan. I lived in the basement with my father’s grandparents. We shared a small space, nearly the size of half a typical kitchen and we would sleep and I would do homework there because I never wanted to be around my brothers and sisters. They looked down on me and wouldn’t treat me as in equal. Even my younger brother and sister looked at me as a lower person despite the traditions of respecting your elders. Still, I think it was the influence my dad had on them. They saw how my parents treated me and came with the thoughts that it would be ok to treat me horribly as my parents did.

            During Chinese New Years when my brothers and sisters and I all got new clothes and new things, I always got last pick, leaving me with the ugliest and cheapest of all things in the pile of goods. I took what I can get. After all, this is the only new clothes I get of the year. All I got were my older sibling’s hand me downs while my younger siblings got a constant supply of new clothes and new toys monthly. I saw the unfairness of it all, but I couldn’t do anything about it. When something bad happened to anyone, I was blamed and punished. The only people I had were my grandparents and my two dogs.”

She laughed as she reminisced and switched to Cantonese. (This is where some of the translation isn’t direct)

            I remember those two dogs. One was a German shepherd the other was one of those herding dogs. That herding dog would hide under the couch the whole day. It was a silly dog.

            Ok. Back to the story now. We moved to San Francisco and life was still the same. When I told my dad I wanted to go to college, he told me I should stay home and work and make money for my family instead. I knew that if I couldn’t get into college I couldn’t make money anyways, so I applied using my own money. I got accepted to Cal Poly and decided to go there. When my family found out, they tried to do everything they can to put me down and discourage me from going. But I was determined. The day I had to leave for college, I had a small suit case and a duffle bag with only 200 dollars in my hands for tuition and food. As I called out a hopeful “goodbye” in my house, and all I heard was my own voice echoing back at me. I was sad, yes, I admit it, but I knew what I needed to do. I turned and stepped out of the house, heading for the Greyhound I was going to take to my new college. I’ll tell you the truth. I was crying the whole way there. But I let the excitement of college and the prospect of a new future take over me.

            Now you see why I spoil you guys so much? Now you see why I know you can do so much better than me? It’s because I didn’t have anything when I was younger. I didn’t have anyone to support me and push me towards success. Now that you have me and your dad, people who push you further than you push yourself, you better do the best you can.”

She continues ranting about things I refuse to type into blog post.

What do you learn about yourself, or your role in your family, from this story? How does the story connect to and highlight something about you?

            From this story my mom told me, I learned that my role in my family is to try my hardest and make the best of everything I have. My mom didn’t have much. I wouldn’t say she didn’t have anything because she still had a home to live in, food to eat, and other things many others did not have. But she was forced to take on a very emotionally harsh road because of the decisions and things my grandparents made. She was bought down from her true potential because of them. Even though she was forced to endure such hardships, she was still able to reach her goal. She wanted to make enough money to support herself and not depend on her parents and she wanted enough money to support a family. She has fulfilled both of these goals to an extent that I would never be able to fulfill if I were put into the position my mother was put into. It really does pain me to know about my mother’s pain and I was shown her definite strength. It shows me that I can do anything because I have the support of my whole family while my mom achieved so much without any help from anyone.

            This story was passed on by my mom because she wants us to know what she went through. It isn’t for her to get out sympathy, but it is to show us how far she has gone even though she’s had to put up with so much. 

          This story hasn't been passed down many generations at all, but I think that I will pass this story down to my children because it is important for the to know that they have the ability to do good even if they have to go through they did not have it worse than my mom in terms of family and support. When they go through a horrible time of pain and emotions, they should have something to motivate them and let them know that if someone else can do it, then they can. 

     In society, there are always fantasies for children. For example, we all go to Disneyland in our childhood and believe that every success and every bit of happiness will come without any effort into anything. Disneyland is just an example of a childhood fairytale that every child wants to live. The reality of life is much more different and is much more complex than a simple wave of a wand and everything is accomplished. Telling a story like that opens a child's eyes up and shows them the true nature of life. I fel like sharing such an important life lesson and story with my children will help them realize that they ahve to work for things and can't depend on anyone else but themselves if they want to reach success.

Twenty Six Malignant Gates

In "The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates", the second section of four stories in The Joy Luck Club, the relationships between the mothers and daughters in America are very similar to Amy Chua's Tiger Mom article we read in class a few weeks ago. In Chua's article, she describes how she forces her child to learn the piano and learn the piece until she knew it and perfected the piece. In The Joy Luck Club, Jing-Mei's mother forces her to take piano lessons because she wants her child to become a prodigy.   

The difference between the two situations are that Jing-Mei's mother wanted her daughter to be a prodigy because she wanted her daughter to be able to compare with Waverly Jong, who was a national chess winner at a very young age. Jing-Mei's mother wanted Jing- Mei to be able to beat Waverly and her mother in a contest of who's daughter is better than the other. In the Tiger Mother article, Chua's intentions was to get her daughter to be able to perfect this piece on the piano.

"Over the next year, I practiced like this, dutifully in my own way. And then one day I heard my mother and her friend Lindo Jong both talking in a loud bragging tone of voice so other would hear." (138) 

      Jing -Mei's mother may seem demanding and mean, but really her underlying intentions are to give Jing-Mei a goal to become someone and Waverly was just a benchmark for Jing-Mei for how good her mother wanted her to be. Chua knew that her daughter could do it and can do the piano piece without any flaws and thats why she forced her daughter to sit down and just play and practice. Both mothers had the intentions to help their children see their potential and to reach. Both mothers didn't mean to be mean or to make their daughters feel bad, but they expected their children to live to the best of their abilities. To get them to reach their potentials the mothers believe that they need to push their daughters to get somewhere.  

Rules of the Game + The Voice from the Wall

What is Amy Tan's purpose behind this introductory piece? What thematic elements, characterization, or plot foreshadowing connect it to the stories that follow, particularly "Rules of the Game" and "The Voice from the Wall"?


     In the Rules of the Game and The Voice from the Wall, both daughters didn't listen to her mother. In the introductory piece, the girl on the bike also did not listen to her mother. Ultimately, the daughter was the one who got into trouble from trying to prover her mother wrong about how she cannot do something. 
     In "The Rules of the Game", Waverly Jong is a gifted girl with skills in playing chess. When her brother gets a gift from church for Christmas, it is the first chess set Waverly has seen. She learned how to play and soon, she excelled into playing at the national level. When her mother began to show her off, Waverly got embarrassed and upset at her mother. She yelled at her in public telling her mother that if she wanted to show off something so badly, then her mother should play chess instead so she can brag. She then proceeds in running away. When she gets back home, her mother tells her family to ignore her. And says that if she did not care about her family, her family doesn't have to care about her. In the introductory piece, the girl thinks her mother is full of it and decides that she doesn't have to listen to her mother. In the end, something bad happened to her.
     In "The Voice from the Wall", Lena St. Clair visualizes everything as being wrong. She hears of her mother's great grandfather, who did something wrong and sentenced a beggar to life in prison. Lena's mother tells her that the beggar's ghost still lives and follows them. At night, Lena hears her neighbors yelling at each other, a daughter and a mother. She only sees the worst parts of their relationship. She thinks that this girl is being abused. Ying Ying, Lena's mother, nearly has a baby, but the baby turns out to have died before being born. Lena's father puts words into Ying Ying's mouth and keeps saying that she is okay and would be fine by tomorrow. Ying Ying doesn't have the courage to tell her family of the guilt or the pain she is suffering from.

Scar

    In the story Scar in The Joy Luck Club, An-mei's mother was kicked out of her home because of how she disgraced her family.  An-mei's mother's first husband had died after they had An-mei and she remarried to a man, becoming his third concubine. She was considered a disgrace to the family because in Chinese tradition, when a woman and a man marries, no matter what happens to the man, the woman must stay loyal to him.  An-mei's mother did not do this and was kicked out by her own mother. An-mei, her daughter was taken away from her mother after her mother was kicked out and lived with her Popo. Her Popo was one who continuously discouraged An-mei to have any connection with her mother and banned An-mei from even saying her name.
     The question here is whether or not family and honor should take priority over the rights of the individual family member. In the book, family and honor did take priority. Although An-mei's mother came back for An-mei, none of her family members would allow her to even get near her. They thought she would become like her mother of she was near her. I think that what Popo did was out of being ashamed of her daughter doing such things. She had to suppress the love she had for her daughter and for the good and honor of the family, kicked her out and banned her from ever coming back. 
     At the end of the story, Popo became very sick and An-mei's mother made a huge sacrafice and endured horrible pain to try to make her own mother get better. I don't think love was ever lost between the two of them, but Popo was definitely horribly ashamed of having her own daughter be the disgrace of the family. An-mei's mother came back because she still loved her family despite all that they did to her. I think she understood the reasons they had kicked her out of the family, but still kept the feelings of love. An-mei ultimately "forgets" her mother, but inside her, she will never forget her because she is a huge part of her past. 

Animal Farm Chapter 11

My Chapter11 is on Leon's blog.

Tiger Mother

"Chinese parents can get away with things that Western parents can't. Once when I was young—maybe more than once—when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage."

     This is the second time I've read this article and it still strikes me the way she expresses the way she felt when her parents disiplined her through calling her worthless. Personally, I've had this kind of experience within my family. It's different when someone else calls you worthless, when your close relatives call you worthless and when your parents call you worthless. When someone else calls me worthless, I blow them off because it just means that they don't like  me very much. Their opinions don't matter to me.  When/If close relatives call me worthless it means a lot because typically, they are supposed to be very supportive. It's only when you are a great disappointment that they would ever call you that. For me, it would be the ultimate insult and wake up call that I am messing up everything. If my parents call me worthless, I don't feel worthless at all. In fact, it gives me motivation to prove them wrong.
    Being called useless and worthless by my parents tells me that I've become so hopeless that they have no other methods to make me do better and are forced to result in making me demote myself to a level they raised me to never want to drop to. My parents said they were ashamed that I was their daughter one time and I remember thinking "Ok then. Be ashamed.  But I'm going to prove you wrong because whatever you think or say, I know you will always see me as your daughter and nothing will ever change that between us. I'll do even better then you'd ever expect to prove you wrong and to prove to myself that I am not as useless or shameful as you say I am." Yep. It was a great motivation for me to better myself for myself and my family,

Connections Between Egypt and Animal Farm

     The connections that I saw between the uprisings and Animal Farm were things like how one rebellion on Animal Farm led to the rebellion or thought of rebellion on the other farms who hear about the reasons for the rebellion in the first place. Like in Egypt, when their rebellions succeeded last Friday, Iran and other nearby areas began to protest on the streets hoping to find a way to break through their governments the Egypt was able to do. Egypt started a huge state of rebellion for many other countries around it and was very much like Animal Farm being the start of a successful rebellion.
     Another connection I found was that in Animal Farm, a small group of animals, or actually, just Major the pig, began the ideas and thoughts of rebellion. Then the idea was spread throughout Animal Farm and an actual rebellion occurred after Major died. It's very very similar to what happened in Egypt. The rebellion started in Tunisia and when the man burned himself to death, the idea of this rebellion spread to Egypt where it ultimately took off and a rebellion really happened. This man is like Major. He sparked the rebellion.
     Another connection is where in Animal Farm, when the humans meddle into the politics and the world where animals ruled is the same as how Americans are going into Egypt and trying to help one side or the other. The humans were fought off in Animal Farm because they embraced the freedom of choice they had without outside rule. In Egypt, many despised how Americans meddled into the rebellions and the business of the Egyptians and their government. They enjoyed having the power and the fact that they are able to "speak" through their own actions and not by some foreign country.
     Orewell is truly a genius. Even though he wrote this book many years before, the connections between Animal Farm and what is currently happening in Egypt are incredibly similar and it amazes me how he wrote something like this in his book even though he knew nothing of how the future would be like.