A book to be saved for my future children
2014-08-14
This is a book that should be read by any second generation migrants who are suffering identity crisis. A book I'll certainly save for my future children.
The book talked about the stories of four chinese mothers and their American daughters. The mothers were born in early 1900s in China, from very different family backgrounds, each endured tragedy and suffering of their own kinds, some are unimaginable by people living in modern civilised and peaceful society. Yet the four mothers buried their grief deeply in their hearts, steeled their spirits, started new lives in American.
The enchanting part of the book is about the mother-daughter relationships around the four families. Daughters raised in American are incapable of understanding their mothers' chinese way of speaking, thinking and living, nor are they willing to learn them. Instead, they all to some extend deny their chinese identities and feel ashamed of their mothers who stand out awkwardly in the Western world. They had no idea what their mothers have been through, what made them the toughest souls that deserve much appreciation and admiration from their daughters.
The story of Jing-Mei and her mother is what touched my heart the deepest. Their relationship is no way any ordinary one. It's rather twisted. The mother held high hopes on Jing-Mei, which also raised Jing-Mei's expectation about herself. However, as Jing-Mei failed the expectations, she had to bear two folds of disappointment, one from herself and one from her mother. She turned angry against her mother, that why she had to bear the hope of her mother, why she was obliged to keep up mother's hope, why she has to care if mother was disappointed because she gave up on herself, and most importantly, why mother didn't keep up the hope on her even though she gave up on herself. Contradicting, conflicting, helplessly frustrating, this was young Jing-Mei's feeling. She couldn't understand the reason of her mother's high expectation, although the secret just lies in her name, she was too careless to find out, until it was too late.
The book ends with Jing-Mei travelled to China, reunited with her two older sisters. Although they've never meet, they held on to each other tightly and burst into tears, immersed in sadness and joy. In the hug of her older sisters, she finally found her Chinese identity and embraced it.