Rice Husband

In the story Rice Husband, Lena’s mother, Ying-Ying, comes to visit Lena and her husband Harold. Her mother comments to Harold that Lena looks so thin, she is like a ghost, you cannot see her. This statement symbolizes a lot of things that are intertwined between mother and daughter. In the way Ying-Ying was raised, she was taught to “keep her mouth closed so selfish desires would not fall out”. I think she passed on the same way of doing things to her daughter, Lena. Lena is now not able to speak up to her husband about the things he does that bother her, one being the fact that he makes seven times more money than she does at the same company. The reason his salary is so much larger than hers is because he has used all of her great ideas over the years that brought him success and never gave her a raise because people in the office would deem it “unfitting”. Since Lena does not have a voice, she is simply a ghost, walking around unseen and unheard.