American Translation

I think this section of the book is really interesting because there are a lot of conflicts throughout each story and it seems as if each person is holding some kind of guilt or shame on them. Since this is mainly the daughter’s telling their story, I think it reflects on how they react to their mother’s opinions and what they think about them. One thing I noticed about Lena, Waverly, Rose and Jing-Mei, is that they don’t like what opinions their mothers have about them, yet they criticize them or each other. Waverly in particular is one individual who feels that she shouldn’t be criticized but at the same time she is very opinionated. These stories reflect on the daughter’s and their growth and what their mistakes and their mother’s take notice in that. Two stories that I really focused on were Rice Husband and Best Quality because I feel sorry for Lena and Jing-Mei and what issues they have to deal with their mothers. With June it’s as if she doesn’t do anything right for her mother to be at least proud of her and personally I don’t think Waverly should have any say on her life. Part of Suyuan’s problem is that she wants Jing-Mei to be like Waverly instead of being herself, which to me is something that would hurt me. And because Jing-Mei can’t be like her or probably doesn’t want to be like her, it causes her mother to criticize her a lot and it also causes Waverly to look down on her. In Lena’s story, I really think her mom jinxed her when she was really young about the whole rice thing because that’s exactly what happened. Ying-Ying also confused Lena as well because it made her think that the one boy who was treating her bad as a kid would end up being the husband who would treat her bad so she made sure that wouldn’t happen and in the end he died and that made Lena feel terrible. Now that she’s older and married to a husband who treats her bad, she feels horrible about everything and to me I think Lena is mad at her mother for telling her about it and making her believe it too. If I were Lena, I would think that it was my mother’s fault who got me in a situation like this. I think the paragraph relates very much to the Rice husband story because Ying-Ying has all of these visions of the bad things that would happen in the future if certain things were out of place nad that's exactly what happens to Lena.