Thursday, November 14, 2013

Book review Throw away daughter






Book review Throw away daughter
 
I think you have never heard of this book, Throw away daughter. But, if you haven’t read it yet, you should read this book.
 
The author of this book is Ting-Xing Ye. She was born in Shanghai, China in 1952. She obtained a degree in English Literature from Beijing University and became an English interpreter for the national government. During this time, she met a Canadian English teacher named William E. Bell, who will marry her. In 1987, she moved to Canada and started to write books, both fiction and non-fiction.
 
This is a novel about Dong-Mei, or Grace, who was thrown away by her Chinese family and adopted by a Canadian family when she was a baby. As she grows older with the Canadian family which adopted her, she starts to have a desire to know about her past and her original family in China. This story is described from many perspectives. In other words, chapters are narrated by different characters that appear in the story. I believe that this technique of using more than one perspective lead to the writer’s success.
 
As I mentioned before, there are certain plotting skills and technique used in the story, such as chapters being narrated by different character from previous chapters. This plotting technique may be confusing to some readers like me, and it may take a few chapters to get used to this style. However, this technique helps the reader understand both sides of the decisions made by the characters in the story. Through reading this book, I realized that every decision in life is made through communication with other people who have different points of view, and there are no perfect decisions in life.
 
In conclusion, this book may be quite confusing but I believe that this book is worth reading. You may cry at the end of the story, like I did.

Monday, October 28, 2013

Diary Throw Away Daughter

Date:23rd June 1989

Dear Diary,

   I saw there were student-led popular demonstrations in Tiananmen square, Beijing on TV yesterday. My father wanted me to see what was going on in Beijing. I thought this was a waste of time since I don't care much about China. But I have learned one thing yesterday, that China isn't a free country.

  Tiananmen square demonstrations still continues today. Almost every channel on TV is reporting about demonstrations in Beijing so I could not watch my favorite music video. Instead of nice music, I heard screams of panicking people who were shot, arrested, or hit by trucks. I cried as I saw many dead bodies in front of me. To be honest, I have never seen anything worse than this. While I cried, my thoughts about China had changed. I now have sympathy for China and worry about Chinese people unlike yesterday when I had no interest in what was going on in China. Moreover, surprisingly even to myself, I also became worried about my genetic mother, Chun-mei. Therefore, I asked my dad whether Yanghou is close to Beijing to know whether my genetic mother was alright. This was the first time I could call her name without anger.

   I now want to know more about my past in China and I want to see my genetic mother Chun-mei. This is all that I can think and care about right now. This change shows that I can now face the facts about my past, instead of just feeling gloomy about rejecting any connections with my country of birth, China.



Grace


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