In the beginning of this book where Hong Kingston wrote about her imaginary life as a woman warrior in China was really exciting. I always love reading about women who are powerful because women are usually written as victims. Surprisingly Hong Kingston, in my opinion, does not make herself a victim in this book. I imagine her fighting against all attempts to make her a victim.
I suppose if I had not read more than this book about Communist China it would be difficult for me to understand the murder of so many female children. It is still difficult for me to understand how a person could murder their own child. I do know that at one point the Chinese government permitted infanticide and even encouraged it. Beijing’s population control program limited parents to one child preferably a male. Chinese couples were penalized by wage-cuts and reduced access to social services when children are born “outside the plan. From what I understand the penalty could mean starvation for a family that depended on wages and government help. Because female children would belong to their in-laws, a male child was preferred in order to help and take care of their parents in old age. This is not a Chinese policy any longer because among other things the ratio between males and females in China was something like 100 males to one female in the aftermath.
Toward the end of the book, Hong Kingston tries to communicate with her mother about her feelings and experiences growing up and her mother tells her to stop talking so much. I could feel Hong Kingston’s frustration. I remember thinking at this point in the book that she should make her mother listen to her. In the end however, Hong Kingston becomes outraged and tells her mother everything that is on her mind simply to find out that her mother did not feel as Hong Kingston believed.
What was especially powerful about this book was the way Hong Kingston felt at school. I plan to be a teacher in the public school and I would have never guessed that some of the reasons children refuse to participate is due to cultural reasons. I would have assumed as Hong Kingston’s teacher did that it had something to do with politics or laziness. I believe that all teachers should research the cultures of their students in order to understand them better. In fact I think that there should be a class taught at the university level and become a required course that teachers must complete in order to receive their degrees to teach. .