Brave Orchid: The Thematic Power Of Silence

The mother wants to explain the importance of the feather to her daughter but she is unable to speak grammatically correct English and her daughter only speaks English. The woman’s daughter grows up speaking only English and “swallowing more Coca-Cola than sorrow” and “for a long time now the woman had wanted to give her daughter the single swan feather and tell her, “This feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions.” And she waited, year after year, for the day she could tell her daughter this in perfect American English” (17). The mother is unable to communicate important messages to her daughter which then creates a language barrier. Jing-mei Woo is given a jade pendant from her mother and ponders what it means after

This stark contrast of home lives showcases how different cultures approach motherhood, which really reinforces the idea of being American versus being Chinese that is explored so much in this novel. Lena desperately wants her mother to understand the expectations associated with motherhood in America, and doesn’t understand why her relationship with her mother is so much more broken than her peers’ relationships. Without these expectations from both Lena and Ying-Ying about how it is acceptable to mother, their relationship would have endured significantly less

Pierce. The story showed that the relationship between them two wasn’t the greatest, it wasn’t the best relationship but it wasn’t the worst. In the story, Rachel and her teacher Mrs. Pierce do have a conflict with each other. The conflict is that Mrs. Pierce made Rachel wear a sweater without asking Rachel if it was hers or not, therefore causing Rachel to feel bad and cry. Their relationship does not change throughout the story, it stays the same.

She would do everything her mother told her. Everything her mother wanted. (137)” Eventually, Marilyn returns, and her arrival is “nothing short of a miracle. (Ng 146).

She had never questioned what her name meant and now it has come together that her mother 's dreams were for all three of her daughters to be together. Jing now realizes that she has upset her mother by not accepting herself as being Chinese in the beginning. Now Jing realizes her Chinese roots. At the end, the three sisters take a picture together and Jing says, Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished moment” (277).

At first, Twyla is not too keen on being roommates with Roberta, but as Twyla 's memory went on it showed the girls had more in common that she thought. Both girls were eight years old, they were not very good in school, and their mothers were still alive. This is what separated them from all the other girls

Deenie The first main characters name is Deenie and her three traits are stubborn, independent, and kind. she is an average girls as she would say but her mother would say she was born with a beautiful face that she needs to put to good use Deenie's mother often says god gave you a pretty face for a reason. Deenie goes to school the same as any other kid but she often gets to skip school for auditions. These auditions are for modeling jobs Deenies mother is always setting up interviews for deenie but deenie does not want to model but she wiud never tell her mother that.

Poverty is a fight that some have to fight every day, it is not by choice that some people struggle. One way that The bean trees challenges the idea that the poor are lazy is how determined Taylor was. Taylor was determined to escape poverty and make something out of her life, “But I stayed in school, I was not the smartest or even particularly outstanding but I was there and staying out of trouble and intended to finish,” (Kingsolver 3). Many girls in high school were dropping out of school and falling into poverty stricken families, but Taylor knowing what

The conventional way to dress for a girl was very different from the way Scout dresses, which is why her choice of attire is often frowned upon, but she insists that she “could do nothing in a dress”(p.90) When she mentions that, she gets the response that she “wasn’t supposed to be doing things that required pants.” One of the reasons why Scout is different from the other girls is because of the way she was raised. Her mother died when she was only two years old, so she didn’t have a big influence in Scout’s life.

ry: Akeelah is an 11-year-old girl who lost her father, who she has inherited her love of words from. Akeelah doesn’t really come from a good neighborhood or a two-parent household. But she soon is thrown into a setting where her love for words will benefit her and give hope for her school and her neighborhood. Akeelah’s school and neighborhood is kind of on the poor, rough, urban side of town. In the movie, Akeelah wonders why she would want to represent a school that can 't even put doors on the toilet stalls.

It is easy for Western parents to allow their children to give up, but not for Chinese mothers, including Amy. Playing the musical instrument was so significant in Amy’s eye, especially because both Sophia and Lulu had a talent in playing their instruments. Amy had a very high expectation of her girls, so she spent lots of money on hiring professional music teachers for her girls and kept her girls practicing hours a day. Lulu even complained to Amy once that six hours a day of violin practicing scared her friend Daniela, since she had no time left for anything else besides playing violin (62). One result of her strict attitude on practicing is that Sophia was appreciated by a Yale professor Wei-Yi Yang, who “taught only Yale piano graduate students and a

Seeing her unhappy and unfulfilled made me determined to change the order that I make my choices in life. Don’t get me wrong, I want to have a family eventually. But instead of having a child first, like all of the women in my family before me, I want to complete my education and start my career. Family will come after. I would like to say that I figured this out on my own but my mom’s support and almost daily go-to lecture of, “I want you to be independent so you don’t have to depend on a man,” worked on me.

Her math teacher makes her sit next to Rosa, a girl with cerebral palsy. At first Jessica is hesitant to do this since she doesn 't want to be linked with the handicapped, but she realizes this is wrong. When she gets to know Rosa through passed notes, she discovers that she likes the girl. Whenever Jessica starts feeling better about her situation, something knocks her back down.

When Paige went to her counselor for

The Book Thief composed by Markus Zusak is a story of compassion, betrayal, and death. On the surface Liesel may portray as a naive German girl but beyond the surface she is just a ray of sunshine in a world filled with hatred, violence and death. Liesel Meminger is a foster child, age nine in the beginning of the book, who experiences life in Nazi Germany. She is strong-willed, brave, and an opportunist. Throughout her experiences, she slowly begins to develop a love of reading books and since she can’t afford them she has to steal, therefore her nickname forms The Book Thief.