Falling Leaves return to their roots
Falling Leaves - The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter, by Adeline Yen Mah, is a story of a young Chinese girl growing up in an environment that most people would crack under. Under the reign of a "evil stepmother," Mah's life was worst than most young unwanted Chinese daughters during the early 1900's. However, due to her strong will and the influence of a special Aunt she is able to over come such a horrid childhood. Today she is a medical doctor in America. However, if she did not have the strength of character to escape to America, where she attended school, is experiencing a fulfilling medical career and a happy marriage, her story could have never been told. The strong and intriguing meaning of her story, Falling Leaves is symbolic of Mah's life. Mah is represented as an individual leaf on the tree of life that has roots stretching back in time; each leaf has a different experience as shown by Mah's hardships, the significance of Falling Leaves is shown through Mah's insight of the beauty of life and its circle of renewal.All people have roots that reach far back in time that contribute to the legacy that makes up ones life in the present. Mah's family background, as she quotes
She believes that her Aunt has a peaceful death and hopes that her "nearness would help [Aunt Baba] along her final journey," (Pg. One example of the cruel actions taken against her is when her brothers force her to drink urine. Mah sustains the hardships she is faced with and in turn becomes a survivor. Mah's only refuge in this rough childhood is her beloved Aunt Baba, the older sister of Adeline's father, who is also despised and hated because she is financially dependent on Mah's Father. 274) so she could appreciate her own roots. 274) at the time of Aunt Baba's death. As we get older, we tend to go back to our beginnings. in the story, "[is with] a Shanghai family headed by my affluent father and his beautiful Eurasian wife, set against a background of treaty ports carved into foreign concessions, and the collision of east and West played out within and with out my very own home" (Pg. It is Baba, who tries desperately to shield Mah from Niang, her vicious stepmother.
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