s and sexual make-up. Like our mother, we have breasts; we bear children and usually are our family's caretaker (notwithstanding feminist revision). She also becomes competition when vying for "Dad's" attention. She ultimately is the "yardstick" against which we measure ourselves, whether in education, career, relationships or motherhood.
             Whether our relationship is strained or easy, hostile or amiable- we need her, if only to validate our femaleness and to guide our way. It is a need that never leaves in the best or the worst of mother-daughter relationships.
             The mother sets he tone for her daughters life, provides a road map and role model and continues to be and example, particularly her genetic and emotional example.
             But if mother and daughter have no connection, we cannot ask or talk to the one person whose psyche and body have "programmed" our own. That's why the loss is incalculable when a daughter has to figure it out for herself, trail blaze rather than learn from an example. Such a daughter has to discover herself, alone.
             What causes the lack of communication or the broken connection between the mother and daughter?
             Most of the conflict that June and her mother face are based upon misunderstandings and negligence concerning each other's feelings and beliefs. June lacks the ability to fully comprehend or know how her own mother because she is ignorant of her tragic and painful memories of the past. Suyuan lost her two daughters in China and her entire family was destroyed in the war. Suyuan decided to leave for America, leaving China behind and placing her future and the future in the promise of a new land. Suyuan hides her past and puts all her effort into turning her daughter into the daughter she could never be: pushing June to succeed in dance and academics and piano.
             Like Suyuan and June, in many ways mothers and daughters are alien, each foreign to the ot...