Chinese Cinderella
Annie Lee
Ms. Clarke
English 9 C Block
20 November 2015
Writing #3: Reader Response
Chinese Cinderella written by Adeline Yen Mah was especially a depressing novel for me because I was able to relate to her. While reading I was constantly putting myself in her position. I could feel how desperate and strong Wu Mei was. I knew that if I were her I would have fallen apart and gave up on everything, but she didn’t. Her strong will for education made her successful, which was one of the major themes along with family conflicts. When Third Brother asked her how she feels about doing well in school she said, “Being top of my class and skipping grades and all that. My friends probably think I’m some sort of freak, reading all the time. Not that it’ll get me anywhere” (180). She always read and studied, but it wasn’t because she wanted to, it was more of something that she had to do in order to be freed from worries and it was her only hope. However, this helped her to be accepted by the father and achieve what she wanted.
I enjoyed reading this book because I was able to connect to her as a person. Also everything happened in a quick pace so there wasn’t a moment to get bored. I personally think I’m similar to Third Brother, but at the same time I dislike him. I thought he was rather a coward, even though I understand his situations. When the brothers, including Third Brother gave her a urine with juice she said that “Why was I crying? Surely, I was injured by now to their malice. What was it that really bothered me?...Yes! It was the loss of the nicest parts of Third Brother that saddened me” (69). Since he was kind to her when they were alone it was more of loss to her. She felt she was losing him and she was hurt by that. He has betrayed her in order for him to survive, but I know that I would have done something similar to him too.
At first I thought this book would be an another typical story of a child struggling, but while reading I knew it was more than that. It had more message and meaning to the story. I learned that a lot of families in China are in similar situations as Wu Mei. With my prior knowledge I know that the families in China are big. When this is the case there is usually at least one child who would be treated unfairly. Since there are many children or readers in hard times the message is to tell the readers to not give up and there is always a way to be accepted if you try hard. This could be a common message, but since this is a true story and the author has experienced it herself it’s more convincing and realistic.
Jena Park
Ms. Clarke
English 9 _ Block
20 November 2015
Writing #3: Reader Response/ Personal Response
Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah was a very interesting book to read; and I really enjoyed every chapter of this book. Many other books I read before were very difficult, but this book was very simple and easy to understand because the book had less vocabulary words and was very closely related to the original Cinderella story which I have already read before. Also, this book had a lot of emotional events that made me feel the same way as the main character, Wu Mei(Adeline), has felt. However, some parts of the book required background knowledge of Chinese history. I agree that the historical parts of the book were important since I can help the readers understand the situations in the book better. However, I was confused in trying to understand the events that was related to Chinese & Japanese history through a little girl’s point of view.
One character whom I strongly wished I was next to is Niang, the main character’s stepmother. The strong feelings pushed towards her is especially when she was acting very negative towards Wu Mei. For an example in one part of the story there is a situation where Niang ear-dropped while the 5 siblings were planning to rebel against Niang and tell the father about how she mistreated them. This can relate to one of my friend’s stepmom who were acting a bit violent in front of me and my other friends and that was very disturbing to see. What surprised was that it wasn’t a big deal to get pushed or either punished; she messaged her stepmom the wrong time and she had to wait for about an hour or so to pick her up and that caused her to get violent but appallingly she was buying her own kid an ice-cream while she was keep punishing my friend. This can relate to Niang and the stepmom because Niang wasn’t nice to her step children but she favored her own children, this is very unfair to see someone getting mistreated just because they’re not from the same mom. Also the step mom can relate to Niang because as you can notice the stepmom was punishing my friend with no legitimate reason. While punishing a stepchild, she has no shame on favoring her child’s ice-cream.
If I were an English teacher, I would recommend this book to my student because this book was very emotional, easy to understand, and can relate to many of the characters and the events in the book. The characters in the story was very straightforward in expressing negative attitudes and feelings towards the main character. Overall this book helped me have better understanding of a girl without a mom or a family would feel like and this gave me a lesson to respect and appreciate that you have someone that loves and cares for you.