The Color of Silence by Liane Shaw

Seventeen year old Alexandra Taylor is in a courtroom to be sentenced for joyriding. Eleven months, sixteen days, and thirteen hours after Alex and her best friend were involved in a tragic car accident that cost the life of her best friend, Calliope Prescott. She is sentenced to two hundred hours of community service and one full year of probation. The conditions of her probation are to continue regular participation in school, observing a nightly curfew of ten o'clock.

Alternating between flashbacks of her life before the accident and her current situation, Alex remembers the events that led to her being in the courtroom. Cali is determined to go to a party but Alex doesn't really want to go. Alex decides to attend even though she'd rather stay home and practice for the recital two days after the party. The party is held at Cory Bellevue's home - a mansion in Greystone Estates. Cali wants to go because of her crush on Matt Wainfield. The two make arrangements to attend and to be picked up by Alex's dad afterwards. At first Alex feels uncomfortable but settles in when she meets Mandy from her vocal class. However, Alex and Cali's lives change forever when Cali takes the keys to Matt's car to do a coffee run.

Her life post-accident finds Alex being taught at home for some of her subjects as she is too distressed to return to school. She remains distracted and unfocused as Ms. Smithson reminds her to keep up with her work in math. Nelle Parkins, Alex's probation officer tells her she has secured a community service project for her at the local hospital where she will visit a young girl the same age as Alex who has serious physical challenges. She lives in the hospital and Alex will be a companion to her, reading, talking or doing whatever staff feels is necessary - something Alex is not happy about.

That girl is seventeen year old Joanie Watson who cannot move on her own and cannot talk. She needs to be fed via a tube that enters her stomach. The only thing Joanie can control is her eyes.  When she was a baby, Joanie was left at a children's hospital by her mother who was wearing a necklace of beautiful polished stones. She left the necklace for Joanie as a keepsake. Joanie lived in another special hospital for a time and then lived in two different group homes, although some of that time involved hospitalization. At the second group home everyone was kind to Joanie and it became home for her. However, Joanie couldn't stay in the group home though once her lungs began to deteriorate.

Above Joanie's hospital bed hangs her mother's necklace of coloured stones which she uses to remind of her things that have happened in the past. Each stone draws her into a memory of her past. Joanie's favourite nurse is Patrick, who has sparkling eyes and who makes her laugh. Patrick tells Joanie that she is going to have a new visitor, a girl the same age. Joanie is thrilled and hopes that this girl will be someone who truly sees her.

Alex learns that Joanie has a neuromuscular disorder that prevents her from being able to control her body and that she cannot talk. One of the nurses, Kathleen, encourages Alex to talk to Joanie as they believe she is able to understand. At their first meeting, Joanie quickly recognizes from Alex's eyes that "she has her windows closed so that no one can see inside."  She wonders why Alex has so few words. Alex is unhappy with her placement because she must go to the hospital and do the one thing she doesn't want to do - talk. Alex's father tells her that she cannot continue her silence forever, that eventually she will have to talk to people.

Because she doesn't want to speak, Alex decides to bring a CD of Broadway tunes. However the music causes Alex to flashback to just before the party when Cali did her makeup. It is a painful memory. For Joanie, the music makes her feel connected to Alex. The next day Alex returns with a jazz CD. Joanie feels that Alex is using the music to block out the world. But how long can Alex continue to block out that fateful day of the party? How long can she continue to live in the past and ignore the present?

Discussion

The Color of Silence is a deeply moving story about a young girl's journey from guilt to acceptance and healing as she helps an unexpected friend achieve her dream of communicating with those around her.

Shaw uses Alex and Joanie, both of whom are stuck in the past, as narrators in The Color of Silence. Their relationship is set against the tragedy of the accident that claimed Alex's best friend's life. Eleven months after the accident, Alex is still struggling to cope with what happened, blaming herself for not taking care of Cali. Alex spends her days thinking about her life with Cali before the accident. It is through her memories that the events leading up to the accident are revealed. She lives in the past, yet is unable to confront it.

Joanie who is confined to hospital as her health deteriorates is also focused on the past. At one time she attended school and lived in a group home. Unable to communicate with the outside world, Joanie's world now consists of the interactions she has with hospital staff, especially Patrick and she also has a vibrant inner life. Joanie looks at the stone necklace which she calls her "rainbow' because of its coloured stones and uses each stone to draw out a memory of events in the past. As a friendship blossoms between the two girls, they both help the other to live in the present.

Although Alex has been assigned to the hospital to help Joanie, it is Joanie who helps to break Alex out of her grief and move her towards forgiveness, acceptance and healing. Joanie pulls Alex out of her self-absorption and makes her think about what Joanie's life is really like. This leads Alex to gradually begin engaging with Joanie  and after her first session, learning to use the eye gaze technology, Alex finds herself not thinking about Cali but of Joanie who is a real part of her present. Likewise once Alex decides to be present to Joanie and realizes that Joanie will have a much better chance of succeeding to learn the eye gaze technology with her help, she draws Joanie away from her necklace and into her present reality.

Since Joanie is severely disabled, Shaw uses her character and situation to explore how people view the disabled. Joanie remembers watching the movie version of The Wizard of  Oz and how the scarecrow was viewed differently by people because of his "raggedy outsides".  Joanie feels that people view her in the same way. "My raggedy outsides hide my brain as well. Even though some people treat me like I can think and feel, no one really understands how much of me there really is. Maybe someday I'll find my own wizard who will show the world that I have a fully operating brain that was really inside of me all along..."   (the latter a foreshadowing of Joanie's learning of the Eye Gaze technology).

When Joanie is taken to the Children's Museum, one of the volunteers places her in front of a mirror but Joanie doesn't like this because the mirror only shows her reflection, the outside of her.  Instead she wishes "there was a magic mirror that could show him who I really am... because the outside of me really doesn't look like the inside of me at all." Patrick tells Joanie that she is the strongest person he knows, the complete opposite of what most people tell her. "Mostly I hear words like 'frail,' 'weak,' and 'fragile' when I hear other people talking about me."

As Joanie begins to learn how to use the Eye Gaze which she calls her Wizard, she begins to wonder how learning to communicate with others will change their view of her and how having this ability will change her. "What would people think of me, I wonder, if they knew how I was on the inside. Would I seem like the same person to them, or would I become someone different? How would people treat me if I could tell them what I want? Would I become a whole person to them?"
"Will I stay the same person if I can use outside words?...When i woke up yesterday morning, I was Joanie. Silent and filled up with thoughts and dreams that no one but me was every going to know. When I woke up this morning, I was someone who can tell Shawna and Alexandra that the square has a name, and that the name is Blue."

Shaw also demonstrates through the character of Joanie, how the disabled are capable of having a rich interior life, unknown to the rest of us. When Joanie is beginning to learn to communicate she notes that Patrick remarks that she now has words. But Joanie has had words for a long time, they have just been inside her. "Patrick would be surprised to know that I have my very own stories and hopes and thoughts and ideas and feelings."

A major theme throughout the novel involves the use of words and silence. Alex won't talk because of the trauma she experienced during the accident. Juxtaposed with her situation is that of Joanie who cannot talk even if she wanted to, because of her disorder.  Yet both girls help each other to find a way to speak. When Cali is driving and loses control of the car she screams at Alex "I don't know what to do! I can't control it! Tell me what to do!"  However Alex can't remember what to do and in her panic, "My thoughts are all scrambling around in a total panic and I can't find any words that will help her." Alex blames her silence for Cali's death.  The silence after the crash leads Alex to remark,  "They say that silence is golden. I know that isn't true. The real color of silence is black."

After the accident Alex told the police what happened but the words came out mixed up. Eventually she stopped answering the police questions because all anyone wanted to know was who was driving, who owned the car and where they were going. There was little concern for her or for what happened to Cali. Three months after the accident Alex was taken to a speech pathologist who suggested she needed help to talk about what happened. But as far as Alex is concerned, "I don't have anything to say. My words are useless." because Cali is dead and nothing she says now will bring her back.

However when Alex begins visiting Joanie in the hospital as part of her community service she recognizes how precarious Joanie's life is without the ability to speak.  "She can't tell anyone if she starts to panic. She can't say what she wants them to do or not to do --what she feels or doesn't feel. If she's hungry or tired or happy or sad or lonely."  After her outburst to her father when Alex explains that she's to blame for Cali's death because she didn't make the right choices, Alex knows her words have hurt her father. She also begins to realize that she's hurting Joanie because she's not giving her the best she has to offer by being silent to a girl who wants more than anything to communicate with the outside world. Researching the eye gaze technology leads her to realize, "What is wrong with me? Going in to see Joanie and basically refusing to talk, when all she wants in the world is to be able to do the one thing that I've decided to stop?"

Meanwhile Joanie cannot vocalize but she uses words all the time. "I actually use words very well. I have listened to stories and movies and plays and people talking around me and to me for seventeen years. I am so full of words and thoughts and images that if I ever could figure out a way to let them loose, they would come swirling out of me in a torrent of syllables... I would fill every room with the colors of my dreams until the whole world became a rainbow of my making." For Joanie, the color of silence is the rainbow in contrast to Alex, who believes the color silence is black.

Joanie eventually leads Alex towards healing and recovery as she learns to communicate. She shares herself and her most intimate part - her rainbow necklace - with Alex. Alex knows this is what friends do and she begins to recognize that Joanie is her friend. Still Alex struggles to find the courage to tell Joanie why she comes to visit her and what happened to her. Alex wants to be a real friend to Joanie and that means sharing something of herself, in her case, the truth about why she has been coming to see Joanie. Talking to Joanie when she's very ill allows Alex to open up and prepares her for the long overdue conversation she eventually has with her father.

Although the novel has a sad ending, Shaw shows Alex is on the road to healing by accepting what she cannot change - her actions in the past. Alex grieves her choices and actions but knows Cali would want her to stop feeling sorry for herself and get on with her life. And it is Joanie who helps Alex on to that road of healing.

The Color of Silence touches on many themes: forgiveness, healing, death, life, and the meaning of friendship making it this a truly touching novel.

Book Details:

The Color of Silence by Liane Shaw
Toronto: Second Story Press     2013
264 pp.

Bitter Melon by Cara Chow

Frances "Fei Ting" Ching lives with her mother Gracie, in a small, one bedroom apartment in San Francisco.

After choosing the pens and notebooks Frances will use for school, her mother makes them stop at the Clement Street bank were most of the tellers are Chinese. There France's mom's favourite teller, Minnie is put forth as someone Frances should aspire to be like: she is modest,  has perfect Cantonese and is a student who is working.

In the bank vault, Frances is shocked to see that her mother has a large selection of Chinese jewelry. She shows Frances two bracelets she wore when she was a baby to remind her of her heritage. There is also a jade bracelet that Frances wore on her right wrist when she was six. But whenever the bracelet came against another surface it made a knocking sound, that angered her mother. Frances was told to be careful because if she broke it her mother would make her eat it. And so in school, afraid that her teacher would tell her mother if the bracelet was damaged, Frances began writing with her left hand. The bracelet brings back painful memories as Frances remembers her mother hitting her for using her left hand, and painfully working the bracelet off without concern for Frances.

However, Frances's mother shows her many other pieces of jewelry. She opens more velvet pouches, "...revealing saltwater and freshwater pearl necklaces, more twenty-four-karat gold necklaces and bracelets, gold and jade pendants, and two giant gold bangles with the double happiness character  and the dragon and pheonix, the symbols of marriage." Gracie tells Frances that she is not some haggard woman but that if her father Gong Gong hadn't left her mother (Popo) and Frances's rich father hadn't abandoned them they would be very wealthy. It is this injustice that has made her bitter. She is determined to change their lives by working hard and she makes it clear that Frances too must sacrifice , work hard and improve her grades.

Frances took the SAT last year and obtained a mark of 1050 while Theresa got 1350. This puts her at a disadvantage applying to universities. Frances's mother tells her she must ace physics and calculus, pass the AP physics and calculus exams and get a score of 1200 on the SAT! She tells Francies that she knows that life is fragile and so they must help each other to survive. Her plan is for Frances to attend Berkely, to get straight A's so she can attend medical school, become a doctor, make lots of money, buy them a nice house and quit her job and maybe even cure her. To achieve this she tells Frances, "No distractions. No sports or other after-school activities. No socializing or running around with boys." Gracie insists that this will be their "pact".

Frances attends St. Elizabeth's, a private, elite Catholic school along with Theresa Fong. On the first day of school, Frances and Theresa are in what Frances believes is their fourth period calculus class, although she's puzzled as to why Theresa is in the class. The teacher is a savvy young woman named Ms. Taylor. As each student states their goals for the year, Frances states that she wants to attend UC Berkeley and get into medicine but Theresa says that she doesn't really know. Ms. Taylor finds this to be very courageous, telling Theresa that this is normal, "You're at a time in your lives of figuring out who you are. 'I don't know' is a good place to start. Theresa here demonstrated honesty and courage in her response." 

However, Frances soon realizes that she is not in calculus but in speech class. Ms. Taylor makes Frances feel excited and special, something Frances cannot envision happening in calculus class. When she checks her schedule, Frances discovers that she has not been enrolled in calculus but in speech instead. The idea that language is powerful and that it can define a person and be used to persuade and influence is very appealing to Frances. 

Frances and Theresa haven't really gotten along well over the years. The two girls are very different. Theresa has a "willowy frame" while Frances is "heavyset". Theresa has thick, long, black hair while Frances's hair is brown black and thin. Frances is tall at five foot four, but Theresa is petite. Frances has good social skills but Theresa is very smart. Their mothers hold up the other as an example of success which has served to alienate the two girls. However after their first speech class, Theresa helps Frances clean her skirt and Frances makes Theresa feel better about her response to Ms. Taylor's question.

At lunch the two girls reconnect and Frances reveals that she didn't sign up for speech but was put in the class by mistake. When Frances states that she will have to go to Ms. Costello and get placed back into caclulus, Theresa makes the offhand suggestion that she could stay in speech and not tell her mother. However, Theresa encourages Frances to go fill out an appointment slip for Ms. Costello which she does but then doesn't hand in. 

Although she intends to correct the scheduling mistake, Frances cannot quite make herself do this. She loves speech, it is empowering and she seems to have an aptitude for it. As the deadline for course changes passes, Frances realizes she has in fact, made the decision to stay in the class. Frances knows that her mother will be furious and never accept her having taken speech over calculus, so she enlists best friend Theresa to help her keep speech class a secret from her mother.

Ms. Taylor encourages both Theresa and Frances to join the speech team, which means they will have to compete in speech tournaments. Around the same time, Frances begins attending a Princeton Review class in preparation for the SAT. The course is held at the prestigious and expensive St. Augustine's, a co-ed Catholic high school. The first few classes Frances sits next to a blonde boy named Collins. Back at St. Elizabeth's, Ms. Taylor tells Frances that her oratory speech is "one of the most beautiful speeches I've ever read." She has Frances sign up for the speech team but their practices are after school, conflicting with the Princeton Review class. Reluctantly, Frances agrees.

Theresa encourages Frances to compete and offers to help Frances study for the SAT by teaching her since she finds the SAT easy. On the drive home from practice with Ms. Taylor she questions Frances about her future plans, about doing volunteer work at a hospital or doctor's office and suggests that she apply to all the UC colleges. She tells Frances that going away from home is a chance to discover who she is and that her mother supported and encouraged her in this. She attended Scripps where she found a smaller community of friends who supported her. Frances finds this shocking. But after an earthquake strikes San Francisco as Ms. Taylor is driving her home, Frances decides that the speech competition will be her last. 

However, the one morning when her mother criticizes her attempt to clean their apartment of the broken dishes, Frances realizes that her mother is lying and using words to manipulate her. She comes to a decision. "I envision myself at a fork in the road. One prong leads to Berkeley, then med school, then residency, then working and living with my mother for the rest of my life. The other road leads to speech, the Scripps, then...I can't see the rest. I can only see my arms spreading, like wings taking flight." Frances decides that regardless of the cost, she must follow through with her plans to do speech. She hopes that through the power of language she can reclaim her life and her future. But little does Frances know, she will need all the determination and courage she can muster to outwit her controlling mother. 

Discussion

Cara Chow has written a poignant novel about a young girl's struggle to live her life on her own terms and to be true to herself. Bitter Melon is one of numerous books written about Asian teens struggling to cope with manipulative mothers. In light of the recent publication of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, it seems to be an attempt by Asian women to confront the problem of mothers (and fathers) who push their children to the absolute limit using almost any means possible to attain academic success and ultimately, status.

 

High school senior, Frances Fei Ting Ching lives with her mother Gracie Ching. Gracie and her mother were abandoned by her father and after moving to America, Gracie was also abandoned by her husband. Because of these abandonments, Gracie has become a bitter woman. Every hardship that comes into her life feeds this bitterness so that it is now making her ill. She suffers from acute stomach pain that leaves her doubled over. Frances notes how the pain from her bitterness has affected her mother physically. "Her back looks twisted and hunched over, as if chewed up and spat out by the hardness of life."

While showing Frances the beautiful jewelry in the safety deposit box, Gracie tells her that they would be very rich if not for being abandoned. Her bitterness oozes out like a poison, " 'I deserve better because I work hard and I am good,' Mom says. 'You deserve better because you are my daughter. I hate God for abandoning us, for letting life be so unfair. They all make me sick, sick!' "  Frances astutely observes, "...all the bad people in our family making her sick, the injustice eating away at the lining of her stomach so that no drug can cure her."   Gracie views every single difficulty in life through a lens poisoned with bitterness. Seeing cracks in the walls of their apartment after the earthquake Gracie doesn't count their blessings of still having a home but states "Its a mockery of my efforts. That's how cruel nature can be." 

Gracie has a plan that will ensure Frances will never leave her. It involves lies, manipulation and emotional blackmail and it involves words. It is this motive that guides Gracie Ching's every action concerning her daughter and has been going on for years. Frances remembers her mother's words at the zoo when she was twelve:  "They nurse their young for only a year or two...the babies grow up and the mothers abandon them, and that's that. But a human mother never turns her back on her baby. The baby eats up her mother's food and money for the next twenty years. But even then, their relationship doesn't die. Then mother and child switch roles, and the child cares for her mother." 

Against this backdrop a situation develops at school that will change Frances's life forever: Frances is mistakenly enrolled in speech instead of calculus.In speech class she is exposed to another adult, Ms. Taylor, who explains the power of words. Ms. Taylor's tells the class,  "Language gives us the ability not only to talk about the present but to reflect on the past and to plan for the future... Because of human language and human imagination, we can create and recreate our identities and our cultures. Language is power...We as women have the power to define ourselves and persuade others to change the ideas of our society and to pass that down for generations to come. "   

This idea invigorates Frances and with the help of her friend Theresa, she stays in the class. It takes some time but eventually Frances comes to realize that her mother is using language to manipulate her preception of herself and her reality. The words France's mother uses to describe her are never uplifting but are designed to put her down and control her perception of herself, make her smaller, and bitter: lazy, stupid, thoughtless, fat, disgusting, pathetic. Once Frances comes to this realization, she decides to fight back to gain her freedom from her mother. What follows is a battle of wills.

In Ms. Taylor, Frances finds a mentor and more importantly a counter to her mother. The words Ms. Taylor uses, although they may be the same as what Frances's mother use, have different meaning. For example when Ms. Taylor asks Frances why she hasn't signed up for the speech team, Frances thinks, "Usually, questions asked by adults are accusations disguised as questions, such as 'Why are you so lazy and forgetful?' " But she realizes that Ms. Taylor really does want to know. There is no hidden agenda or accusation, lies or manipulation. And when Ms. Taylor tells Frances it would be "a waste of talent" she focuses on the word waste. "I tense up at the word waste. When my mom uses it, it means I've done something bad and I'd better do things the opposite way."   Ms. Taylor is the exact opposite of Frances's mother, she is acting in Frances's best interests helping Frances to consider her options and think for herself and about what she wants for herself. She acts as a "corrective lens" though which Frances can view herself and her world. Frances's mother begins to understand the effect that Ms. Taylor is having on her daughter, and that she might be a real danger to her plans for Frances. Gracie attempts to manipulate Frances perception of Ms. Taylor by telling her Ms. Taylor is misleading and using her.

Through Ms Taylor, Frances is introduced to some ideas that she has not been previously exposed to. For example, the idea of unconditional love is brand new to her. Just before their participation in the Chinese American Association speech contest, Ms. Taylor tells her and Theresa that their mothers will love them regardless of how they place. "That's the first time I've ever heard the idea of unconditional love outside the context of religion....the idea that real live parents could be unconditionally loving is completely foreign. Often Mom and other Chinese parents say 'dai sek'. 'Dai sek describes children who are polite or affectionate, who excel in school, who serve their parents before themselves at banquets, or who send money back home. How can anyone be loved not for what they do but for who they are? Isn't who you are defined by what you do?"

Of course, this is not Frances's experience of love at all. It seems she is only loved if she achieves, and more importantly, if she achieves what her mother considers important. The other person who helps her understand this is Derek Collins, a fellow speech competitor. Despite being humiliated by her mother in front of Derek, he still wants to date her. Like Frances, he too is experiencing the weight of parental expectations, so he understands some of Frances's situation. 

Frances's battle to gain control of her future is reflected in the evolution of her speech throughout her senior year. Initially her speech upholds her mother, focusing on the sacrifices she has made and Frances's determination to attain what are really her mother's goals for her. "My mother's persevance and hart work are an example to me....After I graduate from high school, I hope to attend UC Berkeley...Afterwards, I plan to attend medical school and become a doctor...My medical knowledge will improve her health...My future income will support her, so that she won't have to work and suffer any more...I remember that my hardship can't be half as hard as my mother's and that some day...when my hard work pays off so will hers..."

As Frances begins to change her plans, she makes minor edits to her speech. After applying to Scripps, the speech is edited to "My mother's perseverance and hard work are an example to me...After I graduate from high school, I hope to attend a top university..."  However, after discovering her Scripps acceptance and scholarships in the kitchen garbage and sending in her acceptance, Frances begins to realize that her speech no longer reflects her reality. "A wave of nausea passes through me. After everything I've been through with my mother, none of this rings true to me anymore. To speak it, to argue it, to win with it would be a lie."  And so Frances rewrites her speech to reflect what she now understands. She begins by stating how speech has helped her. "Then I started to speak. I saw the effect I had on people who listened. Over time, I also saw the effect my mother had on me when she spoke. The former made me feel bigger, whereas the latter made me feel smaller.I realized then that Ms Taylor was right, that words are more powerful than things precisely because they are abstract. Words are invisible wings, medicine for the soul. They can also be an invisible sword, spiritual mustard gas.They can also be used as a cloaking device.In fairy stories witches use words to cast spells. I saw that this wasn't just make-believe. It was happening in the real world every day."  The analogies are very accurate: What does mustard gas do? It blinds you. Frances's speech lays out the expectations for her life because of her mother's sacrifices. "But this sacrifice does not come for free. I am expected to get straight As, so I can get into UC Berkeley. I am expected to go on to medical school or journalism school. Afterwards, I am expected to embark on a successful career, so that my future income will support her and she won't  have to work and suffer anymore." She is now clearly aware that these are her mother's expectations and not hers. After explaining the Confucious values that her mother holds where children obey parents, Frances explains her dilemma. "On paper the Confucian way looks good...But it has one fatal flaw.It assumes that the authority figures are always just. What if that assumption is wrong? What if their judgements are wrong? What if their expectations are unrealistic or unfair? What if they are selfish or dishonest?" 

If this is the situation in a family then Frances states that the choice can be a difficult one.  'It's like choosing whether to cut off one's right hand or one's left hand. It is like having to decide whether to save your drowning mother, knowing that you may both drown, or swimming to shore alone, knowing that you can only save yourself. If that is your dilemma, which way is right? Which way would you choose?'  Frances doesn't win the state competition because, as Derek tells her, the judges were waiting for an answer. At this point, Frances, doesn't have the answer but she soon discovers it. Ultimately, Frances must confront her mother, in what turns out to be the novel's climax, as Gracie makes a last ditch and almost successful attempt to thwart Frances's plan to attend Scripps and move away from home. 

The title of the book, Bitter Melon originates from a part in the book where Frances and her mother are eating a bitter melon during dinner. Frances does not want to eat the melon but her mother tells her, "If you eat bitterness all the time, you will get use to it. Then you will like it."  Frances describes the melon whose bitterness "...no sweetness can dull" and that "...it lingers on the tongue, tainting everything else you eat." This is a metaphor for Gracie's words which are bitter and are never dulled by her "saccharine" smiles. The melon is eaten with the mouth and words also involve the mouth. Gracie is telling Frances, that like the melon, she will get used to her bitter words and even grow to like them. But like the bitter melon, Gracie's words linger long after, tainting everything in Frances's world.

Although this book might seem a little over the top in terms of some of the actions of Frances's mother, it is probably realistic in terms of what some children in certain cultures experience. However, it is not exclusive to Asian cultures. Parents from all backgrounds can place enormous pressures on their children to achieve in areas they may not be interested in or even have an aptitude for. One thinks of a child pushed to go into engineering or medicine with a limited ability in mathematics. However, the recent focus on Asian children and their parents suggests that young Asian writers have a message for their parents and all parents; allow children the freedom to choose their own path. Parents should focus on directing their young adults, not on controlling them or selecting their career.  

Book Details:
Bitter Melon by Cara Chow
New York: Egmont, USA    2011
309 pp.