Stories have always been a part of my life as a young girl discovering her place in the world. I went to a private school in San Francisco and every day in class my peers and I would gather around our second grade teacher, eyes gleaming with excitement to hear another Bible story. Stories such as how Moses, an ordinary man no different than the next, parted the Red Sea left me astounded. However, as I continued my education, I was no longer impressed by such stories due to hearing the recounted tales verbatim. My curious little mind craved something new and different to consume.
As a preadolescent, my teachers
created a "Reading Bingo" chart to make reading more interesting. I
absolutely hated the idea because I was forced to read an autobiography in
order to get four squares in a row. The task of reading about a real person’s
life story was not appealing to me in any way. I wanted to read about dragons
and wizards who had daring adventures in far away lands, anything but read
about a plain person’s life. After a failed attempt to convince my teacher to
let me skip a square on the bingo chart, I dreadfully dragged my feet to the
library. As I browsed the shelves of the autobiography section, my eyes halted
as I caught sight of the word Cinderella. I snatched the biography off
the shelf and realized it was actually entitled, Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah. "What a
weird title. Cinderella's not suppose to be Chinese!” I thought to myself. I
would soon discover that this was no fairytale. In her memoir, Adeline recounts
the tragic story of her childhood and her desperate attempts to gain the love
of her family. She is considered bad luck after her mother died giving birth to
her. This was the first piece of non-fiction that I have read and although I
expected to be bored to tears, my fingers clutched the pages of the memoir
until the very last sentence. I was completely enthralled by the honesty in
Adeline’s writing. Her writing was simple and she did not use advanced
vocabulary, making the book a fairly easy read. Her story as an unwanted
daughter who seeks the acceptance within her own family really resonated with
me like no story I have read before. The mental and physical abuse Adeline
endured by her wicked stepmother, and the neglect she experienced by her father
was beyond cruel. I was so entrapped in her world that I would intentionally
find a quiet area to be alone with this gripping book.
I had never been so fascinated
by a character such as Adeline. What stood out to me about Chinese Cinderella was how relatable Adeline was – I understood how
she yearned for love from her family and sought to excel in academics in order
to gain attention from her father. As a daughter of divorced parents and having
to live with grandparents to go to a better school district, I never had an
opportunity to connect with my parents beyond the age of eight. I hardly saw my
mother and the times that I did see my father, it was for homework help and
school logistics such as parent-teacher conferences or signing forms. In her
memoir, Adeline has a special relationship with her grandfather (Ye Ye) and
Aunt BaBa. They are the only two family members to support Adeline throughout the
mistreatment she experiences from her stepmother. I deeply sympathized with
Adeline and I felt her pain tugging at my heartstrings as I pored through the
pages. The advice that my teacher gave was extremely helpful as I read this memoir because I could visualize myself in Adeline's shoes. I felt the pain that she described on those pages and her story really came alive. Although a fifty-year-old woman wrote the words, the story still
reflects the pain of a lost child searching for a sense of belonging in her
world.
Chinese
Cinderella
opened my eyes to the wonders of reading and how authors can translate their
emotions into words that could penetrate our hearts as fiercely as a sword can.
Reading this autobiography gave me a greater appreciation for literature. It
has shaped my view of reading and writing in which I realized that it was no
longer was a trivial school obligation, but instead it was a powerful tool that
can be used to communicate messages to the world. No matter how helpless we may
feel at the moment, I have discovered that writing down our stories can act as
a source of therapy to help ease the pain. There is something magical about
transforming such intense emotions into words so that we do not bury our
feelings deep within us.
Since reading this memoir, I
have been inspired to read countless other autobiographies such as The Diary of Anne Frank and The Autobiography of Malcom X, and I
realize that these authors used the power of writing to reflect the harsh time
period they were living in. Realizing that these autobiographies contained more
sophisticated vocabulary, I became determined to search for their meaning in my
Merriam-Webster dictionary. As my lexicon developed, I could understand more
complex ideas than ever before and thus, my critical thinking skills began to
take root. This skill would prove to be essential as I proceeded through high
school and ultimately step foot on a college campus. As a college student, I do
not have as many opportunities to read for pleasure, but I definitely try to
find time for it as sweet escape from the routine of stressful classes and
midterms. Chinese Cinderella was just
the stepping-stone that instigated my literacy journey to discover wondrous
other genres of writing and ignited my passion for reading.
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