Chapter Sixteen: Jing-Mei Woo - A Pair of Tickets; epiphany

The final chapter of the book is of Jing-Mei, June's, trip to China to meet her sisters. Before June departs for Shanghai, she asks Lindo Jong to inform ber sisters of their mother's death. In China, her father tells her the story of why her mom left. June is hesitant to meet her sisters because she doesnt know all the details of the story and feels as if she does not know her mother as well as her sisters. June has an epiphany, "And when she said this, I saw myself transforming like a werewolf, a mutant tag of DNA suddenly triggered, replicating itself insidiously into a syndrome, a cluster of telltale Chinese behaviors..."(267). June sees how her mother was right all along about how it is in her blood. She is Chinese and needs to act like it now. After finally meeting her sisters, she does not see much of their mother in them, but the girls are familiar.

Chapter Eleven: Rose Hsu Jordan - Without Wood; balanced sentence

This chapter is about divorce. Rose is divorcing her husband, Ted. Well actually he is divorcing her. One morning Rose goes out to the mailbox to find the divorce papers and a ten thousand dollar check from Ted. Rose takes sleeping pills and sleeps for three days. She is grief stricken and does not know what to do with her life. This divorce caught her off guard. Her mother reaches out to her to offer her advice. Her mother says, "I am not telling you to save your marriage...I only say you should speak up"(193). That sentenced is a balanced sentence because the words contrast the emphasis of the sentence. Rose takes her mother's advice and applies it to the situtaion. Ted tells her she needs to move out because he is moving in with another woman, but she stands up to him. The house is hers and she is staying there. This chapter reinforces the saying that mother's know best. Rose's mother is older, wiser, and more experience, so she has insight Rose cannot see. 

Chapter Ten: Waverly Jong - Four Directions; deductive reasoning

Have you ever had exciting information to share, but your afraid of the persons reaction because the last tie you told them something it did not go so well? Well, that is how the news of Waverly's engagement is for her. She takes her mom to lunch in hopes of telling her, but because of deductive reasoning she chickens out. Waverly's last marriage ended because of her mother and she does not want her mom to freak out about this one. Waverly says, "My mother knows how to hit a nerve. And the pain I feel is worse than any other kind of misery" (170). Waverly was very happy and she did not want to feel that pain. Waverly takes her mom to her apartment in hopes of her mother picking up on the fact she is engaged, but her mother says nothing. Waverly invites her fiancee, Rich, to dinner with her mother and her so they can tell her mother. Waverly was not sure how Rich would react because she felt she knew how her mother would react. After all of this, Waverly's mother knows that they are engaged and is happy for them.

Chapter Nine: Lena St. Clair - Rice Husband; parable

Rice Husband is about Lena's husband, Harold. Lena's mother, Ying-ying, is coming over for a visit to see their home. Lena begins the chapter with saying that her mother can predict evil events to occur. This reminds Lena of when she was little and her mother told her that if she did not eat her rice her husband would have 'pock-marks' for every grain she did not eat. After hearing this, Lena made sure to eat every grain of rice until she remembered her neighbor, Arnold. Lena quit eating hoping that would help her to not have to be married to Arnold. This later resulted in her anorexia. When Ying-ying came to the house, she broke a vase on a table. Lena says, "...I start to pick up the broken glass shards. 'I knew it would happen.' and her mother says, 'Then why you don't stop it?'" (165). This quote literally explains Lena's relationship with her husband. She never stopped him, and she let him do what he wanted. Lena needs to stop bad things, the vase and her husband, before they become too big to stop or break. 

Chapter Eight: Jing-Mei Woo - Two Kinds; hubris

Jing-Mei, June, had a childhood filled with pain and suffering. She felt she was not good enough for her mother, and that she never lived up to her mother's expectations. Her mother wants June to be a prodigy, so she enrolls her in piano lessons. Not long into the lessons, June realizes Mr. Chong, her teacher, is deaf. This is an advantage to June because she does not have to try very hard. She can get away with not practicing, messing up, and playing the wrong note. The recital comes and June feels she is ready for her performance, but it is awful. Her mother is very disappointed and angry with June, but June is happy. She feels there is a hubris with her mother because in June's mind, she won.  After her piano career is over June says, "The lessons stopped. The lid to the piano was closed, shutting out the dust, my misery, and her dreams" (143). June wants to be her own person, and her mother wants her to be someone entirely different. That causes a rift in their relationship. 

Chapter Seven: Rose Hsu Jordan - Half and Half; flashback

Rose Hsu Jordan is the daughter of An-Mei Hsu, and she does not know how to tell her mother of her divorce. She is at her moms house trying to think of the best way to break the news when she remembers the bible under the kitchen table. Her mother used to carry the bible with her everywhere she went and had great faith. Rose flashbacks to the day her mother lost her faith. The entire family went to the beach so her father could fish and Rose was in charge of watching her younger brothers. Bing was on a ledge by the water, fell in, and was never seen again. Rose and An-Mei searched for the body endlessly for Bing, but they could not find him. After that incident, Rose began to question whether it was faith or lack of faith for that particular scenario. She says, "And later, I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just and illusion that somehow you're in control.  I found out the most I could have was hope, and with that I was not denying any possibility, good or bad.  I was just saying, if there is a choice, dear God or whatever you are, here's where the odds should be placed"(121). She never saw her brother again, but she had to grow up and move forward. 

Chapter Six: Lena St. Clair - The Voice from the Wall; motif

Lena St. Clair is the narrator in this chapter. She explains how her mother would tell her awful stories she encountered that scarred her for life. Lena's father saved Ying-ying, Lena's mother, from the horrible life she had in China. Lena says, "My mother never talked about her life in China, but my father said he saved her from a terrible life there, some tragedy she could not speak about" (104). The motif in this book is the idea that nobody likes to share their past lives in China. What is in the past, stays in the past. They do not discuss what happened before they came to the United States. Lena's father and mother could not communicate very well because Ying-ying knew only Mandarin and Clifford knew only English. Lena acted as the translator for her parents, but she often times could not understand what her mother was saying. After Lena's mother finds out she is pregnant, she arranges the furniture in the apartment saying it is 'unbalanced'. It seems as if Ying-ying did not want the child and bumps into furniture like there is no child in her stomach. After the baby is born, then dies, Lena moves her bed against the wall. She hears strange noises coming from the other side of the wall. She thought the girl was being beaten, but she never saw bruises on her when Lena saw her. The chapter is finished with the young girl and her mother laughing and crying on the other side of the wall.