* How does your response to Nea develop over the course of the story? Is she a dynamic or static character? Explain.…
Her father was the nurturing parent. He played games with both children, spent time discussing books, nature, and helping with school projects. Annie’s mother was very conscious of social status and outward appearances presented in the community. Her mother was less than nurturing and insisted on perfection in the home’s appearance as well as both children’s academics, extracurricular activities, and behavior in general. When failure or shortcoming occurred, severe punishment was executed by Annie’s mother, in the form of corporal punishments and restrictions. Her mother was very authoritarian. Annie began searching for love by marrying quite young to escape her mother’s dominance. Her brother escaped through his music and even tried to run away several times.…
In “Saving Sourdi” the protagonist Nea impacts the story with her personality. She is a caring and straightforward person. Sometimes she seemed selfish because it seemed that she wanted her sister all to herself. As the story progresses it shows that Nea was just trying to make sure her sister was happy.…
“Once, when my older sister, Sourdi, and I were working alone in our family’s restaurant, just the two of us and the elderly cook, some men got drunk and I stabbed one of them. I was eleven” (Chai, 2001). The opening statement to, “Saving Sourdi” written by May-lee Chai, set the tone for the narrative. Nea, the narrator, clearly expresses her strong feelings of love and protectiveness for her older sister, Sourdi. She also gives the impression that she is young, immature, and confused about the world around her. There is also a bit of foreshadowing in the beginning of the story. It starts off in a predicament…
Love is a complex emotion. It has the ability to make you feel like you are flying, literally touching and seeing heaven. Yet it also has the ability to break your heart into a thousand pieces, hurt you in ways you never could have dreamed possible, make you feel all at once like you are living a nightmare and dying at the same time. Love can be wondrous when given freely and unconditionally, or it can be dangerous when wielded as a weapon. There is no love more multifaceted then that of a parent and child. The relationship between Vivi and Sidda personifies both ends of the love spectrum, oftentimes, to the extreme. Through Rebecca Wells’s “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” we are able to see Vivi’s beautiful, life giving love of Sidda, as well as the ease with which she brandishes her manipulation of the most painful aspects of love. Through Sidda we witness a child’s desperate need for approval, an unending desire to please and placate a mother who is both emotionally absent, and emotionally smothering, sometimes in the same breath. The “Divine Secrets” is a psychologically draining journey of a daughter’s quest to understanding the secrets to her mothers love.…
In the story, “Saving Sourdi”, Sourdi and Nea have always looked out for each other. Since their mother was a single mom in a new country, she couldn’t be there for them as much as she should have been at times. Both girls were brought to a new country at a young age and dreamed of a life in America that was better than what they had. Nea and Sourdi’s ma had a goal to give them a better life. Her motivation was her girls.…
The central idea in this story seems to be the mother’s search of an understanding of her daughter’s personality and outlook on life. The majority of the story is the mother trying to depict reasons for why her daughter is the way she is, so delicate, reserved, needless, and even unhappy at times. She seems to also defend her parenting choices by making excuses or blaming the urges of others in order to not have all the blame on her. She speaks about how she had no other option but to put her in the care of someone else at the age of two, even though she knew the teacher was “evil” (Pg. 925). “It was the only place there was…the only way I could hold a job” (pg. 925).…
Precious’ mother exhibit’s extremely authoritarian parenting style and some aspects of neglectful parenting. Her authoritarian parenting comes in the form of her need to always be in control and exerts that control on Precious. She always wants things to be done her way and does not give precious a chance to have a say in anything. She tells Precious she should not go to school but rather rely on welfare checks. She wants precious to cook for her whenever she wants. She does not show any warmth or affection for Precious or her two grandchildren. She is verbally and physically abusive. She is also neglectful because she is more concerned about her own wants and needs does not care about Precious.…
At the age of 3, when I was in the nursery, my mother had to leave me and my sister with our father alone to seek for an opportunity in Hong Kong. Our mother worked as a nanny in Hong Kong, having not much benefit for her such as only having one day off and most of the time, none at all and not even able to take a chance to go home and visit us. It was tough for me and my sister living without our mothers’ guidance, especially for my father who happens to have an affair with many women. When our mother found out that my father is having an affair with different women, she didn’t hesitate to take us away from him. Long story short, our mother filed a divorce against our father. Aunt Aileen, my mothers’ oldest sister had to take care of us after the divorce.…
The lasting impact of early life lessons is shown in this quote. This idea was an ever-present theme in the book, particularly from Aibileen’s side of the story. After raising and coming to love 19 babies, only one of which was her own, in her lifetime Aibileen has made non prejudice and equality a big point of childhood upbringing. Most of the maids, including Aibileen, find it hard to understand that they take care of and love on these children their entire childhood, but the children still end up treating the help as their lesser when they are grown ups.…
A mother is such a complex figure to think about. Mothers are expected to be loving, caring, sweet, but also firm and disciplinary. As seen around the world, mothers share different values and beliefs on raising their children. Many believe that the way a mother cares for her child molds the child into a certain adult. In ways, mothers have a power over their children that, as kids, are hard for our brains to grasp. In the article, The Estrangement, written by Jamaica Kincaid, thoughts on her mother are revealed and accessible to analyze. She shares her story about her mother/daughter relationship and throughout her story, The Estrangement, shows an underlining argument of the reality of the biased views children have towards their mothers.…
Immersing herself in the Murik culture of Papua New Guinea, the author—professor of Anthropology and Museum Studies at Central Washington University—focuses on the Murik ideology of mothering. She uses data from her fieldwork notes to demonstrate the concept, importance, and effect of “mothering” in Murik society. The author’s main objective is to show how people, sharing, and work are conveyed via interactions involving maternal figures and food. A “mother” in this culture is someone who gives food and holds power; the receiver of food is the “child”, indebted and weak. Feeding denotes guardianship; children are claimed…
In conclusion, living condition of Beti Women in Cameroun tend to be very critical on every side of childbearing through social and demographic aspects. Because educated Beti women aren’t disciplined than uneducated women which play an important role in the society. Toward Marie history, she found out she is pregnant and regret her own actions, however an educated, modern honorable mother will set a goal to have a good professional job, marry to an honest man that love her, so she can provide her children with good condition of living. As seem, Marie fell the expectation to be that honorable and justify mother and the future became an unbearable path to her progress in life. Education, sex and childbearing have a coalition toward women striving…
Bailey Martin English 101 1-5-09 Compare and Contrast A Sorrowful Woman by Gail Godwin and “Saving Sourdi” by May-Lee Chai are two stories about how family will always be there for you, no matter what. The central themes in both of these stories are similar, but the methods the authors use to portray them differ. May-Lee Chai was the first of her family to be born in the United States, so it wasn’t hard for her to relate while writing “Saving Sourdi”, which is about a struggling Asian family living in the south. Growing up, the two oldest sisters, Sourdi and Nea, were inseparable and always looked out for each other. But, once Sourdi turned old enough to, she married a man named Mr. Chhay and moved away from her home and family to start…
In the past, mother’s responsibility is take care their small children. But mothers go to work outside the home. Their children may be neglected, grow up to gangster, away from home and become to problems of society. The best person who should be taken care children is not nanny or teacher at school but they are mothers.…