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    Waiting Between The Trees

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    sir_6301263
    This chapter provides backstory on Ying-Ying, the mother of Lena, by revisiting events from her perspective. As a young girl, Ying-Ying was rebellious and felt like a "tigress waiting to pounce." She had an unhappy first marriage where her husband abandoned her when she became pregnant, forcing her to have an abortion. She then lived in poverty with relatives for 10 years before meeting Clifford St. Clair, who she eventually married and had Lena with. Now older, Ying-Ying sees that Lena is miserable in her marriage, similar to Ying-Ying's first marriage, and wants to help her daughter avoid the same fate.

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    Waiting Between The Trees

    Uploaded by

    sir_6301263
    555 views2 pages
    This chapter provides backstory on Ying-Ying, the mother of Lena, by revisiting events from her perspective. As a young girl, Ying-Ying was rebellious and felt like a "tigress waiting to pounce." She had an unhappy first marriage where her husband abandoned her when she became pregnant, forcing her to have an abortion. She then lived in poverty with relatives for 10 years before meeting Clifford St. Clair, who she eventually married and had Lena with. Now older, Ying-Ying sees that Lena is miserable in her marriage, similar to Ying-Ying's first marriage, and wants to help her daughter avoid the same fate.

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    Waiting Between the Trees

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    This chapter provides backstory on Ying-Ying, the mother of Lena, by revisiting events from her perspective. As a young girl, Ying-Ying was rebellious and felt like a "tigress waiting to pounce." She had an unhappy first marriage where her husband abandoned her when she became pregnant, forcing her to have an abortion. She then lived in poverty with relatives for 10 years before meeting Clifford St. Clair, who she eventually married and had Lena with. Now older, Ying-Ying sees that Lena is miserable in her marriage, similar to Ying-Ying's first marriage, and wants to help her daughter avoid the same fate.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    555 views2 pages

    Waiting Between The Trees

    Uploaded by

    sir_6301263
    This chapter provides backstory on Ying-Ying, the mother of Lena, by revisiting events from her perspective. As a young girl, Ying-Ying was rebellious and felt like a "tigress waiting to pounce." She had an unhappy first marriage where her husband abandoned her when she became pregnant, forcing her to have an abortion. She then lived in poverty with relatives for 10 years before meeting Clifford St. Clair, who she eventually married and had Lena with. Now older, Ying-Ying sees that Lena is miserable in her marriage, similar to Ying-Ying's first marriage, and wants to help her daughter avoid the same fate.

    Copyright:

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    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
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    About the author Amy Tan is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships and what it means

    to grow up as a first generation Asian American. In 1993, Tan's adaptation of her most popular fiction work, The Joy Luck Club, became a commercially successful film. She has written several other books, including The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, and The Bonesetter's Daughter, and a collection of non-fiction essays entitled The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings. Her most recent book, Saving Fish From Drowning, explores the tribulations experienced by a group of people who disappear while on an art expedition into the jungles of Burma. In addition, Tan has written two children's books: The Moon Lady (1992) and Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat (1994), which was turned into an animated series airing on PBS. She has also appeared on PBS in a short spot on encouraging children to write. Currently, she is the literary editor for West, Los Angeles Times' Sunday magazine. Notes The title of the chapter, Waiting Between the Trees, refers to Ying-ying as a youth, as well as Ying-ying today. As a youth, she described her self as a fiery tigress waiting to pounce on something she desired. When the drunk, lecherous man at the wedding flirts with her, Ying-ying, feeling ready to pounce, falls for his charms. She soon marries the man and experiences great misery when he abandons her. Now as an old woman, Ying-ying feels she is again waiting between the trees. This time she wants to pounce on an opportunity to provoke some positive action in her daughter. She cannot bear to see Lena living in such misery.

    Clifford St. Clair- husband of Ying-Ying, father of Lena Waiting Between the Trees Summary This chapter revisits many of the same events told in Rice Husband, but from a different perspective. Ying-ying the mother tells this story; Lena, the daughter, told the Rice Husband tale. Amy Tan uses this technique of varied points of view throughout the book. It helps to unify the whole novel. It also emphasizes the lack of communication between the Chinese mothers and their Americanized daughters. Since the daughters never seem to know the whole story, they are forced to live in a world of appearances, since the reality has been hidden from them. When Ying-ying visits Lena and Harold in their new home, she judges it to be overpriced and poorly built. Though Yingying is put in a fashionable guest bedroom, she is upset because the room is small; the Chinese custom is to give the guest the best room in the house. Ying-ying is also upset because she thinks the house is about to fall apart. She is entirely unimpressed by the modern conveniences and architectural wonders that her son-in-law likes so much. During her visit, Ying-ying sees quite clearly that her daughter is unhappy in her marriage. She also realizes that Harold is too busy and self-centered to notice Lenas misery. Ying-ying knows that her daughter is suffering a fate that she suffered many years, for she also had a miserable marriage. She admits to the reader that she was a rebellious girl from a wealthy family. She compares her youthful self to a tigress -- full of fire and heat; she was waiting between the trees to pounce on something she liked. As a young girl of sixteen, Ying-ying attended the wedding of her aunt and met the man who was soon to become her husband. He was drunk, and in his drunkenness, he tried to attract Ying-ying by plunging a knife into a watermelon. The crude act was suggestive of the piercing of a young girls virginity. When the man wooed her with words of love and flattery, the young Ying-ying fell for his charms completely. Shortly afterwards, Yingying married him. When her husband learned she was to have a baby, he left her for another woman. Ying-ying was devastated. She felt she had no choice but to have an

    Relationship Between Characters: Ying-Ying- mother of Lena, married Clifford St. Clair Lena- daughter of Ying-Ying and Clifford St. Clair, wife of Harold Livotny

    abortion. She then went to Shanghai to live with her cousins and spent ten years in poverty. She finally left the squalor of her cousins, moved to the city, and worked as a shop assistant, trying to erase her past. While working in Shanghai, she met an American, Clifford St. Clair. He courted her for many years, but Ying- ying would not marry him. Then when she heard that her first husband was dead, she consented to Cliffords proposal and moved to America with him. She soon gave birth to Lena. Just as Harold is blind to Lena, she is blind to her mother. Completely unaware of her mothers past, Lena does not know about the wealth, the first marriage, or the abortion; instead, she knows only that her father rescued her mother from an unhappy life. Lena also does not know that for many years her mother did not even love her father, for she did not have the emotional strength to care for a man.

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