Reading Log-Falling Leaves

Falling Leaves by Adeline Yen Mah

How does the text relate to the theme of a journey?

The novel is about the life of Chinese girl, Adeline Yen Mah, who was being disowned by her parents. The story composes on how she tried to attract her parents’ attention. Since her father remarried, she suffered lonely, abuse, loveless childhood, and hated not only by her stepmother, Jeanne Prosperi, who was called Niang in her family, and, through neglect, by her own father, and also by her elder brothers and sisters. To make matters worse, her siblings bullied, manipulated and exploited her right until the very end. Her childhood was a roller coaster of taunting, deliberately cruelty and character mutilation. Her only anchors of strength were her grandfather and her great Aunt Baba. Then the novel developed portray on her success in her education: from her medical studies in America to her three successive internships in different hospitals and different countries. Her journey through parenting was a hard one as her first marriage ended up as a failure.

What is the main issue in the text?

The primary issue is absolutely the family problem. Jealousy, betrayed and hatred occur throughout the story. In the story, Adeline and her other siblings were considered second class by Jeanne Prosperi (Niang) and Joseph Yen Mah (her father). Niang also felt jealous when Adeline achieved a good result in her education. When Adeline sought comfort from Aunt Baba, she forbade them both from being together. Therefore she always conspired against the first four children of Joseph and caused disruption. When Niang died, Adeline was curious on why Niang did not have left anything for her even though she helped a lot to fulfil her wishes. Lastly she realised that her own sister, Lydia betrayed her by sending many letters to Niang, which poisoned Niang with negative thought about her. This caused Niang excluded Adeline from her will.

What quality do you admire or dislike in a character?

For many reasons, I absolutely admire on the main character, Adeline. Although she was disowned by her own parent, she studied very hard in order to excel and ensured her family especially her parent to be proud of her achievements. She also was willingly to take care both of them before they passed away. This shows her loving and caring character. Even though Niang did a lot of bad things to her, she still cared about Niang till Niang died. I also look up on her patience. Her father and Niang took her to north of Tianjin in September 1948 to send her studying at St Joseph. Both her parents also instructed to the nuns that she was not allowed to receive visitors, phone calls and mail. She was pretending to be cool at that school by reading books in the library while watching her friends followed their family left the country to run away from communist.

How does the text develop your understanding of the world?

From the novel, I realize that life is not all beautiful. There are people out there who are cruel and heartless. Niang is a perfect example for it as described by Adeline. Niang had bullied Adeline and tarnished her image among family members with any available option. Niang, as a stepmother, obviously despised the first four children of Joseph and cared only for her own son Franklin. Other than that, Lydia wrote many letters to Niang to impose a sort of excommunication on Adeline for the sake of money, even though Adeline supported her son in education. This tells that in certain situations, because of money, family unity and values are overcame. Besides that, sexism and racism are topics subjected to immense criticism around the world. Adeline was lowly treated in England when working there due to her gender.