Quote 10
I know this, because I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people’s misery, to eat my own bitterness.
And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way. (IV.1.4)
Despite An-mei’s best efforts, her daughter still followed in the footsteps of voiceless Chinese practice women who shoulder all the emotional burdens. An-mei speculates that the long matrilineal line is like a staircase that: although each step is in a new place, they are all going the same direction.
Quote 11
And I would stare at my mother. She did not look evil. I wanted to touch her face, the one that looked like mine.
It is true, she wore strange foreign clothes. But she did not speak back when my aunt cursed her. Her head bowed even lower when my uncle slapped her for calling him Brother. She cried from the heart when Popo died, even though Popo, her mother, had sent her away so many years before. (IV.1.9)
An-mei is fascinated by her mother, and notes that her mother’s love for her grandmother never died, even after her mother would have every reason to start hating her grandmother.
Quote 12
In the afternoon, my mother spoke of her unhappiness for the first time. We were in a rickshaw going to a store to find embroidery thread. "Do you see how shameful my life is?" she cried. "Do you see how I have no position? He brought home a new wife, a low-class girl, dark-skinned, no manners! Bought her for a few dollars from a poor village family that makes mud-brick tiles. And at night when he can no longer use her, he comes to me, smelling of her mud." (IV.1.90)
An-mei’s mother’s identity and social position is based on her husband, Wu Tsing, and the order in which he married his wives. An-mei’s mother is insulted at who Fifth Wife is, and the place she occupies in Wu Tsing’s bed rotation. Moreover, she despairs at her position as Fourth Wife, ashamed that she has no rights.