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The theme of Loving oneself found in Lindsay Wong’s The Woo Woo and Charlie Chaplin As I Begin to Love Myself.

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The theme of Loving oneself found in Lindsay Wong’s The Woo Woo and Charlie Chaplin As I Begin to Love Myself.

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The Quote As I Begin to Love Myself, written by Charlie Chaplin, describes how to love oneself when recognizing the truth of themselves. The memoir The Woo Woo by Lindsay Wong is a memoir about her modern Chinese Canadian family, and how she has recovered from the trauma of her parent and coming through her struggles.

As I began to love myself I recognized that my mind can disturb me and it can make me sick. But as I connected it to my heart, my mind became a valuable ally. Today I call this connection “WISDOM OF THE HEART”.

The quote by Charlie Chaplin illustrates that since a person began to love himself, the person will start to accept the misfortune around him and tolerate it; when a person is too obsessed with trouble, with the heart to feel its cause and effect, the person will understand and comprehend.

The quote can connect with the memoir, as Lindsay is beginning to understand her parent while coming of age.

Although the author was abused by her parent, she was shocked by their childhood miserable poverty and begins to empathize with her parents during a dinner party with her aunts and uncles.

"Not only had my grandmother been cut off from the family fortune, but she had basically been abandoned in a backwater village to run around barefoot and be infamously crazy. So my mother and her siblings had grown up with nothing to eat (Wong, 90).”

Lindsay faced a variety of struggles with her trauma, but she has realized that her family would rather believe in ghosts than admit to deals with serious mental health problems because mental health issues mean shame to most Asian families. As she grew up, she came to understand that her parent was doing their best to raise her even though they did not notice that the trauma has taken root in their bodies. Because of her acknowledges, she started to tolerate her mother by taking the mother's past cruel stories up and begins to sympathize with those who have no courage to face their own mental health issues.

Lindsay was able to recover from the shadow of her childhood, and I believe the significance of her memoir is not only to hope that people can seek help with their mental illness, but she had expressed her trauma through words and dare to accept herself and her family.

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The connection between The Woo Woo and a real case happened in China

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The connection between The Woo Woo and a real case happened in China

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In the memoir, the author has written that her mother and even her grandmother was selling to another man to get married, and this shows a big problem which still occurs in China; The ancient feudal system of son preference; happens mainly in poor areas, and many of the families will sell their daughters but keep the boys because they have a family value of if a man has no sons, all his property will be passed to his brother’s sons, no matter of the daughters.

People can recognize that in many modern Chinese families, the man always has the authority, just like the quote from the book, “my father complained, making it known to all of us that we should hate Beautiful One because he hated her. Since he was the Boss of our family, it was assumed that we should take on his opinions and beliefs, just as we had inherited his last name (Wong, 83)”.

Because of the modern form of family’s value, the women who were married to the men’s family will not be treated with kindness, they will only ask the women to be pregnant, and having sons seem to be a true honour. In the memoir, the author mentions a housewife was having nervous breakdown with three kids in tow, “She could not stop having children until she had produced a boy because she would not be blessed according to our Chinese superstitious (Wong, 29).” Also, in the memoir, it says the grandmother Poh-Poh was selling to a poor man for only 100 bucks, and they have eight kids.

This reminded me a case that happens in China in 2018, a woman who names Fang from Fangzhuang village in Dezhou, Shandong Province, was abused by her husband and in-laws because she could not get pregnant. On January 22, 2020, the first instance said that because the defendant was able to truthfully confess the facts of his crime, and voluntarily pay compensation of 50,000 RMB in advance, and he will stay in prison for just few years. Fang’s cousin told a reporter that before married Fang is more than 160 pounds, but after when she was beaten to death, she is only more than 60 pounds. After forensic examination, the cause of death was extensive soft tissue contusion with repeated blunt external force and based on the malnutrition; this has issued the evidence of man’s family abuse of her, and the family included the man’s mother. Why would a mother who was also oppressed by feudal society bully a wife who could not get pregnant? This leads me to believe that those women are being brainwashed; everyone around them believes that women should be the pregnant machines, and whether it is superstition or not, this brainwashing technique from childhood lets women themselves believe that they should be born giving birth for men. The importance of men is taken for granted at such times.

It reflects the problems that if children grew up in the atmosphere of the preference for sons, and most of them grew up will favour boys over girls because this is what they have educated since they were born; this is the reason why system of son preference and objectify women is still exists in China and also occurs in the memoir.

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a woman was beaten and killed by her husband and in-laws. they were sentenced to three years - cnn

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Public outrage after family sentenced to three years for killing young woman

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A Chinese court made a rare move to calm public outrage this week over a controversial murder case involving a young woman killed by her husband and in-laws.

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My own experience connected to The Woo Woo

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My own experience connected to The Woo Woo

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My mom is similar but not the same as Lindsay’s mom; She and Lindsay’s mom both born in poverty, and I believe that the childhood trauma has an impact on her. While I was small, I used to be a naughty kid, and my mom starting to beat me since I was in kindergarten. I remember that day I was refused to go to kindergarten, so I hide under the bed, and my mom was so angry, so she used a long wooden slat to poke me out.

When I was growing up and I asked her why she always hit me, my mother said that was she trying to teach me and giving me the lessons. I still do not think my mother was educating me; she just took her anger out on me, and her education shaped my temper into extremely egoistic and stubborn. While I was in Grade 6, I do not remind what we fought about, but since I said “shut up” to her, she suddenly changed like another person who yelled at me and left me on the road. I was scared because it was midnight and where I was is a total no man land, but my stubbornness made me walk alone in the dark for more than an hour, from street to sidewalk, until my mother’s anger dissipated, and she brought me back.

From when I began to feel completely uncomfortable with my mom is while I want to use my uncle’s new glass, the one containing wood can purify water and my mom stopped me, but my uncle gave that glass to me. She suddenly mad for no reason, and she dragged one of my legs from one room to another room whatever I cried so hard, throw me on the bed slapped me several times until I cannot get up and my ear began to hum. I saw my mother picked up from the corner of a plate and wanted to hit me, and this has taken place in my brain, I could never forget it. I believe anything of the family could affect the children, and I began to bully just like Lindsay in the book but thankfully I transferred to a very good middle school. If comparing me with the elementary school me, I am so different; in elementary school, I made a huge gash on my left hand with a compass; and it would be with me forever. Although it was a private school like my primary school, the students and teachers were like a family.

Until now, I am always kind in front of others but irritable when facing my mother. It was not until last year that I learned that my mother was also beaten by my grandmother. She was born in a pigsty of a small village and worked hard to get to Beijing without any education. It was only after she gave birth to me that she began to let her life become better. She said she had wanted to die, but she was never learned about the mental health issues; she used to say to me that people who have depression are just too vulnerable despite she used to try to kill herself a long time ago, and if I cry through the phone and tell her I want to die, she will be yelling at me and tells me to suicide right now. Even though my mom and I were in much the same situation as Lindsay’s book, but last year my mom finally changed her attitude when she was travelled with her colleagues for work, one of the girls suddenly took her clothes off and ran outside the hotel, so she was sent to a mental institution with no memory of who we are and who she is because she had received the Electrocution therapy; this may be because of her mom’s emotional abuses to herself, which the girl used to complain about every day to me, and it leads her to do anything if her mom could talk to her nicely. Whoever has that kind of shadow in their childhood is in the way of a relationship. Even more, ironically, there are thousands of people like me and the girl in China who have trauma and mental health issues because of their family, but they can only express their situations around on social media, because to many of the Chinese family, they do not admit the presence of depression.

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Creative Drawing connected to the book The Woo Woo

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Creative Drawing connected to the book The Woo Woo

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Lindsay’s father always making some cruel and mean jokes to Lindsay, which is something like "fat pig” or “low IQ”, leads her to deny herself when she was young; this was the reason her mother burned, and the reason can be seen in the book, “the poor woman blamed herself for not being a vigilant ghost-hunting mommy. I was fat and lazy and stupid, which meant that I was possessed” (Wong, 86). In my drawing, the reason why the woman is covering by dark is that other’s words, which are the devils, are controlling her, just like in The Woo Woo, Lindsay’s father blamed her for guessing she was the reason that her mother had left the home. Lindsay felt guilt, so she breaks a girl’s arm during the hockey game because she thought that being the MVP will bring her mom back. The shames and insults have become an arrow shot at Lindsay. Although the wound was not obvious, her hearts were broken like glass. This is why she ended up having a seizure in the washroom and crying; the source of everything is the iron wire tied around her eyes and blinded her eyes, which is also the reason why Lindsay will be having a mental break down. The wire represents the mental health issue, and Lindsay did not realize that she has a mental health issue for the first time, she was only afraid to be hunted by the ghosts just like her mom.