https://padlet.com/elaineli/om0a8kv6f57ucco8 After Maxine's fight with her mother, she thinks, "I had to leave home in order to see the world logically" (204). Maxine explains how leaving "home" allows her to "sort out what's just my childhood, just my imagination, just my family, just the village, just movies, just living" (205). How and why does Maxine leaving "home" help her decipher what’s real and what's fake? How does this newfound clarity enable her to develop and strengthen her Chinese-American identity, apart from the Chinese stories her childhood is built on? Find textual evidence besides the given text to support your claim. Respond to at least two of your classmates' claims. en-us 2022-11-21 18:38:09 UTC 2022-11-29 14:36:23 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet.net/icons/png/1f1e8-1f1f3.png kmull24 https://padlet.com/elaineli/om0a8kv6f57ucco8/wish/2401993045 During Maxine's fight with Brave Orchid, she accuses her of many things that her mother may not have been the "real" cause of. Her leaving home to seek more logic and find what is "real" brings her to discoveries and reality checks about herself and her life thus far. One realization is her inability to speak Chinese well, She states, "I've stopped checking "bilingual" on job applications. I could not understand any of the dialects the interviewer at China Airlines tried on me, and he didn't understand me either" (205). Maxine comes to terms with not being fluent in Chinese and stops pretending that she can speak it well when she is unable to even "understand" it.]]> 2022-11-29 14:28:37 UTC https://padlet.com/elaineli/om0a8kv6f57ucco8/wish/2401993045 qmona24 https://padlet.com/elaineli/om0a8kv6f57ucco8/wish/2401993118 By leaving home, Maxine gains the courage and independence to accept and acknowledge what is real and what is fake. She states that she would "like to go to China and see those people and find out what's a cheat story and what's not" (206). She becomes independent from her mother and accepts that the stories her childhood was built on shaped who she was as a person, but also are not all based in reality. She develops a desire to travel to China, whereas before she was afraid of the country because she realizes the stories her mother told were not all true, and she wants to find out what her own culture is really like. ]]> 2022-11-29 14:28:39 UTC https://padlet.com/elaineli/om0a8kv6f57ucco8/wish/2401993118 jfree231 https://padlet.com/elaineli/om0a8kv6f57ucco8/wish/2401994455 Maxine furthers her understanding when she leaves her home for college. 57 "I did not plan ever to have a husband. I would show my and my father and the nosey emigrant villagers that girls have no outward tendency"(57).  I think Maxine gains a rebellious identity from leaving. She is able to examine the values of Chinese culture her mother taught and rejected it showing introspection. She sees that the Chinese way for a woman to live is not the only way and decides to live against it when rejecting a future husband. ]]> 2022-11-29 14:29:20 UTC https://padlet.com/elaineli/om0a8kv6f57ucco8/wish/2401994455 tweis23 https://padlet.com/elaineli/om0a8kv6f57ucco8/wish/2401996040 Maxine feels the need to "leave home in order to see the world logically" because she wants to start to form her own story separate from her mother's. When introducing the story about her grandmother, Maxine mentions her mother told her about it after Maxine admits she's a storyteller. Maxine contemplates, "the beginning is hers, the ending, mine" (206). Maxine wants a life separate from her mother. At the "beginning" of Maxine's life, she was reliant on her mother as an example of how to act, but now, Maxine wants to create an "ending" that is one of her own. By leaving home and her mother, she will be able to form a unique "ending" to her life and "sort out" what her own story is, not the story of her family.]]> 2022-11-29 14:30:13 UTC https://padlet.com/elaineli/om0a8kv6f57ucco8/wish/2401996040 lshal23 https://padlet.com/elaineli/om0a8kv6f57ucco8/wish/2401996715 Maxine knows that the only way she'll be able to distinguish fact from fiction is by leaving behind what she knows, 
"to go to China and see those people and find out what's a cheat story and what's not" (206). The tradition of talk-story makes it difficult for Maxine to understand which aspects of her identity are truly her own, and which are "cheat stories,"  handed to her by others (her family, her community, the media). Many of the stories she's told as a child were embellished, and designed to teach her a lesson about the world around her; Maxine faces a unique problem, however, in the sense that world around her is very different than the world her parents lived in back in China. The only way for Maxine to truly understand herself and her identity is to leave, even if only for a little bit. This choice allows her to see the world from a new perspective, relatively unclouded by the stories she's been told throughout her childhood, which gives her a better understanding of stories vs reality, and even a better understanding of how, despite being contrasting, truth can find its way into fiction.]]> 2022-11-29 14:30:35 UTC https://padlet.com/elaineli/om0a8kv6f57ucco8/wish/2401996715 egood241 https://padlet.com/elaineli/om0a8kv6f57ucco8/wish/2401998261 Leaving "home" allowed Maxine to develop her independence. Maxine believes that in order to achieve her aspirations, she must leave home. Arguing with her mother, Maxine exclaims, "I am going to college. And I'm not going to Chinese school anymore...And I don't want to listen to any more of your stories; they have no logic"(202). Because traditional Chinese culture enforces the idea that women must be a wife or a slave, Maxine leaves home, believing that is the only way to accomplish what she wants. Later, she says, "You can't stop me from talking. You tried to cut off my tongue, but it didn't work"(202). Maxine associates her childhood with storytelling and silence. By leaving "home", Maxine wants to find her voice. ]]> 2022-11-29 14:31:22 UTC https://padlet.com/elaineli/om0a8kv6f57ucco8/wish/2401998261 kswee24 https://padlet.com/elaineli/om0a8kv6f57ucco8/wish/2401999242 Leaving "home" has allowed Maxine to learn and discover things on her own. Her point of view of things in life is no longer clouded by her mother or anyone else. She gains independence and the ability to think for herself. Instead of hearing everything from her mother, who Maxine sometimes struggled to tell if everything that was being said to her was true or not, she was able to find answers for herself. She says, "I'd like to go to China and see those people and find out what's a cheat story and what's not" (206). She is gaining the courage and willingness to discover things for herself. In this example, she wants to go back to China and see if the stories her mother told her about are true or fake. ]]> 2022-11-29 14:31:54 UTC https://padlet.com/elaineli/om0a8kv6f57ucco8/wish/2401999242 ekneb23 https://padlet.com/elaineli/om0a8kv6f57ucco8/wish/2402001280 I think she is able to start to decipher what is real from what is fake when she leaves home because she is finally able to have a life that is not tainted through her mother's stories or the lives of her relatives in China. When she leaves home, she is able to meet people with different experiences and she is able to learn the truth behind her family, village and herself. I think this act of going on her own is also able to help her create her unique Chinese-American identity because she is finally able to learn to accept the fluidity of her identity and she is able to create her own person through her childhood filled with these stories and her experience growing up a degree separated from the stories about China she was given. Maxine also says that shed "...like to go to China and see those people and find out what’s a cheat story and what’s not" (206). I think this further shows that she is learning to move past her childhood and become her own person because she wants to see everything for herself and she doesn't want to take anyone else's word for it because her childhood made it hard for her to just believe what anyone else says (ie. her mother's stories).]]> 2022-11-29 14:32:58 UTC https://padlet.com/elaineli/om0a8kv6f57ucco8/wish/2402001280