For me, the visuals of China were unforgettable. Seeing what the mothers endured, hated, and loved in their home country helped me understand their ambivalence about America and their frequent disconnection with their daughters. The girls, though they have heard (most) of their mother's stories ad nausem, can never really know how hard life was for women in China and how lucky they are to live in a free country. It is not until Jing-Mei travels to the country and meets her half-sisters whom her mother was forced to abandon in China, that she starts to feel real empathy and sorrow for her mother's tragic life. Like Jing-Mei, seeing those images really brought home Tan's stories for me. The novel was fascinating and absorbing, but something about the visual captured me in a way the novel could not.
As for point of view, it is hard to say if I "agree" with a point of view or not. There are multiple points of view, from each of the daughters and each of the mothers. However, being a mother and a daughter myself, I understand how your children never really know how much you love them and what you've gone through as a person (a not-mom). As a daughter, I still get frustrated with my own mother who, raised in the 50s, has little in common with me.
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