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Lindo Jong grew up in China, with Chinese cultures. She moved to America and had a daughter, Waverly Jong. Waverly grows up in America with American cultures, unlike her mother. Lindo and Waverly are both stubborn and independent. Waverly's stubbornness leads to her Lindo tries to instill Chinese culture in her daughter, so that Waverly will still be ‘Chinese’. This is hard for Waverly, because she has to assimilate to culture that she has not experienced. With identity being the root of this mother-daughter conflict, Waverly must find that balance between conformity and independence. Another conflict is how Lindo and her friend, Suyuan Woo, compete for a better daughter. The daughters also gain tension due to this competitiveness. Waverly tells her mother “Don’t be so old-fashioned...I’m my own person”(254). Waverly says this to her because Lindo told her to not throw away her blessings away. Lindo describes how Waverly is Chinese on the outside, but “American-made” on the outside. This idea of being Chinese on the outside and American on the inside makes the chapter title Double Face pertinent to their mother-daughter relationship. Lindo does not think that Waverly can be her own person, she believes that she “gave her up”. Lindo tells herself “I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind”(58). She is thinking about her identity and charachter, saying that she was like the wind.
Wind is a metaphor of Lindo and Waverly’s relationship. In the chapter Red Candle, the candle that signified Lindo’s marriage was blown out by the wind Lindo made. Lindo describes her invisible strength like the wind. In Rules of the Game, she later teaches Waverly about her invisible strength. Waverly learns that it is a strategy for winning respect and arguments. Lindo tells her to not go against the wind, and that the strongest wind can’t be seen. When Waverly learns how to play chess, she gets better due to this strength. She learns everything there is to learn about chess. With her strength of being able to strategize, she becomes very good at chess. She progresses to compete in tournaments. Lindo’s teaching improves her daughter’s chess skill, but Waverly dislikes her mothers control. Lindo takes credit for Waverly’s success at chess. Waverly tells herself, “All weaknesses and advantages become evident to a strong adversary and are obscured to a tiring opponent”(94). A more simplified version of this quote is that strengths and weaknesses become clear to a smart enemy and become unclear to a tiring enemy. She discovers that she must not allow her opponent to see her strengths and weaknesses. Waverly must not let her adversary be able to predict her next move. She thought to herself, “I discovered that for the whole game one must gather invisible strengths and see the endgame before the game begins”(94). After studying about opening moves and controlling the center early, Waverly realizes that before she starts a game of chess, she must be aware of every single possible move. Her ability to strategize like this is part of the invisible strength that Waverly inherits from her mother. Waverly’s advanced skill at chess somewhat translates over to her lifestyle and how she goes about things.
Waverly and Lindo first start to understand one another when Lindo gives Waverly her necklace. She passes her necklace down to her daughter before Waverly plays her first piano recital. Later, they both are at the barber shop. The barber is cutting Lindo’s hair, and she says that Lindo and Waverly look alike. When the barber is called away, they talk about how they have ‘two faces’. One face being American, and the other being Chinese. “You can see your character in your face, … You can see your future”(256). Lindo tells Waverly this when she is describing their facial similarities. They both realize now that deep down, they have the same ideas of morals. When Waverly responds saying ‘What do you mean?”, Lindo is left thinking to herself, “These two faces… The same happiness, the same sadness, the same good fortune, the same faults”(256). She recalls her past with her mother. She tells Waverly about how Waverly’s grandmother told her which of her characteristics portray different aspects of her future life. Lindo’s mother, talking like a fortune-teller, saying things like her nose holes are not too big, her money will not run out; a girl with a crooked nose will have something bad happen in her life. Lindo and Waverly truly understand one another when they clarify and confess to one another’s ideas of their ‘two-facedness’.
Bridge Building
This mother-daughter relationship can be closely related to the relationship of Edward and William Bloom. Both parents want their child to be more like them. Both of their children want to be unique. When the children ask question the parents respond with a story to answer. While Lindo’s responses aren’t as nearly lengthy as Edwards, they are still sort of similar in that they are a story. Both pairs of parent-child relations only understand or begin to understand each other towards the end of the story. William thinks about his father, “So in a way it was true: as I grew, he shrank”(123). In both relationships, the children grow up, while being filled with information from the parents. Also, the way Okonkwo did not want to accept change to a different religion bridges to how Lindo still wants her daughter to be Chinese, even though they live in America. Even though Okonkwo’s unacceptance to change was an extreme, and the fact that he killed himself, there is a similar idea of not liking change.