Waverly and Lindo Relationship

Conflict

Waverly grew frustrated with her mother, Lindo, because of Lindo’s habit of showing Waverly off and not letting Waverly have her own ideas or life. Lindo also criticized Waverly’s boyfriend, Rich. They fought again while at the salon. Waverly, like her mother Lindo, is very independent, stubborn, and can be tricky. Lindo says to Waverly, “Such and ugly face. The Huangs won’t want you and our whole family will be disgraced” (52). The Huangs were a family that promised their son for marriage so they treated Waverly like family as one of their own. Lindo became jealous and made sarcastic remarks towards Waverly about it. Lindo was having dinner with Waverly and said, “Look how much Huang Taitai’s daughter can eat” (51).

Symobolism

Symbolism

Amy Tan uses the relationship between Waverly and Lindo like yin and yang. Waverly and Lindo both want to have harmony in their relationship but end up repelling from one another perhaps because of their similar characteristics. For this reason they can be represented by a yin yang because they fit together to make a circle and split evenly but the relationship’s colors are opposites.

Resolution

Waverly’s boyfriend, Rich, ate dinner with Waverly and her mother, Lindo. Waverly was nervous before and during the dinner because of her mother’s history with breaking down any guy in Waverly’s life. Lindo will expose and point out the flaws in any of Waverly’s boyfriends and always wins. The dinner went rough because of Rich’s slipup of insulting Lindo’s cooking. After the dinner, Rich seemed to think it went fine but Waverly knew it did not. Rich tells Waverly, "How long does it take to say, Mom, Dad, I’m getting married?" (179). Waverly responds with, "You don’t understand. You don’t understand my mother." Rich shook his head. "Whew! You can say that again. Her English was so bad. You know, when she was talking about that dead guy showing up on Dynasty, I thought she was talking about something that happened in China a long time ago" (179). These quotes show Waverly defending her mother because she does love her deep down.

Bridge Building

The relationship between Waverly and Lindo is somewhat similar to my relationship with my mother. Our similar characteristics clash sometimes but some of the time our similarities or even differences bring us closer. This happens with Waverly and Lindo, Waverly is very independent and does not enjoy her mother showing her off to other people about Waverly’s chess playing skills. She even quits chess in all because of this.