Interpreter of maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

The book  “Interpreter of maladies “by Jhumpa Lahiri left me with a nice, puzzled impression, which is the aim of the author – to make you think about simple and at the same time incomprehensible meaning of the life. Even though the book consists of different small stories, they are all connected together, and the last story explains more about Lahiri’s point of view on life and relationship between people. In all stories Lahiri writes about Indian people connected to the American culture. The author describes characters and events through the eyes of one character. The interesting thing is that those character usually a man. The author of the book, Indian origin, goes deep into her main character’s thoughts and feeling, revealing his, sometimes uncomfortable and frustrating, inner world. Lahiry pay a lot of attention on the most ordinary, subtle thoughts and fears, which occurs in the head of the main characters. She is bringing the unsweetened inner micro cosmoses of the  main characters, showing their  doubts and mental struggle to understand and except the world and people around them.  As I was reading the stories, I didn’t stop to be surprised and captured by the accuracy of Lahiry observation of man’s thoughts and behavior. Sometimes it was really frustrating for me  to realized that I also have similar experience in life, besides I don’t know what kind of thoughts my husband has. I noticed that the main characters usually possessed strengs, but at the same time they very weak and don’t know what love is, they see their spouse like a stranger, intruder in their life, however excepting them altogether like a necessary, inevitable event in life, similar to death or a birth. The most disappointing part in all the stories for me was an absence of any romantic feelings, passion, or attraction of characters to each other. Such attitude related to the peculiarities of Indian Culture, to the Hindu religion of acceptance and not questioning your destiny, life and circumstances.   The man, like a main character, also is the clever way to show the male dominance in Indian culture. Women’s happiness and wellbeing depends on man, and it makes man’s doubts and weaknesses loom bigger in the eyes of the reader.  

Funny in Farsi

Author used humorous writing skill to tell us what her life is. The stories in her life are funny. They always made me laugh. I also felt there is so much love and happy in her life. It is a great book for people who immigrated to the United States and learning English, like me. Through the book, I was not only reading a funny story, but also let me got a model of how to handle two cultures when they were shocking. Reader can have fun to know more about American culture and immigrants’ experiences from reading this book.

Interpreter of maladies

Interpreter of melodies
The book the Interpreter of melodies is constructed of many short depressing stories which are based on true life. Although, all the stories that I read were very impressive the one that interested me the most was “The treatment of Bibi Holder”. The story began describing how Bibi Holder suffered from an ailment, which no one was able to cure or figure out. In the book Bibi was also described as a woman who had lost her father and was living and sleeping in the corridor from the Holder Family. One day the Holder Family toked het to one of the best doctors, and the doctor said that all she needed to be cure was a husband. After that Bibi was taught how to talk to man, but she was never able to find one. Soon after tha,t the family which she use to live with abandon her, At the end of the story Bibi became a single mother and was happy at last, although the father of the baby remain a mystery.

The Joy Luck Club

The book ”The Joy Luck Club” written by Amy Tam talks about four Chinese women-drawn together by the shadow of their past-begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks, eat dim sum, and 'say' stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club. I enjoyed this book immensely. All four of the mothers had such high hopes for their daughters that they wouldn’t have to deal with any of the disasters to survive in their childhoods. It was so interesting. Then, their daughters thought of their mothers’ old-fashioned, old school Chinese ways; how they felt they could never live up to their mothers’ high expectations and creating incredible internal conflicts for all four daughters. This is the first book of Amy tam that I have read, and I really enjoyed the way she wrote it, or may because I am also Chinese. But sometimes the book seems a little bore. It totally talks about common lift of people. I still recommend this people for college students. It is easy to understand and close to lift.

The job luck club review

The book “The Joy luck club” by Amy Tam review about four woman and their daughters in “The joy luck club” and telling how to guide each other in in America. When I first time to read the book, it was not easy to understand because I didn’t who was talking about the story. After you read a few page, you could easy to understand what was talking about. The major purpose of the book is telling the culture between China and America. At the begin of four stories, they always statement their relationship whit mother and daughter. Women all will think about the future of their as a mother. They might think what their children do and teach what they do. In the story, they created a club in America, they party among themselves, play mahjong, and share secrets and gossips about their lives and other things. At the end, this is a good book for book club; it is not too hard and not too easy. If you understand some Chinese world and name in the story, you might easy to understand it.

One Decison

One Decision

“Why we are not living in china if we are Chinese?” It was the question that my brother asked my grandmother some years ago when I was in junior high school. My grandparents’ parents are originally from China, and they moved to Indonesia because they thought that in Indonesia they may have a better life than in China. However around the 1960s, there was a huge moment for Chinese-Indonesians that changed their lives. At that time, there was a war between Chinese-Indonesians and native Indonesians. The rumor was that many Indonesians didn’t like Chinese immigrants; they were envious because Chinese-Indonesians could have better jobs than them. Furthermore, the Indonesian government sent out a warning that all Chinese-Indonesians have to go back to China within a week. On the day that my grandparents were going to leave, there was an announcement from the USA that Indonesian government was not fair and should not make a decision without a clear explanation. The US governments believed that Chinese-Indonesian should be treated equally and have the same rights like the native Indonesian citizens. therefore, the rest of Chinese immigrants who had not gone back to China could prefer either to go back to China or to live in Indonesia. However, if they decided to stay in Indonesia, the Indonesian government could not guarantee their security and safety. My grandparents decided to stay in Indonesia because going back to China meant starting from “zero” because they had nothing over there. From this point forward, my grandparents’ decision has affected our family’s life.

We lost ome family members because of my grandparents’ decision. My grandfather has two sisters that were already married and have children in 1960s. When there was an announcement that Chinese had to go back to China within one week, all of my grandfather’s family had decided it to go back to China. Everything was already planned; my grandfather’s sisters would be going first and my grandfather would go the next day after them because he needed to take care his business before he went. However because of the US announcement, my grandparents decided to stay in Indonesia which meant that they could lose contact with their families. My grandfather didn’t know where his sisters were in China. His sisters’ family who moved to China had nothing over there, there is no house and business/job. Furthermore, there was no technology for communication at that time. Now, it has been a half of century since they went back to China, yet my grandfather still never heard news about his sisters or their whereabouts.

The worst effect of this policy for Chinese-Indonesians happened in June 1998. At that time, the situation for the Indonesian government was really bad. They couldn’t control the native Indonesian communities. This was a big chance for Indonesians to discriminate against Chinese immigrants. They went crazy and became really violent; they burnt Chinese immigrant’s houses and cars, killed Chinese-Indonesians, robbed things that were in the houses and stores, and raped the women. I was seven years old at that time and I remember seeing a lot of smoke around my house area from my balcony. I also heard news from my father and neighbors that a lot of bad things happened around my neighborhood. Luckily, all of my family lived in the safe area, so we survived. However, we had a big traumatic experience from that has been hard to forget.

My family can’t speak Chinese language. Before 2001, there isn’t any Chinese course in Indonesia even though there are a lot of Chinese immigrants over there but no one was allowed to teach or learn the Chinese language. The reason the Indonesia government closed down the Chinese courses, even the small Chinese courses, was because they don’t want to have more Chinese culture spreading around Indonesia. However in 2001, there was finally a change. The new government gave permission to open some small Chinese courses. In the following years there are a lot of big and small Chinese courses in Indonesia; it even spread to some schools. I finally got a chance to have Chinese lesson when I still lived in Indonesia. Even though it was just the basic lesson, I am still grateful to see part of my culture finally come out of the shadow. Right now, even though none of my family can speak Chinese fluently, but all my younger cousins and sister are still learning it at school. My older cousins and brother is the same thing like me, just know the basic. My parents, my uncles and aunts have already felt tired to study so it meant that they won’t be able to learn to speak Chinese.

In conclusion, Indonesia is a beautiful country that has a lot of natural resources; everything is also cheap over there such as worker and life expenses. Those were the reasons why Chinese wanted to stay over there. However, we never expected that native Indonesia could do crazy things like that to us. That moment has become part of history and life changing experience that will be hard to be forgotten. Luckily, things have changed as there is less discrimination to Chinese-Indonesian. But the wound is still there and it is hard for Chinese-Indonesian to be completely healed from that traumatic tragedy. This is the reason why some of my families have decided to rather spend the rest of their life in United States than in Indonesia.

One Child, Unlimited Burden

Many people said that people who were born after the 1980s were the beginning of a nightmare. This is because in the 1970s in China, the government had a new policy, which was to promote that one couple have only one child. The emergence of this policy affected everyone after 1980’s. In the old society, every average family had four children, so China had become the most populous country in the world. This family planning was ordered to control population growth so that it can improve the living standards and economic prosperity. After this policy was fully implemented, it really influenced a lot of Chinese people who were born after 1980. I was born after 1980, so has this policy influenced me a lot lack of affection, personality and pressure.
First of all, when the family planning was implemented, it let me feel the lack of affection and gave me too much special attention. Each family could have one child, and my family was no exception. My parents only have me. This began my lonely childhood. Since I was conscious that I knew I do not have any brothers or sisters, I realized I had nobody to play with me. In fact, I just played with dolls solitarily and played multiple roles by myself every day. This has caused me never know how to share anything with others in my life. It is because as the only child of my parents and grandparents, they have always treated me as a precious pearl. Without any siblings to share their love, I have been as “a little queen” in this family. They have always helped me do anything and make concessions for me. Specifically, they helped me to wash the clothes all the time. As a result, when I was thirteen years old, I still did not know how to wash my clothes. The whole family spoiled me such as the small flower in a greenhouse. This didn’t allow me to learn to be independent.

Moreover, this policy has always made me have some problems with my personality. Growing up, I began to have my own social circles and began to have a boyfriend. Nevertheless, we haven’t known how to tolerate or get along with each other. We have always had a lot of arguments when we got together. It is because we both grew up in one child family. Sometimes we have hurt each other because we have treated everything with apathy and we had mood swings such as a change in the weather, sometimes sunny and sometimes rainy. In love, I have always liked to do what I want; I haven’t cared about him a lot. We both have been self- centered people; and have had a hard time considering the other. We plan to get married and have a child in the future, but if we keep going in this situation, we will divorce and this will not be good for our child. This problem cannot be ignored.
Finally, this policy has given me a lot of family stress. In the future, if I get married, my family will become a”421” family which has become popular family style since 1980s. A “421” family means my parents, my parents in-law, my husband, my child and me in the family. We only have one child, so we will have high expectations for him/her. Having a good job is very important to my husband and me because we will be the ones to take care of the burden of family maintenance. We need to make a lot of money to let our child get into top school and have a good education in the future. Therefore, my husband and I have to assume all the cost of this family. We have to consider a lot, not only give them a good living condition but also the mortgage of the house and cars. This is as a heavy cloth wrapper. It is endless. We both are in one child families, so no any siblings can share this great responsibility.

In conclusion, after this one child policy was implemented, it always has given Chinese who were born after 1980s a lot of problems. When numerous problems arise, I as most people who were born after 1980’s, haven’t wanted to grow up and I hope I can always live under the protection of our parents. Indeed, family planning was the burden for the previous generation, but at the same time, it brings a heavier burden to next generation. Many of our generation have lost confidence in our life and love. I hope this legislation will change so that it can solve many lonely childhoods, character effects and family pressure. Let us live more exciting lives.