Stories From Another Life
By: Anna Cimorelli
Parable:
My favorite parable was "The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates" because it taught the lesson of listening to those who try to protect you from the perils that you cannot see. At the end of this parable, the mother told her daughter to not ride her bike, but the young girl went ahead, falling "before she even reached the corner" (Tan 87). A mother will try to prevent her child from getting into trouble, but sometimes the child chooses to not listen and ends up getting hurt.
Mother/Daughter Selection:
If I could choose again, I would pick the mother and daughter in the Woo Family. I want to read about this mother-daughter pair because it is interesting to learn about the communication barriers within the Woo Family and how they work around it in order to pass their stories from generation to generation. I also find the first chapter to be very important in explaining how the Joy Luck Club was formed around the idea of being hopeful during the miseries in China.