Chinese Cinderella Essay
Almost everyone has felt lonely or unappreciated at one point or another. Only few are strong enough to prove themselves and persevere through it. The book Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yah Mah shows her perseverance through abandonment from her family and the loneliness she endures.
In the beginning of the book, you can see that Adeline’s family lack of encouragement and value towards herself and some offer other siblings. This is shown someone forgets to pick her up from school that’s when Adaline begins to feel abandoned and lonely. On the first day of school in Shanghai, all of Adeline’s siblings had been picked up from school except for Adeline. She writes,”Eventually I was the only one left. Nobody had come for
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After Aunt Reine brought her back to her family in Hong Kong, Niang sends Adeline off to Sacred Heart Boarding school/ orphanage. Here Adeline receives no visitors or letters, she never goes home, and only has a brown ragged dress two sizes too small and worn out sneakers. She is teased because of the way she looks but tries to keep a level head by working hard in school and even skipped two grades. After many months at Sacred Heart, Adeline received bad news that her grandfather ( Ye Ye) had passed away. At the funeral, Adeline grieves for Ye Ye, and Niang only makes it worse by announcing in a loud voice,” Adeline is looking uglier and uglier as she grows older and taller”(187). To make matters worse, Niang tells Adeline that at the end of the school year, 14-year-old Adeline needs to find a job because her father couldn’t afford to pay for so many children. At this point, Adeline has almost lost all hope until she finds out that a playwriting contest that she had entered earlier in the year, had won and she would receive 50 English pounds. This is what made Adeline’s father change his mind and have Adeline go to college in England. For once she actually felt valued and like she had a chance to feel free in