Fae Myenne Ng's New Life

Since the California Gold Rush, people around the world came to the United States to seek for opportunities and jobs to start their “new” life. In these settlers, many of them were Chinese, who were trapped in California because of the Revolution in China. They came to the United States to helped build California’s agriculture, mines, and railroad. Fae Myenne Ng’s family was one of settlers from China, her mother sailed across the Pacific Ocean for months searching to give a better future for her next generation - Fae Myenne Ng, who was born in San Francisco, California, in 1957. Fae Myenne Ng, as the first generation born Americans in her family carries lots of hopes and pressure from her mother. She knows that it takes a lot of courage for

Her writing style created metaphors and symbolism. Leon ones said in the book, “Sorrow moves through the heart, the way a ship moves through the ocean. Ships are massive but the ocean has simple superiority.” Leon described the power: One mile forward and then eight miles back. Forward and forward and then back.” (Bone 142) It created a motion of a traveler, the image of a ship moving through the sea. It showed how hard it is to make a living; sometimes in life, there’ll be hills you have to cross and overcome. While writing these sentences, Fae was very conscious, she “wanted the writing to echo the rhythm of work”, she continued, “The image of a ship moving through the sea seemed to be the best way to talk about that. The image comes from life, Leon crosses the ocean to come to this country. I wanted to remember that crossing and to think about what he held onto, this ideal of coming to a better place, making a better life for future generations. I think of Mah and Leon, immigrants, as sacrifice characters. Once they set sail, their personal lives were essentially over.” (BOMB Magazine) It also tells the beliefs of Leon, that after all these years he been through, he still held the central idea of being at a better place with a better life, but in the end, you’ll still miss the place you came