Speak By Lensey Namioka

For this project, I chose the story “TIES THAT BIND, TIES THAT BREAK”. This fiction book was written by Lensey Namioka. It is about the change in China, and what happens when someone doesn’t do stick to tradition. The setting is in past China. The main character is a girl by the name of Ailin Tao. It talks about her life growing up. The story is told in a first-person perspective (From Ailin’s perspective). I would recommend this story to anyone who enjoys suspense but not enough to make it a mystery, and to someone who enjoys stories about China and the people who are currently and have lived there.

In the beginning, Ailin is a very young girl. She meets her future husband, whose name is “Hanwei Luis”. Ailin soon learns that her stubbornness

They were not allowed to interrupt men talking, or think of themselves as the same rank as men. Ailin noted that “Their greatest weapon to get out is suicide”. Ailin knew this is not how she wanted to live her life, so she decided to rebel against tradition. Ailin’s father knew that change was coming to China. He knew that things were changing. This is the only reason that Ailin did not get her feet bound. Ailin’s father lets her go to a girls only public school, where she learns to speak English. Ailin is even the best in her English class. Her teacher for English is an American woman named, Mrs. Gilbertson. Some of her classmates (Who have bound feet) look down on her. But Ailin finds someone who is a lot like her. Her name is Zhang Xueyan. Ailin and Zhang both know that China is changing. One day when Ailin is leaver her school. She sees Hanwei, and they stop to talk to each other. After the conversation, Zhang informs Ailin that Hanwei still likes her. This is how Ailin learned that Mrs. Luis is the one who ended the engagement, not Mr. Luis. When it was Ailin’s second year attending MacIntosh (her school) her grandfather died. Not too long later, her grandmother died from a stroke. A few weeks after grandmother's death, Ailin’s father started to cough up