Xu Xi's 'Famine'

Subjectively speaking, “famine” contains different meanings. In the book “Famine” by Xu Xi we follow the protagonist trying to overcome her parent's death, internal guilt, and trauma by “escaping” to New York. Famine to the narrator is what she lived through by only eating rice and tofu because of her family's financial situation. Famine is also something that she was missing, such as the love from her parents, her goals, and her wants. For 51 years of her life, she lived for her parents. She had no time to think about her dreams and grew accustomed to the way they viewed life. Her parent's death rid her of the only responsibility which was to take care of them. “I escape” (Xi, 65) are our protagonist’s opening words which would make the readers

She was raised by authoritarian parents which is a “parenting style characterized as low in responsiveness but high in demandingness” (Bi et al. para 3). The main cause of her trauma was her father, who beat her and threatened to starve her (Xi 66) even when they were living an impoverished life. The reason for her beating was that she wanted to go to secondary school. This was a goal of hers but, was shot down by her parents with the expectations and responsibilities that were put on her. She was expected to take care of her parents as if they were her children. She had no say in what she wanted to do in life and fought her way into learning English. As the protagonist would say “We all must pick our battles, and my acquiring English was a…sufficiently drastic defiance to last a lifetime” (Xi 71). Children who are raised by authoritarian parents turn out to be secretive. They do not develop an attachment to their parents and will go to lengths to acquire whatever type of freedom they can hold. Learning English to her was a feeling of freedom and a part of her that her parents could not control. The protagonist and her mother would be the scapegoat for her father's anger. Seeing the way her mother was treated made her develop a strong character much like her father. To her, her father was the source of evil who held their lifestyle by the

She would criticize the people around her and their lifestyle because she was jealous. She would even teach her students and people she would encounter about “famine” just like her father did to her but, deemed her students “uneducable” (Xi 65). The mentality she developed when talking about famine is the same as her father. Her father was a narcissist who wanted to ram everything he learned about famine into her. Trautner stated, “Children will model the behavior shown to them by their parents while with their peers and as future parents themselves” (para 3). She also developed the same abrasive attitude as her father, which is common when raised by an authoritarian parent. Because she was forced to live a certain lifestyle she wanted other people to learn the same as she