Analysis of China Boy Novel - Book Report/Review Example

China boy Summary China Boy is a novel that talks about an American born son of a refugee Shanghainese family called Kai Ting. The family of Kai Ting finally settles in San Francisco after ending an odyssey across both friendly and unfriendly terrain. The book begins with a retelling of Kai Ting of how his family who was his mother, father and three elder sisters fled the civil was in China and also the way they were settled in San Francisco, particularly in the Panhandle, a rough, huge poor neighborhood. Kai grew up in this “concrete crucible." To his mother, he is the best child and only son, and she pins high hopes on him. His sisters are older than him and he neglects the original position of coddled youngest child. His globe rotates around his mother whose charisma sense of family entwine for little Kai a protective cocoon. Until he begins going to school, he has very small sense of the world outside his home. He is not that critical to other children his seniority and what it will take to rood the cross-section between the family protection and the perils of a world populated with unsympathetic outsiders. Kai being unlucky, his mother passes away. At this situation, Kai is robbed of the balance from the fact. Previously he could rush home from the school compound and the streets of the Panhandle to the safety of home. To complicate the issues, his father marries Edna McGurk, who steps into her new section of stepmother with reluctance; however, with draconian thoughts about how to rear suddenly inherited children. The stepmother is a Philadelphia society lady who is determined to rob all China’s vestige from the household and also by physical force. Kai finds himself in a torn violently situation between two worlds. From his situation, he is neither accepted in any of the worlds and his eventual fight for the peace in between as he locates an enemy, a companion and a set of gurus who have experienced far greater arms than his own. Kai’s father turns a blind eye as his second wife locks the children out o the house at daytime. Kai return at night with bruises and torn clothes that become an excuse for a second beating. At the moment comes redemption after a fashion. However, it is difficult-fought and painfully won. The occasion is the Chinese-American experience as Dickens might have elaborated it, analyzed by many rogues and little saints. According to the author, blacks, Hispanics, whites and Asians attempt to extreme of goods an evil, though, closely drawn and intensely human, they are no stereotypes. The book is used as a primer on how to maintain body and soul jointly in a world that is as gravelly as the streets of his neighborhood hero and seems frequent dangerously out of control. Themes The novel is a rite-of-passage story. It covers only about one and half years of life situation of Kai. It depicts a balanced stand in his growing, a period of the excellent change and uncertainty out of which he will group strength and exist or to which he will succumb. From his mother’s demise, his physical and emotional distance of his father, the cruelty of his stepmother, and the everyday conflicts that he experiences on his neighborhood streets, he is plunged into a seemingly inescapable dungeon. To run away, he has to get a plan on the very last dregs of an individual integrity somehow unquenchable resilience of a seven year old in order to salvage a childhood gone awry. Experience conflicts within and without his house, he nonetheless soldiers along and despite incredible odds neutralizes the neighborhood bully in the defining situation of his short existence. The culminating performance makes a sign of a breakthrough for him. From this position, the book leaves the audiences with the hope that with one conflict won, Kai is designed to win the other conflicts and ultimately, to win the long violence of his childhood. Also, the book talks about displacement that is about suspension between two clearly defined seemingly irreconcilable way of life. The culture represented by the mother of Kai and uncle Shim looks like to slip away with each day together with Mah-mee’s demise. Characters The book comprises different characters playing different roles to build up the story. The first character found in the book is Kai Ting who is the protagonist in the story. He is the only and young son in the family with three sisters. Also, he is the only American born son and the only one who struggles with English because the rest had formal teachers. He is considered to be very special by Mah-mee because he is the first born son, but the last born in the family. After his mothers demise, he has no benefits. He cannot see well, young and gets beaten up a lot even by small children who need to prove they are rough for him. He had taught his real mother that fighting was very dangerous for his karma, thus he grapples with fighting back and learning to fight. The second character is Mah-mee who is the real mother of Kai. She and her daughters travelled by cart from Rangoon to San Francisco to Free China. Despite the quietness of the cultural pressure, she asserted her independence. She terribly drove, superstitious and seemed to do many eccentric things such as turn on all the lights. Also, she sits in the bathtub and talks to her father, pull over on the side of the main route to go to the seashore and light joss sticks to her father. The other character is the father. He is the second born in a rich family. His father was an opium abuser who embarrassed the family and passed way terribly in a re-education bivouac after the battle. The father toils at china Lights Bank in Chinatown and also travels much to be a soldier but due to his children and wife, he did not succeed to go to war again at Korea. Jennifer is another character found in the novel. She is a sister to Kai. She is the families first born. Megan, another character, is a sister to Jennifer and sister to Kai. She does not seem to have any grudge though her mother does not treat her well. Janie sister to Megan, Jennifer and Kai is also another character. She was sick as an infant in china. She was young during the run. She was lucky to have survived all the problems and diseases. Her sisters hide her about their mother’s death. Later she figures it out but with no respect, hold to the fiction. Toussaint LaRue is also a character in the novel that is Kai’s age. He provides Kai some fighting pointers, and then tells him that fighting has establishment in slavery because men could manifest their manhood and wants to hear narratives about his father because he died in the World War II. His mother is a maternal figure for Kai. She is poor and with that she shares her food and love. Toussaint attempts to help Kai talk in a way more appropriate for his neighborhood. Big Willie Mack is also another character whom Kai has to deal with. After a significant fight with Jerome he turns back to Kai in which he beats him to a pulp as explained in the novel, and this makes Kai lose all confidence. The antagonist characters in the novel are Hector Pueblo one of the non-Chinese and Non-Black people Kai meets in the play. He is a mechanic at the garage of Cutty. He is a war vet and advises Kai to never idea from a fight. Mr. Barraza is a former heavyweight fighter with much success, but his power punch characteristics disappeared after the leasing of his wife. Uncle Shim, who was to be Kai’s tutor, is a traditional Chinese brainpower and calls Kai Haushehen meaning a capable student and thus considered a high honor. Miss Angie Costello is convinced by Mr. Barraza to let Kai on his card. She feeds him and gives him a job that gives Kai money for pending for food of Chinese though he has to relinquish the majority to Edna. She is kind and Kai takes her as maternal key figure. Mr. Miller is an instructor of Kai and promises Kai’s father that he will teach him. Mr. Punsalong who is also an instructor, takes a tough approach with Kai, educates him the dirty movies like throat punching. Kai together with his friends watches him practicing some martial arts on the roof of them. Finally, there is Mr. Lewis another minor character in the story. He is an African – American instructor who is a supervisor over the other instructors. He sticks on a mind-first approach to boxing. He encourages Kai to talk clearly. Conflicts found in the novel In the story, there are several occasions of conflicts. Kai, the protagonist, must dispense with the demise of his mother who had pampered him all of his life. The situation can be taken as an instance of an internal conflict, whereby Kai does his best to come to terms with losing the most crucial person in his life. Kai finds himself in cold, cruel world when his father marries another lady who becomes Kai’s stepmother. This is another instance of man versus man conflict. Kai’s stepmother is very cruel and abusive to all of her stepchildren. Kai has a conflict on the streets with the street-smart kids who beat him up on regular occasions. Kai lives in a place that is prejudiced towards him because he is a Chinese. The occasion can be viewed as a man to society conflict. His father sends him to the YMCA and he learns how to box. He is taught to trust and respect his coaches and with their encouragement he is capable of standing up to the biggest bully in his neighborhood. He does not win although he takes a beating, but he can inflict pain upon the bully. He earns some respect and honor from others but most importantly, he learns to respect himself. The stepmother of Kai called Edna is cold, abusive and very cruel. She never permits Kai to stay in the house. She throws him out into the cold and cruel globe to fend for himself. She makes Kai starve physically and mentally. She does not permit Chinese to be talked or ancestral stories to be spoken in the house. She makes the wicked stepmother in “Cinderella” seem like Mary Poppins because of her actions. Conclusion Kai’s story is coming of age in the San Francisco slums which can be the story of any critical young boy struggling to end the opperassers on the mean streets of a huge city. Kai discovers himself the punching bag for every oppressor in the neighborhood because he is brutalized by the stepmother determined to expunge all traces of his Chinese mother from the home. YMCA becomes his salvation mentors which a group of retired boxers. The novel “China Boy” resonates with strong characterizations, evocate descriptions of San Francisco in the 1950s and the righteous indignation of abused innocence. The author of the novel, Gs Lee, is a semiautobiographical account of growing up in a conflict ridden family who is unable to completely embrace either American or Chinese culture. He defines the story as an enthralling situation of family associations, the perils of boyhood and the hardness of being Chinese in San Francisco of 1950s. Works cited Gus Lee. China Boy. Dutton Books United States, 2009. Print. Read More