In the scene, the mother is looking at a language that she knows well and being unable to understand it in the form it’s written because of the ways in which the new values are literally embodied in it. There’s a moment early in the novel when the narrator’s mother is trying to understand updated Chinese language, which was changed after the revolution to reflect statist ideals. The novel also spends some in the future from 1991 where some further exploring into the family and family connections happen. This cousin, we will find out is a kind of political refugee making her way to Canada after the protests and massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The novel begins in Canada in 1991 when our narrator is expecting a cousin to arrive to live with her and her mother. Because as outsiders to the story, we have some of the official history, there’s a kind of dramatic irony involved, but especially because of the way information is restricted and controlled in authoritarian regimes. This is a multi-generational family novel, but because of the fractured nature of the family and the family history, the narrative is considerably fractured as well. “In a single year, my father left us twice.”
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