Monkey Bridge Chapter 6

5 Comments

1] Mai's mother was a very messy and disorganized person, and often felt like a "fugitive" in her own home.
2] Mai's mother often wrote journal entries about her life, and in one particular entry, she writes about her life in Vietnam and how HER mother was getting married and how she wanted to pass down her wisdom to Mai. Her "Awesome Ears" as she calls it.
3] Mai's grandmothers wedding started off uneventful, and she married at the age of 14? (Book does not describes that part).
4] Mai's mother was born with "heavenly ears". They were so long that they were compared with pictures of Buddha. It was believed that her ears broke the karma and fear of the traditional ears cut off from pigs.
5] Mai didn't feel comfortable with who she was, and as her mother describes her, she doesnt like blemishes and imperfection.

4 Questions
1] Why were the ears of pigs cut off in the ceremony of a marriage?
2] What it bad luck if a girl did not bled three drops of blood on her marriage night?
3] Why didn't Mai accept her Vietnamese culture? Was she ashamed?
4] How old was Mai's mother when she wrote the entry?

3 Vocabulary
1] Peculiar: Strange; odd.
2] Sidled: To move sideways or obliquely.
3] Catacomb: Usually, catacombs. an underground cemetery, esp. one consisting of tunnels and rooms with recesses dug out for coffins and tombs.

2 Literary Terms
1] "My mother's bedroom was dark, emptied her." - Metaphor.
2] "I threw myself on her bed and felt the seemingly infinte silence, the expanse of sadness that was peculiarly hers, dissolve inside my body." -Metaphor.

1 Overview Sentence
In this chapter of the book, Mai's mother wrote a journal entry about her life in Vietnam and about her mother. It describes her mothers wedding and how she was born and what she wants for her daughter.