ive role in American society.
Kai's family teaches him the essentials of his native Chinese culture in a way which created a joyous and profound connection between the boy and his heritage. His mother was at the center of such an education which would later serve him well in his coming of age experiences:
I loved bedtime, when my mother sat by my pillow, holding me in her lap to read books that she drew from the redwood crate. She read about mounter warriors who fought pirates on the east coast of Africa during the twenty-five-thousand-man expeditions in the early fifteenth century, about Bannermen archers who walked a thousand miles, crossing the Great Wall from Manchuria (Lee 47).
Kai is raised to express himself artistically, in writing and in music, so that he is able to develop not only his natural talents, but also his self-esteem. These tools and attitudes would also come to serve him well as he underwent the transition from boy to young man.
When his mother dies, his father summarizes the difference between the old culture of China and the new culture of America (or Chinese-America) with which the boy would now gave to deal: "It is no longer good enough to measure a man by what he knows.
. . . That is the old world, the old China, standard. Now what counts is this: what can a man do?" (Lee 54).
Kai is sent to live with the Philadelphia society woman, and although it is a rough transition, he maintains the sense of humor---if dark humor---that would make his coming of age far more bearable than it would have been otherwise: "Edna Madalyn McGurk . . . was a college graduate in English literature from Smith, was primly handsome, and had missed her calling when the SS closed its ranks to all comers after the demise of Hitler" (Lee 55).
Edna is so prejudiced that she is unaware of her prejudice. She symbolizes bigotry in America, treating the boy and his heritage as if it were a curse:
I can't stand h...