Scar

“When I was a young girl in China, my grandmother told me my mother was a ghost. This did not mean my mother was dead. In those days, a ghost was anything we were forbidden to talk about.” In this passage, a ghost is a symbol for something that should not be said or talked about. By telling An-Mei that her mother was a ghost, her grandmother was saying that her that her mother should not be mentioned.

Many people keep their feelings holed up inside them, never letting anyone know that something is wrong. “That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.” In this chapter, An-Mei has a scar from having hot soup spilled on her when her mother came to visit. The soup scalded An-Mei’s skin and her mother left immediately. After her mother left, An-Mei was hurt both physically and emotionally. Over time her wound healed, the scar replaced it, and she suppressed her hurt. From the outside no one could tell anything was wrong.

This reminds me of a character in Thirteen Reasons Why. In the book, a girl had bad things happen to her. Instead of telling someone, she kept her feelings to herself where they built up. She tried to suppress her feelings so that no one would know about her wounds until she could no longer handle them. Both An-Mei and the girl had wounds that they kept to themselves, hidden from other people.