Her Mother's Voice
By Anna Woo
Genre: General Fiction, Asian American Fiction
Her Mother’s Voice is about the mother-daughter relationship
and cultural conflicts. It is
about a Chinese mother who is dying of cancer and her adult daughter, Emily.
Emily consciously and unconsciously struggles with her Chinese identity due to
her experiences of racism and alienation, growing up as a second generation
Canadian in a mid-sized Ontario town. She struggles against being the good and dutiful
Chinese daughter, yet finds herself playing this role. Consequently, she finds herself
searching for a professional who can help cure her mother’s cancer. Western and Chinese medicine are pitted
against each other.
In addition, she has been hiding her romantic relationships
from her mother. Now with her mother dying, she is forced to face her fears and
become open about her current relationship with a White Anglo-Saxon man.
My Review
Her Mother’s Voice is a story about the complex relationship
between a Chinese mother and daughter. Lacking an emotional and physical connection to each other, Emily is thrown into a caregiver role
after her mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer.
I understood the anxiety and mental anguish Emily felt when
it came to pleasing her mom and debating introducing her white boyfriend to her
traditional mother. Her Mother’s Voice
is a quick read and I found the ending to be satisfying. I think readers who enjoy
a complicated family dynamic should give this book a shot.
Author Bio
Anna Woo was first published in 1993 in a collection of
short stories called Sharing our Experience, by the Canadian Advisory Council
on the Status of Women.
She has a Master Degree in Education in Counselling
Psychology from the University of Toronto/Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education (1997). As well, she
completed the Creative Writing program through The Humber School for Writers in
2002.
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