Chinese Cinderella
Chinese Cinderella is a beautifully written autobiography by Adeline Yen Mah, describing the experiences she went through as a young child. There are many similarities in the stories including, an unkind stepmother, unkind siblings, neglectful fathers, but there are also kind characters like Aunt Baba or the fairy Godmother, who are some of the very few people who care for Adeline or Cinderella.
The author indicates that Adeline Yen Mah is an unloved child. Having a father and stepmother who don’t love her, Adeline struggles to find a way to cope and this makes it even harder to confine in her friends about this. One day Adeline had been forgotten to be picked up from school and had to find her way home. “I realised that nobody had missed me”. “They didn’t even know I wasn’t home”. This proves that not only is she lonely but invisible to her family. In the fairytale ‘Cinderella’, Cinderella is forced out into the attic and forgotten about, but when they find out she was the beautiful lady at the ball, they suddenly remembered her and pretended they cared about her. The reader is made to feel sorry Cinderella, who must now try to find a way to help her get through her situation.
The autobiography ‘Chinese Cinderella’ links back to the original fairytale Cinderella many times. Like when both fathers in each story neglect their first wives children.This sh...
