It's interesting how the idea of ideals continually comes into play, especially with things so fundamental to a culture like language. Saying that Chinese is "ugly" and "not beautiful like Japanese sayonara words" almost doesn't make sense, until the description "with the consonants and vowels as regular as Italian" (Kingston 171). I'm not saying that the sentiment isn't unhappy or frustrating, but at least the idea makes sense here, why Americans seem to be so uncomfortable with Chinese. As a language, it sounds harsher and less 'familiar' than Japanese does, if only because of the tones and multiple different sounds. In terms of speaking, Japanese is much easier to pick up than Chinese for the same reason; grammatically, it has clear syllables and distinct blocks. It's simply easier to break apart than Chinese, which probably contributes to why it sounds more familiar.
Development of writing (Chinese -> Japanese).
The fact that to her mother's eyes, buying candy would be "sneaky and bad" is another illustration of how different cultures can be. The clash of cultures is crushing the Chinese-American girls to the point that they can't speak up in class, that they resort to being "cute and small" so "no one hurts" them (170). It isn't even just the clash of cultures that's crushing them; the vestiges of their Chinese past still lie around them, and still end up tormenting them. The idea that their own relatives call them "maggots" so frequently that they commiserate over it at the dining table, the idea that it's become so common-place...that put together with the way 'slave' means the female 'I' and how 'dustpan-and-broom' is a synonym for 'wife' shows how ingrained into the culture the idea that girls were inferior is (204).
Wife?
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