Chapter 1 Reflection: Heavy hitting start! Heart wrenching description of this little boy with his deceased Mother, leaving her behind and being placed in an unfamiliar environment. I am very interested in why the professor wants Robin. I found three things most impactful: Robin not being able to keep his name, the Cantonese man and ship worker translation scene, and Robin shedding all of his past to survive. Not being able to keep his name really strips him of identity off the bat. The professor had seemingly no empathy for this matter. The translation scene was impactful due to the blatant racism and it really introduced the power of language that I assume will be prevalent throughout the book. It was clear that Robin didn’t want to translate what was said, but was in a position where he had to and he was the only one with the power to do so. Despite that power, he couldn’t change the negative impact the words would have. Last, the description of Robin completely cutting out his heritage is just devastating, but shows the atrocious expectation to conform. Not only is everyone else forgetting he’s Chinese , but he is too. And let’s also remember…. this is all being related back to language. He is speaking English in his head , speaking English out loud and dropping a lot of his accent. All of which is making him “less Chinese.”
