In What You Don't Know, Lulu Wang shares a story about her grandmother, Nainai, who was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and was given three months to live. Nainai is from China and some of Nainai's relatives live in America and Japan. A few things happened within their family and how they responded was different from how my culture would have responded. NaiNai sister got the results of Nainai physical which diagnosed her with stage four cancer. So that’s how some of the family members knew about Nainai’s secret. The doctor told Nainai sister, which Lulu call her little Nainai, that she should get Nainai hospitalized. Little Nainai said her sister was too old and then she would have to tell her the bad news about her health. Little Nainai said she didn’t want her sister to know the bad news about her health because she would get depressed and won’t eat. Lulu mother told Lulu about her grandmother and explained that it wasn’t “permitted” for her to tell her grandmother about her health. Lulu was stunn. So the family is just telling NaiNai lies about her health. They want Nainai to be happy and not depressed. They did have big gathering for Nainai by having a early wedding so that everybody can spend time with her. No one said anything about Nainai’s secret.
Argumentative Response: Did you agree with the family's choice to deceive Wang's grandmother? No, I didn’t agree with the family’s choice to deceive Wang’s grandmother because my culture is different. Within my culture and if I think they did the right thing no. I believe they should have told Nainai because everyone should have say so on they own life. Some people may want to do something special that they never did in life. If they know they only have a few weeks to live I think they deserve to know. They might even want to have special studies about their religion. They might even want to do something special with their family and or friends. It was thoughtful and nice what they did for Nainai but I don’t think it was right. If someone tell you in advance to do something like that then that’s a different story. I believe everyone should accept everything that goes on in their life and deal with. Lulu was stunned because she wanted to spend time and grieve with her grandmother but she couldn’t because it was a secret she couldn’t share with her grandmother. Nainai’s son was speaking at the wedding and it was a shame his mother didn’t know how he really felt he was hurt, about that secret. That’s why I think it’s important to let a person know what’s going on in their life so they can do what they want to do and have a choice on what they want to do in their life. Narrative Response: When have you made an important choice to tell someone a difficult truth or you made an important choice to tell a lie that had a major impact on you and/or someone else? Years ago, I probably was around nineteen years old when I made an important choice to tell someone a difficult truth. My husband and I met when I was eighteen. I was a nice young lady but I did do some fun things when I was younger and my husband also. My family didn’t like me with no male friends especially on my father side. My grandmother on my father’s side her name was Irene and my grandmother on my mother side was Florence. I was the first grandchild for both grandmother’s. That’s why of course when I speak about one I have to say something about the other. They use to argue about me all the time. Ok my grandmother Irene had five sons. So I was the first girl, granddaughter. My grandma Florence had five girls and three boys. So as I got older father and uncle was very strict. I was nineteen and already had kids they still was act strict. They would scare the guy away. My husband family was very nice and the went to church all the time. My husband is the only child. He was brought up very nice, respectful and especially to his grandmother and mother. He couldn’t fix his mouth to say he did anything wrong, he would lie first. My family taught me to be kind respectful tell the truth and all the above. My family grew to love my husband and my husband family grew to love me. One day when I was around nineteen (my husband and I were friends then), we were out at a party and we smoked some joints. I really didn’t smoke like that and neither did my husband. Before that night he barely smoke only occasions but after that night he was going in, smoking everyday. One day my husband mother called me and was asking me questions. For some reason I could not fix my mouth to say a lie and I didn’t even want to try. I knew my husband wouldn’t want his mother to know that he smoked refer. That was the worst but I told her the truth because that’s how I am. That’s how I was raised. I told her yes he smoke refer. So that was the difficult truth. *I have revised this post so some of the comments posted below might not be responding to the new content here.
8 Comments
|
Regina KingI will use this Blog to discuss course materials. Archives
December 2017
Categories
All
|