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Emily X. R. PanA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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A flashback to Leigh’s freshman year shows Leigh searching through some boxes in her family’s basement for evidence about her maternal relatives. While she is doing so, Axel stops by and tells her that he broke up with Leanne because he could not figure out who he was. Leigh tells him about the trouble she has been having at home with her mother.
All seems to be forgiven between them when they exchange their homemade Christmas gifts. Axel makes Leigh a projection to accompany the Lockhart Orchard music tracks. Their eyes meet and they exchange an intimate look.
Back in her Taipei bedroom, Leigh wishes she did not think about Axel because doing so reminds her of the day her mother died. She wonders whether she can control the memories, and she notes that when she lit the incense stick with the feather, it “mixed in memories that weren’t mine, moments I didn’t know had happened” (158). She lights a new incense stick and takes up the leaves she stole from tea with her grandmother and Feng.
Leigh observes the moment of her grandmother Yuanyang’s birth. As a baby, Yuanyang is adopted into another family. She is raised to be the perfect wife for the family’s son Ping, but all the while she wonders about her birth family. She inhales the substance of the green tea leaves, hoping to learn “the secrets of the land” (163).
Although Leigh feels that the memory is real, she is sad that she is experiencing it through “wisps” of incense smoke rather than through her mother’s stories about her own mother.
Leigh has cut up all her shirts and successfully constructed her bird net. However, she only sees a temporary illusion of the ceiling giving way to blackness and oblivion.
Leigh receives an email from Axel. Axel describes how, before Leigh woke up, he would often go over on Sundays and talk to her mother. He mentions that Dory liked Emily Dickinson and that she recited a poem about having “lost a world the other day” (169). Axel wondered what world Leigh’s mother had lost.
During freshman year, during Leigh and Axel’s search through the boxes, they find a box full of unopened letters addressed to Dory. The letters are in Chinese and have a return address in Taiwan. There is also a book of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Leigh imagines that the letters are from her grandparents and worries that they do not know that she exists. When she opens one of the letters, she finds a black-and-white photograph of two little girls. Although Leigh does not see any familiarity in the photograph, that night she dreams that older versions of the girls in the picture demand to know her identity. When Leigh tells them, they say her mother does not have a daughter. Leigh wakes up “right as they were about to erase my head” (175).
Back in Taipei, Leigh’s recurring dream of her mother as a bird is different. This time, one of the bird’s claws disintegrates.
Upon waking up on the 42nd day after her mother’s death, Leigh realizes her dream means that with every passing day, her mother’s presence is diminishing. Leigh knows she must find her mother urgently. She goes out to a park with her grandfather Waigong, and she wonders whether he is Ping, the adopted brother who her grandmother was supposed to marry. They bring a purple flower back to her grandmother.
Over breakfast with her grandparents and Feng, Leigh’s ire at Feng’s persistent presence grows. Still, she has to accept Feng as a translator if she is to understand what is going on. They listen to a CD with music by Teresa Tang that Dory played and improvised on at the piano. Then, Leigh asks her grandmother why she was given to another family and whether her grandfather was her grandmother’s adopted brother. Her grandmother explains that she was given away because her family was poor and it made better economic sense to sell her to another family who already had a son, because then she would be raised to that family’s liking and become a suitable daughter-in-law.
When the father of Yuanyang’s adopted family died, her adopted brother Ping became wild, and her adopted mother said she did not have to marry him. One day Yuanyang’s biological brother came to say that her birth family had made their fortune with a hotel and they could afford to take her back. It was at the hotel that Yuanyang met and fell in love with one of the guests, who would become Leigh’s grandfather. However, Leigh’s grandmother still aimed to look after the deteriorating health of her adoptive mother and was devastated when she died.
Leigh sits in her room and thinks about the “huge, dark chasm” (188) where her family life fell apart following her mother’s death. She wonders whether her net will be large enough to catch the bird. Two emails come through, one from her father, the other from Axel. Axel’s features a recording he made of Leigh’s mother playing the Teresa Tang song that Leigh listened to with her family.
On the last day of winter break during her freshman year, Leigh’s father approaches her for a conversation. He tells her that she is wasting her time focusing on art. She asks him about the Emily Dickinson book in the basement. He says that Dory told him on their second date that she absolutely hated Emily Dickinson. However, when their relationship was long distance, Dory said that she had written him a poem that was actually by Emily Dickinson. Leigh enjoys this romantic story as evidence of her parents’ love; however, she cannot understand why it feels like her family is crumbling. She also feels that her father is becoming distant from the family.
Back in Taipei, Leigh feels that she is going mad with her memories and decides to light another stick of incense. The bird left behind a box with Leigh’s childhood drawing for her father. She cannot bring herself to burn it to access the memory. Instead, she watches a vision of the room disintegrating and the bird dropping a feather.
Leigh enters into her father’s memory of her as an eight-year-old girl, handing him a drawing. The vision also shows Leigh’s smiling mother bringing her a birthday gift. Second, there is the memory of Dory at Leigh’s high school art show, proudly pointing out Leigh’s creations. Third, there is a memory of Leigh’s grandmother in her late forties. Then Leigh hears piano music, and her grandmother hurries away as though she does not wish to be seen.
Leigh feels utterly haunted by her memories and the feeling that her family were once the “standard colors of a rainbow” and are now “murky colors made dark and complicated by resentment and quiet anger” (208). Her phone begins playing the Teresa Tang track that Axel sent her.
Leigh comes home one February day in her freshman year to find that her mother is horizontal on the couch and that she has dialed 911. The emergency services arrive and take Leigh and her mother to hospital. Leigh does not understand what has happened, and her father leaves her in the dark.
The next day Leigh stays at home with her mother and notices that she has a bottle of prescription pills, which Dory describes as “my new life” (214). The next day, with Axel, Leigh speculates that her mother is depressed. They talk about Axel’s mother, who ran out on the family when Axel was only six, and wonder whether it is possible to be in love and unhappy.
Leigh recalls when she and her father went to see her mother playing piano in a concert. Leigh considers that her mother was at home in the music.
Back in Taipei, Leigh, Feng, and her grandmother visit the Catholic church where Dory was taught to play piano by a gifted nun. Although a digital piano has replaced the one her mother played on, Leigh thinks she can hear someone playing the piano. A young man appears and asks whether Leigh is American. He makes a comment that Feng does not care to translate.
At Shilin Night market, vendors remark on Leigh’s foreign appearance and Feng translates that a giant red bird appeared to one of them. When Feng reveals that the market was Dory’s favorite and that Dory traveled far and wide to sample the fish balls, Leigh snaps. She asks Feng to stop pretending that she knew her mother, as though she was a member of the family herself. When Feng protests that she is only trying to help Leigh, Leigh says she does not need any help. Feng excuses herself and leaves Leigh alone with her grandmother.
Back in her grandmother’s apartment, Leigh tries to push Feng out of her mind and works on her net. She wonders whether she is a tetrachromat, someone who can see colors that other people cannot. She is sure that birds are tetrachromatic animals. She is as sure of the red bird’s existence as she is of her own.
The summer before Leigh’s sophomore year, Leigh’s father insists that she go to a sleepaway camp. Leigh does not want to go and leave her depressed mother alone.
When she is forcibly sent off and detests the experience, Axel comes to get her. They spend the night in a motel, and the sexual tension between them mounts, even though nothing happens.
Back in Taipei, Leigh is swept up in the process of remembering, with colors accompanying the process.
The summer before Leigh’s sophomore year, Leigh returns home from camp to learn that she was sent there so that her mother could receive the type of electroconvulsive therapy that would change her brain chemistry. Apparently, the medication and psychotherapy approach that usually works on other patients has been ineffective on her. Brian also tells Leigh that Dory has been battling depression all her life. Leigh sees that her mother appears more normal following the treatment and believes that everything will turn out fine.
Back in Taipei, when Leigh is unable to sleep, she puts her fingers into the memory box and retrieves a folded sketch where Axel drew her on one side and she drew him on the other. Unfolded, the sketch shows them smiling at each other.
Leigh has a succession of three memories. In the first, she overhears a conversation between her mother and father, in which Brian expresses concern that Leigh only has one friend and is too intensely into art. While Dory thinks Leigh should do what she loves, Brian worries that art will not be enough to provide for her or make her happy. In the next memory, Leigh’s father inspects and takes a picture of a charcoal drawing Leigh did of Axel’s shoes. In the third memory, Leigh’s mother is making waffles for Axel while Leigh is still asleep; she tells him that he and Leigh are lucky to have each other.
Leigh is aware that she only has six days left to find her mother. However, she visits the park with her grandfather, and they play a game together and watch a cicada shedding its skin.
Leigh wonders whether her mother ever saw a cicada molting, and whether she had a similar desire for rebirth and renewal.
Back at the apartment, Leigh notices that her grandmother is melancholy and missing Feng. Leigh decides to show her the box of memories. When she gets to the picture with the two girls, she asks who they are. Her grandmother does not answer. When Leigh lights the incense sticks, there is not so much a vision as an earthquake-like tremor, which causes the floor to give way beneath them.
Following the gale, Leigh first sees a vision of her and her grandmother in a field, and a box with all the contents her grandparents burned around her. Second, Leigh sees a vision of her father writing letters in Chinese to her grandparents and secretly mailing them pictures of Leigh and her artwork. Third, she sees a vision of her grandmother pregnant with a daughter. The daughter turns out to be her mother’s older sister Jingling, whom Leigh has never heard about. More scenes ensue that reveal Jingling to be responsible and obedient, while Dory, the younger daughter, was a musical genius with “dreams that stretch beyond being a perfect child, a perfect wife” (268). The final scene shows the sisters as college students at an international airport terminal, where Dory is getting ready to go abroad to the United States. Jingling imagines that Dory’s stay abroad will be temporary.
Leigh experiences the earthquake sensation again, and the scene evaporates.
There is ash everywhere, and Leigh’s net is charred and crumbling. She struggles to make sense of the fact that her mother has a sister. She also realizes that her net has broken because her grandmother was not meant to witness the memory.
When Leigh checks her emails, she responds to the one from her father, saying she wants to stay in Asia another week. Then she opens one from Axel, where he refers back to a conversation they had about being in love and there being “something weird” between them (274). He asks for her opinion on the matter. Leigh is overwhelmed.
The summer before Leigh’s sophomore year, she takes a break from worrying about her recovering mother to go to the creek with Axel, Caro, and Caro’s girlfriend Cheslin. At the creek, Cheslin strips off while Caro takes pictures of her and Axel and Leigh watch. The atmosphere is so intimate that Axel feels awkward and leads Leigh away. The two talk about the differences between love and lust. Leigh suggests that Axel might have reservations about falling in love because his mother left him when he was a child. He says he has feelings of love but does not know what to do about them. Leigh imagines that he is talking about his ex-girlfriend Leanne Ryan or perhaps another girl altogether.
Back in Taipei, when Leigh falls asleep near dawn, she can hear the flapping of wings and her mother calling her name. She wakes up to the taste of ash in her mouth.
On the 44th day after her mother’s death, Leigh panics and admits that she needs Feng’s assistance as a translator. She and her grandmother go to Feng’s apartment. Leigh apologizes to Feng, who accepts her apology, saying it is normal for grievers to be irrational and rude. She too has lost her family.
They go to a night market, and Leigh asks Feng to ask her grandmother about Jingling. Her grandmother replies that Jingling loved to eat and read Emily Dickinson. It is Ghost Month, meaning some of the food at the night market is kept aside as offerings for ghosts, who are the hungriest of all. Feng, who has seen ghosts herself, believes Leigh’s story about seeing her mother as a bird. Her grandmother even finds a long red feather from the bird.
Leigh is desperate to sleep but can only think of ghosts and colors. She thinks that she sees her mother, but the vision crumbles.
The fall of Leigh’s sophomore year, her art teacher, Dr. Nagori, says her work is strong enough to submit to Kreis, an art show for emerging artists in Berlin. When she goes home, Dory is enthusiastic, telling Leigh that she must not back out because she is afraid. Leigh snaps at her mother because she is not excited by the prospect. She realizes that this is because Axel has not been invited to submit a portfolio; she sees art as something that the two of them do together. Axel, meanwhile, says that music is more his art form and does not mind at all that Leigh was selected to apply for the art show.
Leigh notes that he has been spending more time on his music and that Leanne is also a band member. She is upset by the reintroduction of Leanne into Axel’s life but does not say anything about it.
In the middle chapters of the novel, Leigh continues searching for her mother in Taipei, while night visions lead her through her maternal family history and allow her to reexperience the events prior to Dory’s death. As Leigh experiences flashbacks and probes into her mother and grandmother’s past, she learns that both women subverted Chinese ideals of womanhood. While Leigh’s grandmother followed the typical Chinese example of being given away to a family with a son and being raised as a potential wife for him, her fate altered when her adopted mother claimed Yuanyang was too good for her son, and she eventually married the man she met at her biological parents’ hotel. Meanwhile, Dory goes a step further in subverting social expectations, as she “has so much more in mind” (268) for herself than being the perfect mother and wife and wants to explore her musical genius. Dory, who stands in counterpoint to Jingling, the obedient sister who died young in a tragic death, thus shows the wish to self-actualize and not simply be an obedient member of the community. Arguably, Leigh’s focus on her art despite her father’s demands that she should do something more practical and enterprising with her time shows that she has inherited her female ancestors’ gift for subversion, even though she does not resemble them physically.
In these chapters the sociable Feng, who claims to be an authority on Dory, becomes even more of an annoyance to Leigh, who is jealous of Feng and secretly believes she stands in the way of Leigh’s relationship with her grandmother. However, Feng’s departure leaves Leigh guilt-ridden and lost, until she learns to view Feng as a collaborator rather than a competitor.
Pan punctures the Taipei narrative with interludes of Leigh’s life leading up to her mother’s suicide. Leigh’s sense of responsibility toward her ailing mother and her estrangement from a father who does not seem to understand her give the impression that she was isolated and inadequately cared for during her early high school years. Pan reinforces Axe’s role as a fitting mate for Leigh, despite his dalliance with Leanne, owing to his own narrative of having a mother who walked out on him in childhood and to his deep connection with Dory. Despite the romantic complications between them, Leigh feels that she can trust and confide in Axel in the months prior to her mother’s suicide. Nevertheless, Leigh’s preoccupation with her mother’s well-being, and her inability to fully express and realize her romantic feelings for Axel, stunts her confidence and growth, as she lives in the shadow of fear and doubt.