Blossom Beeby
Blossom Beeby, an adopted Korean child is brought up in a “manufactured” white family and her Asian-ness is suppressed. She identifies herself “inside” as a Caucasian person as a reflection of her surroundings; however when she looks in the mirror she sees a “foreigner”. This sense of difference or confusion between the experience of self and physical appearance leads to a sense of denial and rejection. She feels empty.
Because of her confusion, she experiences conflict and rebels. Her relationships with migrants help her evaluate her place in the world and she becomes more comfortable among people of ethnic origins. “It was the first time I’d felt comfortable being an Asian”. Once again, her identity is to take an important turn when she returns “home” to expose the myths of origin relating to her mother and the circumstances of her birth.
Tasks
- Write a checklist of Blossom Beeby’s views and values
2. Write a list of Beeby’s story-telling/narrative devices. What techniques does she use and how do these techniques reflect her message?
3. Practice sentences with an analytical focus. See the sentence models.
4. See p. 57. How to Write an A + Text Response. Choose 2-3 prompts. Write a list of statements connecting Beeby’s views and values and message to the prompt. What evidence would you use?
DR JENNY’S TIPS: How can I improve my English?
Practice your statements which you will adapt to a variety of prompts. You must be as analytically precise as possible.
The following sentences are vague and generic:
- The story provides flashbacks of Beeby’s life growing up.
- The world revolves around the concept of identity and belonging with Beeby’s story being a prime example of such.
- The way that Beeby faced her conflicts allowed her to find who she was and shape her as a person.
PS: Always use the present tense to evaluate the author’s views, values, evidence and examples otherwise you will be switching between past and present tense.
Compare with the sentences below.
Statements and a checklist: Link to Identity
- This sense of a gap (slippage) between the experience of self and physical appearance leads to a sense of denial and rejection that haunts her and leaves her feeling displaced, raw and empty. She has self-doubts because of the tendency to ignore and suppress her ethnicity.
- Blossom Beeby feels a sense of loss, denial and emptiness because the image she sees in the mirror is not the person she feels comfortable with; she experiences her Asian-ness as something “inferior” to her white surroundings.
- Relationships are critical to our sense of self and as relationships change so does our self-image
- Beeby returns home, thinking that she will be able to “find” herself but she realises that she lacks a close bond with her home and with her mother
Narrative / story-telling devices and language features
- The mirror imagery: BB uses numerous images of self reflection to convey her cultural confusion and the disjointed image of herself. As a Korean, she finds herself in a white environment. As the only Asian kid at school, her Asian-ness is pushed to the ‘crevice of her mind” and she experiences her ethnicity as somehow inferior. It is negated and she comes to experience her ethnicity as something to be rejected. (“For much of my childhood, my Asian-ness was pushed to a crevice in the back of my mind”.
- The imagery of the clothing label to capture her parents’ manufactured style of parenting (an “adoptive parenting manual”)
- Compare and contrast techniques: the picture-table book provides idyllic images of the cherry blossoms but a “shrivelled” up picture of the old woman
- A “before” and an “after” self: Beeby begins to associate more people of her own ethnicity (a “cultural hodge podge”); she begins to feel more comfortable. Her sense of comfort contrasts with her earlier feelings of shame… The difference between these two selves captures her emotional journey.
Sentence models: (See the Language of Analysis pp 36-40)
- Beeby juxtaposes A with B (to place side by side)
- Beeby draws a correlation between
- The metaphoric/symbolic reference to the inverted mirror captures …
- The image of the “clothing label” functions as a metaphoric reflection of …
Write one or two paragraphs in response to the prompt: Discovering who we are and where we belong can be challenging.
Search for “self” : her roots
Blossom Beeby gains a different perspective on her identity and changes after she sees an advertisement in a fashion magazine. Formerly, she thought that Asian people could not possibly be beautiful. Brought up in a white environment as an adopted Korean child, her “asianness” was pushed to the crevice of her mind. She saw herself as inferior. But after seeing the beautiful Asian model, she realised she did not have to be ashamed of her ethnicity and began to realise that she could be proud of her appearance.
- Tips on grammar: See the sentence evaluation.
- Return to An Australian Anthology: a snapshot of literary landscapes