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Contents
Suyuan's American-born daughter and the novel's closest thing to a central narrator. She feels like a disappointment to her mother and spends the book trying to understand who Suyuan really was. Her trip to China at the end is the novel's emotional payoff.
Jing-mei's mother, who dies before the novel begins. Her story, told in pieces, anchors the whole book. She fled China during the war, lost her twin daughters, and rebuilt her life in America. Her absence forces Jing-mei to finally pay attention.
A mother who survived an arranged marriage through sheer cleverness. She is proud, controlling, and deeply invested in her daughter Waverly's success. Her pride reads as pressure, but it comes from a woman who had to fight hard for every inch of freedom she ever got.
Lindo's daughter, a former chess prodigy. She is sharp and competitive, but she is also afraid of her mother's judgment. Her story shows how a mother's pride can feel like a cage even when it comes from love.
The most haunted of the mothers. She lost her spirit after her first husband abandoned her and she destroyed her pregnancy. In America she became passive and ghostlike. She sees her daughter Lena repeating her mistakes and cannot find the words to stop it.
Ying-ying's daughter, trapped in a marriage built on false equality. Her husband's insistence on splitting everything fifty-fifty is a way of keeping emotional distance. Lena knows the arrangement is wrong but cannot act until her mother's visit forces the question.
A mother whose own mother was shamed as a concubine and eventually died by suicide to give An-mei a better position. An-mei takes from this a fierce belief in speaking up. She pushes her daughter Rose to stop being passive.
An-mei's daughter, going through a divorce she did not initiate. She has spent her life letting others decide for her, partly out of guilt over her brother's drowning. By the end, she finds her voice and changes the terms of her situation.
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