Liberty Goddess (symbol)
Liberty Goddess is the symbol of the United States of America. Back in China, when Kimberley dreamt about America, “Liberty Goddess” was always present in her “old dreams of New York”. She thought they “would be living in Times Square”, for according to her, America was a country of equal opportunities, where everyone had plenty of various chances to succeed. That was New York she “dreamt of”. Liberty Goddess looked “so magnificent” and so did the rest of New York as soon as she got out of “slums of Brooklyn”, which were always associated with poverty.
A dead road (allegory)
A dead road is an allegory which stands for absence of any hope. According to Mrs. Chang, “the road we could follow in Hong Kong was a dead one”. She had every right to think so. Her parents were sentenced to death during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, her husband, Kimberley’s father, died, her friends were trying to flee from Hong Kong. Mrs. Chang brought her daughter to the country, where she “could become whatever you wanted”.
Adjusting (motif)
Kimberley has to admit that her life in the USA has nothing in common with her expectations. It is not easy to adjust. She compares everything with the way it used to be done “back home” and realizes that is “a different world”. Mrs. Chang gives up on herself in order to give Kimberley a chance to succeed. She says, “my days of being a refined music teacher are over”, but hurries up to reassure her that it is okay, because “that’s what a parent is for, to do whatever is necessary to give her child a good life”.
