In Perfect Match, Nina Frost (Assistant District Attorney) lost it when her own son was raped by a priest. Instead of putting faith in the faulty legal system, she shot the child abuser dead in court.
My daughter read this book some time ago but she remembered this plot and said that it was one of the best she came across. I was born with a slant with words and grew up with adults telling me that I should become a lawyer to use my gift. Some how I did not but quite a few of my closest friends are in the legal profession.
Perhaps I was rather sheltered, I honestly can claim that I did not personally know of any child abuse victims in my country. Well, in the East, such things are buried and everyone concerned considered it best forgotten. And so, my readers probably wondered why I choose to elaborate on response to such a book.
A short recap: I suffered emotionally from some form of learning disability as a child. At 21, I witnessed first hand how angry a full blown dyslexic child was when taunted by peers that he could not read. The trip I made to a self diagnosis became a life long passion. I worked with my own children. Then I took in other people's children to help them to over come obstacles in learning. Ultimately I become a listener to women who might have overcome all the learning obstacles but whose lives were plagued by unresolved anger, frustration, irrational fears and whatever emotional scars caused by the desperate fight many years ago.
Recently I heard of two children in my church. A teenage boy who aimed high to become a medical doctor found that he was not made for studying the sciences at age 16. In fact no matter how hard he worked, his grades fell. Until now I hesitate to get involved. Both the mother (who is kind of a friend) and the teenager are Chinese educated. Even if I reveal my blog name and ask them to read the relevant blog, they are not going to understand enough to help the situation.
The other child is seven years old. His parents sent him to a Chinese primary school. He is already displaying the classic symptoms of not being able to cope in class. In fact his back ground is rather interesting. His mother possesses two degrees and is an educator in a local college. His father, I don't know his educational back ground, works in a restaurant selling a local delicacy. Since both sets of grand parents have money, the boy will turn out ok in the end. But even as I think about their decision to put him in a Chinese school, I get angry. He may end up with much baggage and lots of emotional scarring. I somehow survived with my perfect recall (long ago I probably functioned as a photostat machine, which explained why I excelled in Chinese which is made up of unique ideograms), and now I can still pick up knowledge easily as I can elect to turn on an in built tape recorder. But funnily enough, I live in a house full of English books but you would be hard pressed to find a single Chinese book. No, I don't hate the Chinese language. On the contrary, I do love Chinese literature and Chinese poems. At some point, I should rewrite my entire set of blogs in Chinese. But I delay and I drag my feet. I suppose it is all a matter of time. My next person to listen to is talking to me in Cantonese now. In a few years' time I would have acquired all the working vocabulary in Cantonese to explain about the learning process and the emotional journey she struggled through. By then, it would be easier to type in Chinese characters without bothering with Han Yu Pin Yin.
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