Ali
In this paragraph, the author further builds on her claim by contrasting Alice in Wonderland to the conventional fairy tale. She also gave specific examples of how it is different than classic fairy tales we know about and reaches a conclusion that Alice in Wonderland is a work full of imagination. It would be better if the author point her final claim clearly in the end, so that the audiences would better understand why she compared between two types of fairy tales.
W
In this paragraph, the author brings in another source to talked about different types of fairy tales, which served as different functions. Unlike the one mentioned in the previous paragraph, which focused on the imagination within fairy tales, this paragraph focused on the type which has education purpose for students. It taught how to behave, and set rules for them, which is the opposite of what the common people know about fairy tales.
In
The author introduce a new source in order to give the audiences the context of what the society was like back then. She talked about during Industrial Revolution, people's lives were restricted by many rules, and gave the reason why imagination is so important back then. Also, the author talked about the functions of fairy tales, as well as fairy tale writer's motivation for their work. It informed the audiences the history of fairy tales.
The
The author talked about why imagination would attract herself as well as Victorian audiences, and gave definitions to the word "imagination".
I
The author introduced her artifact, and talked about the reason why the work is so successful. In this case, it is well connected, and build on with the previous paragraph, because it now talked about why it is interesting to other readers as well.
I
This paragraph tells the audiences the author's problem. It shows why the author is interested in her subject, which is "Alice in Wonderland".
When the festivities
This paragraph described about the senerio after the feast is over. She then describe the emptiness that she felt because of her non-traditional Chinese family.
Sometimes my mother
The author talked about her point of view of her current-situation; that is, she is satisfied with the non-traditional Chinese lifestyle. She preferred to live in the way that she was preferred to. The function of the paragraph is to summarize her opinion and state her own attitude toward the current life.
Bingo, I said, I’ve never in my life played that.
Bingo is a foreign game to the author. It is a culture difference between Chinese and Americans.
“To kill time,”
It is a English idiom. It means that to spend time on meaningless matters.
“We all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them.”
She compared herself to George Eliot, because George Eliot is a female writer, yet she wrote in man's tone. It is an analogy to her own situation, because she's Chinese, yet she wrote in English.
Li Po or Du Fu
They are ancient Chinese poet
Nabokov and Conrad
Both Nabokov and Conrad wrote in their second language.
The tragedy of Nabokov’s loss is that his misfortune was easily explained by public history.
She referenced to Nabokov to explain why a tragedy is not private.
She learned the song in kindergarten, the year Communism took over her home town; she can remember only the opening line.
it is a historical event that happened in China, which is called the Cultural Revolution. It is a very painful period during the Chinese history, and the reason that her mother can't remember the song might be she doesn't want to recall that painful memory.
A burden to her loved ones: this language must have been provided to me. I would never use the phrase in my thinking or my writing.
"A burden to her loved ones" is an idiom that the author, as a Chinese, never used before.
To be orphaned
A metaphor. It's talking about how she abandoned her mother language and forget about her pass.