Mulberry Child Analysis

The feeling that I would feel if I found out that my mother didn’t want me because she had too many kids would be unbearable. In Mulberry child Jian Ping says “I wasn’t supposed to be born. My mother didn’t want me, not at first. She tried to get rid of me, but I was stubborn.” (Ping 5) Her mother Gu Wenxiu tried to have an abortion but in that time period they encouraged people to have as many children as possible. She even tired things on her own. Things such swinging off the monkey bars and falling on her back, and birth control. Even though her mother didn’t want her at first she now loves her dearly, but her mother isn’t the only one that plays a key role in her life. Jian Ping’s grandmother Nai Nai plays a huge role as a motherly figure in her life, takes care of the Jian and taught her how to care for others. “In the Chinese …show more content…
As it Jian says in the book when she was able to go home “Nai Nai, my grandmother who had been living with our family for five years, welcomed me with open arms.” (Ping 10) After reading that part of the book told me already the kind of person that Nai Nai was. She was a kind and caring person who would be there whenever someone needed her. She came across as a motherly figure even though she was not Jians real mother. “Nai Nai set up an old cradles by her bed. She took me under her protection.” (Ping 10) Since Nai Nai had rasied four children of her own she knew all the right things to do to help out with and take care of a new born baby. It is motherly like to naturally want to take care of children, and in every way Jians grandmother took care of Jian. The connection that Jian and Nai Nai have is one that no other grandmother and granddaughter have ever had before. Since Jian was ill and was born prematurely she need special care and attention from her mother and Nai Nai, and Nai Nai would go out of her way to take care of Jian and her siblings in any