94 pages • 3 hours read
Adeline Yen MahFalling Leaves
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1997A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Chinese Characters
The power of language and storytelling extends to Ye Ye’s study of Chinese characters and calligraphy, especially the word ren (endure). As Ye Ye explains:
Divide ren (endure) into its two components, top and bottom. The top component, dao, means knife, but it has a sheath in the center of the rapier. The bottom component, xin means heart. Combined together, the word is telling a story. Though my son is wounding my heart, I shall ensheath the pain and live through it (77).
Thus, the term ren (endure) serves as a metaphor for Adeline’s own process of surviving and persevering through childhood and adulthood: she sheathes her pain and uses it to guide her to happiness and home.
Chinese characters such as ren also serve as a connective tissue between the Yens’ familial pain (and endurance) and the broader historical experience of Chinese people. As Ye Ye further illuminates: “To me, the word ren (endure) represents the epitome of Chinese culture and civilization” (77).
Chinese Proverbs
Falling Leaves is organized into thirty-two different Chinese proverbs that serve as both the chapter titles and thematic summaries of each section. Each proverb is written in Chinese characters and phonetic Chinese words, and retranslated into English. While the significance of this layered expression and translation is left open, it bespeaks much of Adeline Yen Mah’s coming of age between the Chinese-speaking cities of Shanghai and Tinajin, and the English-speaking countries of England and the US.
The title of the book itself is a reference to a Chinese proverb: “duo ye guy gen (falling leaves return to their roots)” (3). In the opening of the book, this proverb evokes the image of the Yen children returning to Hong Kong and gathering as a family, returning to their legacy, their “roots.” By the end of the book, however, this proverb assumes a different tone in the light of Aunt Baba’s peaceful death. Adeline recognizes the bond between them as women who have endured much hardship, who have harnessed their pain in the manner of Ye Ye’s ren character. Reflecting on this idea, Adeline feels a “wave of repose, a peaceful serenity” (274).
The Will
Falling Leaves begins with a family gathering wherein Niang announces that Joseph has left his children no money in his will. As she and her siblings passively handing over their copies of the will without questioning this puzzling announcement, Adeline explains that this interaction characterizes their collective passivity in the face of Niang and embodies their troubled familial experience.
This troubled familial experience extends to Niang’s will, which inspires even more heated sibling rivalries (especially between Lydia and Adeline). The will becomes a vehicle for Niang to assert her dominion over the family even after her death, stirring up antipathy between her stepchildren (which was how she maintained her control of them). When James points out to Adeline that Niang would’ve wanted her to fight him over her disinheritance, Adeline realizes that the financial aspect of the disinheritance doesn’t really matter to her. Rather, she is hurt by the idea that she doesn’t belong within the family, that she will never be fully accepted by them.
