Looking at one main element of the writing, (structure, style, tone, texture, theme) create a blog post. This post should highlight one writerly technique, and make a statement about the function it has in the novel.
You should incorporate three quotes from FCC to back up your ideas about this writerly technique. Use the quotes as proof for your argument, and remember to analyze extensively. How does this element in the book strengthen it? Why do you think Jennifer 8. Lee presents her thoughts in this way?
Also, in you blog post's thesis identify one meaningful discovery you have made while reading the book, or identify one meaning realization that Jennifer 8. Lee has in the novel.
Example of thesis:
In the novel, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, Jennifer 8. Lee uses an informative, yet comedic tone to introduce her readers to the hidden traits of, and unknown facts regarding, Chinese American culture.
** Remember to put the Chapter you are analyzing in the "subject line" of your post.
Fortune cookies suck. I hate them, in this book Jennifer 8. Lee discusses what is real
ReplyDeleteChinese food and what’s not? Jennifer does this by being very informative about the
Chinese culture. In chapter three Lee tells us that the fortune cookies were actually
made in America. “Could fortune cookies have been introduced to the United States by
the Japanese? “ (39). It was argued for years on how the cookie came about in
America. How it was made and why it was sweeter than most sweets that were made
in Japan. “ If the Chinese had introduced the crispy curvy, wafer-thin fortune cookie to
the United States, where had they drawn their inspiration from?” (41). So it was argued
again because through out the book everything is being questioned what’s American or
what’s Chinese is it fake or fake? Everything here in America is sweet and tastes
amazing but in china things are bland and I guess bony.
I made the discovery that this book and along with others can help us figure out what
really comes from here. If cultures really do things that we say they do. If everything
about some places are true in fact. Why we Americanized some things and why we
keep some things the same. These were all topics that got answered through this book.
“There are some forty thousand Chinese restaurants in the United-States – more than
the number of McDonald’s, Burger Kings, and KFC’s combined.”(9) Now all I want
answered is why people chose to eat fast food over Chinese food. There’s more of it
than the fake stuff.
In chapter three of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, Jennifer 8. Lee uses sarcasm as the tone in this chapter as illustrated by several quotes I chose. I feel that Lee wrote the book as a search for her own identity as an Chinese American, and discovered more than she was looking for along the way.
ReplyDeleteLee writes, “It was a clash between cities. A battle of cultural legacies. A matter of competing firsts. The identity of an American icon was at stake.” (38) In this quote Lee is being sarcastic and dramatic and making it sound as if there is an important battle about to happen. In truth, she is talking about a court case over who invented the fortune cookie.
“Chinese families didn’t bake.” (40) This is meant to be funny because Lee is saying the chinese probably didn’t invent the fortune cookie because they don’t really bake at all. She writes about how Chinese deserts don’t involve baking and most Chinese kitchens didn’t used to have ovens.
“Even the famous Chinese moon cake, essential to the mid-Autumn festival, taste a bit like the hockey pucks they resemble.” (40) In this quote Jennifer 8 Lee is making fun of the most famous Chinese desert by informing us that they aren’t very good.
Although I found The Fortune Cookie Chronicles very complicated to read, it did makes me realize that something I never gave much thought about could inspire this much investigation and writing.
"My siblings and I are known as the ABC's. American Born Chinese. We're also known as bananas (yellow on the outside but white on the inside) and Twinkies (which has more of a pop culture but processed ring to it)". (11) In this quote Jennifer using an informative tone. She's telling us about how people labeled her and other Chinese American's in her neighbor hood. She is telling the reader what she had to experience growing up.
ReplyDelete"I asked my mom if she had known all along that fortune cookies weren't Chinese. She shrugged. She said when she first got to the states from Taiwan, she'd assume they were from Hong Kong or mainland China." (13) This tells us that her own mother didn't know what real Chinese food was. She thought that they had come from Hong Kong or one of those Asian islands.
"I never rally understood what "real Chinese food" meant until I want to China. Years of study in Chinese saturday school, daily classes in college, and a semester in taiwan had opened up the world of opaque characters of my mother's books." (15) When she went to her country she started to understand her culture. She knew what real Chinese food was and she then realized that the Chinese cook books that were in her house were just american knock offs. She was so blind for so long, and know that she has gone other country and gotten a better understanding everything was starting to fall into place.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteKatelyn Adzima
ReplyDeleteICW
Meg Reilly
2nd December 2013
Fact or Fiction? Truth behind American Chinese food
In the novel, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, Jennifer 8. Lee uses informative/factual writing structure
with a lightened tone about the differences between American Chinese and real Chinese food. In
chapter 5, Jennifer also uses a serious tone but precedes the seriousness to find out the truth about her
culture. Throughout the whole book Lee finds more and more truth behind her cultural identity. In this
chapter it mostly analyzes the differences between a famous American Chinese dish verses what the \
dish is really about. Jennifer’s lightened tone gives you a better understanding of what fact and what is
fiction.
Jennifer states, “So Chinese people like chicken feet and legs (lots of bones) and are confounded by
Americans’ preference for chicken breast (boneless and bland),” (76). Us Americans believe that real
Chinese food is very bland and un-tasteful to say the least. That is why in America we change Chinese
food into a big lie because we make what tastes right, not what is right. But, to the Chinese they think
that they’re food is the best of the best. Jennifer’s awareness of the situation and being told of what is
real and non-existence from the Hunan people is what makes this information informative.
Jennifer states, “I mumbled something about how in the United States we don’t eat dogs because we
have sentimental attachments to them as pets. He nodded. ‘Those dogs are made for pets. They look
good. These dogs are raised for eating,” (72). In America we could never eat pets used as a food
substance because to us it’s morally wrong. Personally, that would be awfully nasty to be eating an
innocent pet that I once called my own. That’s the difference between the American Chinese culture and
China; they see dogs as meat to cook. When Jennifer heard this from the man I feel like I can picture
her just shaking her head in belief about how big of a difference it is.
In another quote, Jennifer states, “I asked them about General Tso’s chicken. They had never seen the
dish, ‘No one here eats this,” (71). Jennifer found out that America was the first to start the dish and not
China. They called the dish something else, which was ‘Geojeol Tso’s chicken.’ The taste of America’s
version of the dish was a lot sweeter and tangy. When she tried the real dish from China it was spicy
and chewy, not crispy like ours. This left her surprised because she loved General Tso’s chicken so
much and was taught that it was famous and well known.
Unfortunately, I found The Cookie Chronicles to be a very intolerant book to read, but I realized that
American culture changes different cultures into our own in the U.S. We change the culture so much
here in the states that it creates a sub-group from an existence society.
Austin Herrera
ReplyDeleteMeg Reilly
Chapter 2
In chapter 2 of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, Jennifer 8. Lee reports the struggles and obstacles Misa Chang had to go through to advertise her business. She tells the tale of the first NYC Chinese restaurant to offer delivery and distribute menus under apartment doors and in lobbies. In this chapter Lee focuses on using real examples and situations to help the reader understand the conflict between handing out fliers and invasion of private property, which is the theme of the chapter.
After Misas’ success of putting out menus under the doors and in mail boxes in apartment buildings, other restaurants copied her strategy and decided to do the same. “The fliers were stuffed into mailboxes, piled on lobby furniture, thrown in heaps on lobby floors, and shoved under doors. Residents and landlords argued that the flood of paper engulfing the Upper West Side was a health and safety hazard.”(32) Lee paints us a picture of how overloaded the apartments were getting with menus and coupons from the local business and restaurants. She names off a list of complaints and hazards that are made from the overburden of menus. She uses words and phrases like: “stuffed” “piled” “shoved” “thrown in heaps”, words and phrases that really jump out and make it that much more drastic and dramatic for the reader.
Also, Lee describes another scene/theme where the doormen of the apartments get irritated by the overload of the menus. She says, “Angry doormen would arrive at Empire Szechuan and dump a month’s worth of accumulated menus from their buildings, many of them from other establishments.”(32) When I read this statement, I automatically created a scene in my head. After reading these sentences I could create an image of an angry doorman walking up to the restaurant and angrily throwing down the menus and leaving. The tone and theme sort of relate with each other in this chapter. The tone and adjectives that she used made it easier for me to create that certain image.
Another part of the chapter that really grasped my attention was when the menu wars started to get violent and bloody. A man came out of this apartment and noticed that a Chinese man was placing menus up at a location where it had a sign saying “No Menus.” The man approached the Chinese man demand him to stop and gave him the menus back. The Chinese man placed them back up and the man took them back down again. “The back-and-forth over the menus turned into a shoving match, which turned into an exchange of punches that spilled out into the streets. Carol (the man who told the Chinese man to go away) suffered a bloody nose, but he was evidently the better fighter; the delivery man had a broken jaw.”(32) The tone that she uses in these sentences really decorated the theme and scene of the altercation.
The whole chapter is about the war on menus and where you are allowed to advertise them. Some people don’t mind and some people hate it and are extremely irritated by them. Lee uses stories to describe what happened during this time when trying to promote your business using fliers.
While reading this book I discovered that one little invention or tactic can change a business and the way of business in drastic ways. Misa had one simple idea. She thought, “if the customers don’t come to me, I’m going to go to the customers”, and that’s exactly what she did. She started from the bottom and started handing out fliers (that she made personally) and getting the name out. Sooner than later, she was a success! Think outside the box and be different because people like things that are different and unique. That’s what grasped the customer’s attention.
Rebecca Brunner
ReplyDeleteICW
Meg Reilly
December 3rd, 2013
American Stir-Fry
LAST BLOG POST-CHAPTER 15
The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee uses tone is several different ways through out the book. Between each chapter the tone changes. Depending on what Lee is trying to get across, depends on what tone she will be using in that chapter. For example, in chapter 15, Lee states in a very informative tone, “In the Chinatown subway station in New York City, the chosen translation is delicately pixeled together with colorful titles: huabu.” However later through out the chapter she goes on to say in a more personal tone, “The book began as a quest to understand Chinese food. But I realize it was actually a personal journey to understand myself.”
I believe the reason that Jennifer 8. Lee wrote this book was not only to find more about the Chinese-American Culture but to find herself more too. For parts of the book in certain chapters, it almost seems as if she is lost herself. By figuring out her background more intensively and by finding more information about her own culture, she began to feel like a whole new person. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee uses tone in informative yet in a personal narrative way to show her findings of the Chinese American Culture.
Also, in Chapter fifteen Jennifer talks about the American Stir-Fry and how it was created. After finding most of her information about the Sir-fry she begins to show us different tones for different meanings of the American side and of the Chinese side.
One of my personal favorite quotes in this novel is, “Cooking is like a language: the ingredients are the vocabulary; the techniques are the grammar. You can mix and match across different traditions absorbed from the people and influences you've been exposed to.” This is one of my favorite quotes because it shows us a blend of her personal narrative and her informative side speaking. It is showing us what she believes cooking is but then she tells us why in an informative way to understand fully.
The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee uses tone in informative yet in a personal narrative way to show her findings of the Chinese American Culture.
Last Blog Post: Chapter 15
ReplyDeleteIn the book, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, Jennifer 8. Lee wrote about her personal experiences and journey to understand the authentic culture. The form of the book is chapters with the short stories. And also, she discusses what is real Chinese food and what’s not.
In chapter fifteen, Lee uses an informative and descriptive tone to write about her personal experiences and the unknown facts she found about Chinese American culture. “The book began as quest to understand Chinese food. But three years, six continents, twenty-three countries, and forty-two states later, I realize it was actually a personal journey to understand myself.” (251) In the beginning of the book, Lee never knew anything about her own authentic culture so she decided to spend time in China teaching herself and studying about her own authentic culture. “Cooking is like a language: the ingredients are the vocabulary; the techniques are the grammar. You can mix and match across different traditions absorbed from the people and influences you’ve been exposed to.” (254) Until now, she found her own identity through traveling and gained her cultural experiences. The point of the chapter is about American stir-fry. “We are a stir-fry; our ingredients remain distinct, but our flavors blend together in a sauce shared by all.” (259) Everything was blended together in a big swirling pool in which it called melting pot here in America. That’s why there aren’t a lot of authentic cultures here in America. You will only find your own true authentic cultures in other countries where your family came from.
Tenyia Anderson
ReplyDeleteICW
Meg Reilly
Dec. 3, 2013
American Stir-Fry
FINAL BLOG POST. Chapter 15
In Jennifer 8. Lee book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles in Chapter fifteen her tone changes in a couple ways. First she’s giving an informative tone, then, facts, to a personal tone. It’s a little inconsistent but still understandable. An example when Jennifer says “This book began as a quest to understand Chinese food… I realize it was actually a personal journey to understand myself.” In America, there is no blood requirement. With the Chinese, there is only a blood requirement.” This is explaining her culture why you’re even considered full Chinese, half or none at all. This is because of your name or immigrations that were documented. Also there’s a realization when Jennifer says “Look at me, and you may see someone Chinese. Close your eyes, you will hear someone American.” But she explains that before and after that some people may look Chinese but listens to different music and dance style. Her point she’s trying to get across is that everything isn’t Chinese. But she’s learning new things about herself and her family as well as her Chinese culture. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee uses informative tone, then, facts, to a personal tone to discover and explain her Chinese American Culture.