Perspective

The story is written in first person from the limited perspective of Adeline Yen Mah. This limitation is actually not a problem because Adeline presents information of her ancestry and tells the story of her childhood from the perspective of adulthood. She includes things she knows though she wasn't there to personally witness all the events she describes. For example, she describes the first meeting of her parents and her own birth. While she can't possibly have witnessed these things, she relates them as they were told to her, probably by her Aunt Baba. She seems to relate these faithfully, though there may have been some aspects of the story that were either presented as a supposition on her own part or as supposition on the part of her family. For example, she says that her mother is ill after giving birth to Adeline and that she doesn't...