Themes
Courage: Ailin is high-spirited, headstrong, and defiant, and her father supports her determination not to get her feet bound.
Traditions: Ailin's family is so traditionalist: the women stay at tome and take care of men meanwhile they work all the time. It also exists the tradition of binding their feet.
Family: The concept of family is presented in the entire book. The relation between Ailin and his father is a very important point of the story.
Marriage: The concept of marriage is present in Ailin's life since she was really young.
Xenophobia: Big Uncle hates foreign traditions and foreigners who live in China.
Significance of the book in the literary world.
The book won an ALA award for the Best Book for Young Adults, and it sheds some light on the importance of gender equality, gender roles, and human rights, especially for young adults who live this conflict of gender roles and traditionalism in the flesh. Reading this book gives us more insight on this matter and helps us reconsider these roles and what society tells us.
Significance of the title.
"Ties that bind, ties that break" It means that the painfully process painfully tight binding to the feet of young girls to modify the shape of the foot in China, is a way of breaking their freedom and to be opened to the pain that society and traditions impose.
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