Themes, Title and Significance

So far, I can think about a couple of themes (at least the most important ones) the book Ties that Bind, Ties that Break, will be dealing with. First, there is culture; just by looking at the issues with the bound feet situation, we know the book is heavy charged -culturally speaking-. Other examples of this theme are the arranged marriages and all the behavior and manners existing in the book. The second would be friendship and love, this in regard with Ailin's friend Hanwei and the relationship developed between them along the chapters of the story. A third one is freedom, since the first pages one can see that Ailin is sort of a free spirit. She likes to run free, she is not that interested in the things or duties her older sisters carry but she is mesmerized by the new and let's say uncommon things she talks with Hanwei in their first meeting, And of course she does not want her feet to be bounded, like the old tradition dictates. She wants to be free from the regulations and conventions of her environment.

Ties that Bind, Ties that Break has received some critical acclaim from various magazines and was well received from readers all around the world; specially for its amazing atmosphere, setting and its power and intensity. Among the prizes its author has been awarded with the (American Library Association) ALA Best Books for Young Adults in 2000, the California Young Reader Medal in 2004, the Texas TAYSHAS High School Reading List in 2001 and a nomination for the Illinois Rebecca Caudill Young Readers Award in 2002.

For me, the title says -aside from the "obvious" relation with the bound feet and the way its practice could torn apart Ailin's family.- that there are some relationships that at some point will cause you to "break" or to stop yourself from being with other persons as important as that one. It is not necessarily something bad, but it happens. I think the title will reflect itself in the story by showing that there are some (kinds of) unions that sunder.

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Ties that Bind, Ties that Break - About the Author

TITLE: TIES THAT BIND, TIES THAT BREAK.

AUTHOR: LENSEY NAMIOKA.

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 1999

NUMBER OF PAGES: 154

EDITORIAL HOUSE:  Dell Laurel-Leaf. A division of Random House, Inc.

Lensey Namioka was born the fourteenth of June in 1929 in Beijing, China. Her father was Yuenren Chao, an important linguist, poet and scholar and her mother was Buwei Yang Chao, a physician and writer who was one of the first women to practice Western medicine in the Asian country. After the Japanese invasion in 1937. She and her family moved to the United States. There, she studied at Radcliffe College and the University of California, where she met Isaac Namioka, a Japanese student with whom she got married and later in the sixties she moved to New York City. She is the author of many popular books like April and the Dragon Lady (1994) a nominee at the Utah Young Adult’s Book Awards, Ties that Bind, Ties that Break (1999) which awarded a place among one of the American Library Association's 10 Best Books for Young People, Yang the Eldest and His Odd Jobs (2000), Half and Half (2003), Mismatch (2006). Nowadays, she lives in Seattle (Washington) with her husband, with whom she had two daughters: Aki and Michi Namioka.

What does it mean to blog?

For me, to blog or blogging is at its core, to publish in a rather personal online platform. It allows people who have access to the internet to share their experiences, thoughts, opinions, knowledge, and so on with any other person in the web. And hopefully, to get some feedback from the readers, compare opinions or just to have a short talk about what has been published.
Blogging can also serve other purposes, like being a repository for file hosting,  a (home) business platform, or a hub for discussing any kind of topic people might have as a common interest.

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