ABSTRACT
In middle school and high school, I often wrote diaries and poems. They focused on my relationships with my parents. Most of the time, I wrote in Chinese because even though I had been learning English, my English was not good enough to express what I felt. Often I wrote to complain about my father, who, despite the fact that I studied hard and believed that I did a lot more housework than my peers—cooking, washing, cleaning, and feeding pigs—never seemed satisfied. To him, my food was either too salty or not salty enough. In my Chinese writing, Father was too talkative, constantly fault-finding, and did not care for his own family.
