Page 53 - Point 5 Literature Program Option 1 Teachers Guide (2) (1)

Part I
this story of a troubled mother-daughter relationship is a narrative in the first person through
the eyes of the young daughter, interspersed with dialogue. the key phrase in the opening
sentence is invisible strength – a strategy for winning arguments, gaining respect from others,
and also for defeating chess opponents. although the body of the story seems to focus on
winning chess matches, we perceive throughout the underlying conflict between mother and
daughter and the fight for respect, which also ends the story.
The mother’s lack of assimilation and reliance on her past is reflected in her typical truncated
Chinese sentence structure and the imagery in her speech throughout the story. as you read,
make sure the students understand what she is saying.

After the first example of learning invisible strength, Waverly gives us a rich description of
the story’s setting – life for a financially struggling immigrant family living in San Francisco’s
Chinatown. they live above a bakery and we see the neighborhood as the young girl sees it –
to her and her brothers it is a fascinating place that offers interest and adventure. she does not
see herself as poor or deprived in any way. her descriptions of all the places of business, the
chemist, the printer, the fish market and the café, indicate that this is a community that can
maintain much of it’s cultural traditions, quite separate from the America around them.
the first full dialogue between mother and daughter about Chinese torture shows that the
mother does not get the subtle hint that she is hurting Waverly, or perhaps she simply does
not know the meaning of the english word torture but does not want to admit it, and so treats
it as another profession, proudly (but ironically) saying the Chinese do it best: We do torture.
Best torture. the dialogue is also humorous.

This concludes the introduction, drawing us into an entire world in just a few of pages of text.
Part II
Next we move to the Christmas gift of the chess set, with a detailed description – once again
through the eyes of the child – of the distribution ceremony. We get a first glimpse of Waverly’s
intelligence when we see how she selected her gift.

the mother maintains her sense of pride, not wanting to keep a second-hand, incomplete gift,
but here she loses out to her children. Waverly takes an avid interest in the game, asking about
the rules, and this leads us directly to an example of her mother’s wisdom. We are told explicitly
that she cannot read english, but she is shrewd and understands how life is for an immigrant
and how it is up to the immigrant to adapt. Every time people come out from foreign country, must
know rules… . Better you take it, find out why yourself. the description of what Waverly learns
about chess exemplifies everything we know about how chess can help to develop a person’s
thinking: tactics, having clear plans, foresight, patience: …one must gather invisible strengths and
see the endgame before the game begins. We can also see that chess is a metaphor for succeeding in
a generally hostile world. Invisible strength also means revealing as little as possible to the other
side about the why: one must show and never tell.
Waverly finds a mentor in the park who teaches her everything he knows and explains the
different chess plays with typical Chinese imagery.