Brave Orchid's photographs fascinate Kingston, who notices how differently her mother looks into the camera: "She has spacy eyes, as all people recently from Asia have." Brave Orchid's "spacy" look underscores the intense fear and hesitancy that many Chinese emigrants felt leaving their homeland for America. However, Kingston points out that after these emigrants reside in America for a few years, they "learn the barbarians' directness — how to gather themselves and stare rudely into talking faces as if trying to catch lies." For example, photographs of Kingston's laughing father, who looks directly into the camera and wears a straw hat "cocked at a Fred Astaire angle," show how Westernized he has become since moving to America. Emphasizing the transitional nature of this chapter, Kingston writes that her mother, who has lived in America for many years, now "has eyes as strong as boulders, never once skittering off a face." Also, Brave Orchid's style of dress has dramatically changed. In the medical school class photograph, she wears a dress that suppresses any hint of sexuality: "Chinese dresses at that time were dartless, cut as if women did not have breasts." In old age, Kingston notes toward the chapter's end, Brave Orchid dresses in "American fashions."
Kingston uses the photographs of her mother as a narrative device to introduce Brave Orchid's personal story. Like many Chinese men during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Brave Orchid's husband — Kingston's father — immigrated to America in search of work. Intending to return to China, instead he sends money to his wife for her boat fare to America. During the time of Brave Orchid's husband's absence, their two Chinese-born children die, and only after a sufficient period of mourning — "In China there was time to complete feelings" — does Brave Orchid decide to attend a medical school of midwifery. Note that on the side of the boat that carries Brave Orchid to the medical school from her hometown, a sea bird is painted to protect the boat against "shipwreck and winds." As in previous chapters, Kingston closely links birds to her family's history; for Brave Orchid, at least, birds bring good luck.
