Rebecca Lim's "Tiger Daughter" teachers' review

Brief description and distinctive features

Brief description of Tiger Daughter:

In this novel Rebecca Lim invites us into the world of Wen Zhou who is the only child of Chinese immigrants. Wen Zhou is the main character of this aptly-titled Tiger Daughter. Wen’s family is one without power, privilege or hope. Her father had been a doctor in China but failing the Australian examinations sees him give up and he works in a Chinese restaurant. He is angry, bitter, unhappy. Mr Zhou is also fiercely controlling and Wen’s mother lives in fear and is constantly trying to maintain peace in the strained Zhou household. Wen shares her family’s challenges with her friend Henry Xiao who also endures conflict and sorrow within his own family. Wen and Henry are determined to break out of this cycle of poverty and despair by sitting for the selective school entry examinations. Henry says that “people who come out of that school can do anything and be anything.” When tragedy strikes Henry’s family, Wen finds she needs more than strength and resilience to navigate what is happening to her own family.

Here we have a novel written by a woman born in China about a family born in China who struggle in Australia. Lim’s aim was to build our empathy and understanding and that is the hallmark of a successful novel or film: for the reader or viewer to both learn something about humanity and to understand and feel compassion. It is also a book which reflects more accurately the changes which are occurring in Australia’s population.

Rebecca Lim is a Melbourne lawyer, writer, illustrator and editor. In August 2022 Tiger Daughter won the Children’s Book Council of Australia top award for older readers.

Distinctive features of Tiger Daughter:

• Wen Zhou is the main character and Wen also tells the story; this first-person narration adds credibility, conviction and a real edge to this compelling and at times, confronting story: “When my friends ask me what my life has been like so far, mostly I remember the rage … Actually, more even than the rage, maybe what I mostly feel is the fear.” p. 15-19
• Tiger Daughter includes a contents page of the novel’s structure: Prologue, Part I, Part II, Coda and each chapter has a different title, some of which hint at the narrative’s direction e.g. The Day Before Things Were Never the Same Again.
• The range of different settings includes a very recognisable school which Wen reveals is “the safest place in my life, and Henry’s” p.7
• The novel includes some drawings and handwritten features which Lim’s own children created
• The novel provides insights into Chinese culture and beliefs as well as the migrant experience.

Ways to use Tiger Daughter in the classroom

Tiger Daughter could be a close study or part of a wider unit which explores a range of texts under the concept of Representation and Point of View. This could include Representation of the Migrant Voice or The Outsider or Australia and its Many Voices. 

In a Close Study the aim is for your students to develop a genuine connection to the text, develop their own personal interpretation and response to the text, and an understanding of its distinctive features. For close study choose the best books in your book room: books that offer a richness for deep study. Carefully consider how long this unit should be - there has been a move to term-long units, but I think 3-4 weeks on a text for close study will improve engagement and deep exploration. Consider: what do you want your students to get most out of this close study? Charged With Meaning (edited by Wayne Sawyer) has some excellent chapters on choosing and exploring texts for close study. 

Students should read Tiger Daughter in class; rather than allocating reading at home, consider the importance of the English classroom as a place to read. We need to legitimise and value reading in the English classroom. Students can be “energised by the groupness” of the classroom and if students have read the text the exploration is richer and more meaningful.

How to hook students in their reading? 

The best way into this novel is the story itself. Read the Prologue and the first chapter of Part 1 to students as these are very powerful chapters. Pose the question, why has Rebecca Lim chosen to include both the prologue and the opening first chapter?  In what ways do they offer the reader different insights to the story?

Consider the physical features of the book

• Front and back cover
• Dedication
• Contents: titles of the different chapters and their impact/meaning
• Occasional pen and ink drawings including the tiger
• Author’s Note
• Note to teachers and librarians
• About the author

Read the information about the author then the Note to teachers and librarians: What are three points in the Note to teachers and librarians which gave you more insight to Rebecca Lim than the dedicated page about her? Choose two phrases which would be valuable on the front cover or in a marketing poster. 

Closer focus on the opening

1. What is the role of a prologue?

In groups discuss the features of the novel which are established in this Prologue:

• Narrative voice: who is telling the story? What effect does this first-person perspective have on the reader?
• Early characterisation of Wen and Henry: choose two lines which establishes the characterisation of Wen and Henry.

Rebecca Lim’s daughter’s recommended reading list in year 7 included Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Getting of Wisdom – the same books she had studied at high school 30 years before.

“I steamed home and said, ‘That’s it, I’m going to write something for my daughter and her friends so that they see themselves represented and maybe one day kids like her will get a list with other people’s names on it’,” she says. 

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/here-s-the-secret-to-keep-kids-reading-from-someone-who-knows-20220815-p5b9y3.html

In groups students can discuss how effective these comments are in engaging us to read further.

2. After reading the text, pose the question: in what ways does Tiger Daughter challenge your thinking and arouse your interest? What are three examples from the novel which you found most interesting? (Encourage students to value their own personal response in tasks like these.) 

3. “A theme is a statement about life… A theme is a statement about human experience that is profound and which responders may accept or reject depending on their own worldview.” (Textual Concepts) Here are some possible key ideas or themes of Tiger Daughter. Small groups can work with these or if preferred, decide to replace two ideas with what they think are the key messages of the novel.

In small groups discuss which ideas are the most important to the least and arrange them in a diamond pattern:

Then join with another group and discuss their similarities and differences. Use this discussion for a sustained response on the ideas in Tiger Daughter. 

4. Workshop the strategies of unpacking an essay question and in class explore a scaffold to help students to respond to this formal mode. Use one of these essay questions (modelled on Stage 6 questions) to workshop and then offer choice for students to respond:

• Explain how Tiger Daughter invites us into a different world and broadens our understanding of human experience. In your response, make detailed reference to your prescribed text.
• How does Rebecca Lim’s Tiger Daughter portray interesting ideas about difference? In your response, make detailed reference to the novel.
• Discuss how Lim’s perspective on personal challenges is conveyed in Tiger Daughter. In your response, make detailed reference to the novel. 
• It is not only the subject matter but also the narrative point of view that makes Lim’s novel unsettling. Discuss this statement making detailed reference to the novel.

Relevant details in relation to the new English 7-10 syllabus

Text requirements: Extended prose (novel), Australian author, cultural, social and gender perspectives, popular and youth cultures.  

Below you can find some content that could be covered in a close study of the text. 

Concepts could include Representation • Perspective • Point of View • Themes.

Relevant NSW English 7-10 Syllabus content

Reading, viewing and listening to texts | EN5-RVL-01

• Analyse the main ideas and thematic concerns represented in texts
• Clarify and justify personal responses to texts, explaining how aspects of the text, such as character, genre, tone, salience or voice, position a reader and influence these personal responses
• Consider how the social, cultural and ethical positions represented in texts represent, affirm or challenge views of the world
• Evaluate experiences of reading by sharing responses to texts
• Evaluate the ways reading texts help us understand ourselves and make connections to others and the world
• Reflect on how an appreciation of texts can be enhanced through re-reading, and close or critical study
• Understand and reflect on the value of reading for personal growth and cultural richness

Understanding and responding to texts A | EN5-URA-01

Representation

• Analyse how contextual, creative and unconscious influences shape the composition, understanding and interpretation of all representations
• Analyse how language forms, features and structures, specific or conventional to a text’s medium, context, purpose and audience, shape meaning, and experiment with this understanding through written, spoken, visual and multimodal responses
• Analyse how engaging, dynamic and complex characters are constructed in texts using language features and structures, and use these features and structures in own texts
• Explore how narratives can represent and shape personal and shared identities, values and experiences

Understanding and responding to texts B | EN5-URB-01

• Evaluate how texts can position audiences to accept, challenge or reject particular perspectives of the world, and reflect on this in own texts
• Analyse how elements of an author’s personal, cultural and political contexts can shape their perspectives and representation of ideas, including form and purpose
• Explain how texts affirm or challenge established cultural attitudes and values in different contexts

(English K-10 Syllabus 2022 © NSW Education Standards Authority for and on behalf of the Crown in right of the State of New South Wales, 2023)

Connecting texts