- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- The Comedy of Errors
- Coriolanus
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry IV, Part 2
- Henry V
- Henry VI, Part 1
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Henry VI, Part 3
- Henry VIII
- Julius Caesar
- King John
- King Lear
- Love's Labor's Lost
- A Lover's Complaint
- Macbeth
- Measure for Measure
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Othello
- Pericles
- The Rape of Lucrece
- Richard II
- Richard III
- Romeo and Juliet
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- Timon of Athens
- Titus Andronicus
- Troilus and Cressida
- Twelfth Night
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Venus and Adonis
- The Winter's Tale
Kao’s maternal grandmother (Chue’s mother) has just died in Laos, and Chue is beside herself with grief. In highlighting Chue’s difficult choices in the past, Yang reflects on the patriarchal values that forced Chue into a difficult predicament in her teenage years. Kao feels bad that her mother had to choose between her own family and her love for her husband (because being with her husband meant living with his family instead of her own). Yang thus stresses that Hmong culture’s emphasis on women entering their husbands’ families caused Chue a lot of heartache.
Yang also uses Chue’s prolonged grief…