![]() In response, Jack boxes up his paper animals and refuses to respond to his mother when she speaks to him in Chinese. Mark begins a campaign of racist bullying against Jack at school. ![]() ![]() Jack shows Mark his paper animals, and Jack calls them “trash.” When Jack’s paper tiger knocks over and breaks Mark’s action figure, Mark insults Jack’s mother and tears up his tiger. Later, a neighborhood boy named Mark comes over to Jack’s house with an Obi-Wan Kenobi action figure. Jack overhears two female neighbors exchanging racist gossip about his family, wondering why Jack’s father married his mother and criticizing Jack’s biracial looks. The story shifts back to when Jack is 10, after his family has just moved into a new neighborhood. Afterward, Jack’s mother immigrated to the U.S. ![]() When he arrived, he learned that Jack’s mother spoke very little English, so he hired a translator to mediate between them. Jack’s father saw Jack’s mother in a catalogue and then flew to Hong Kong to meet her. His father explains that they met in Hong Kong through an introduction service that matched American men with Asian women. Once, when Jack is a teenager and is no longer speaking to his mother, he asks his father how he and Jack’s mother met. Later, she makes Jack more magical paper animals to play with. To comfort him, his mother makes him an origami tiger and breathes life into it. When the story begins, a young Jack is crying. ![]() “The Paper Menagerie” describes the relationship between a biracial Chinese American boy, Jack, and his Chinese immigrant mother. ![]()
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