Revolution is Not a Dinner Party

Revolution is Not a Dinner Party was a really eye opening book that made me realize how different two worlds can be. To think all of these things happened to a nine year old girl. When I was nine I was in third grade, playing with dolls without a worry in the world. While Ling had to deal with so much like losing her hair, being alone, and watching her father be taken away from her.

For me I am such a daddy’s girl. I look up to my dad and any chance I can get I am going to be with my dad to do something or just talk and hang out. I feel like that Ling and I have that in common. She adored her father and spent lots of afternoons and nights with him to learn English and be around to talk to. If my dad was taken away from me at such a young age I would be heart broken and would never be as strong as Ling was in the book. The amount of strength that Ling has that she proves many times throughout the book is unbelievable to me.

All the nights that she spent alone because her mom worked shows how strong she is. I would never be able to do that. I was thinking as I was reading this that what she does to survive and deals with is so cool. She deals with bullying at school and comes home to a pretty much empty house and knowing that her father is gone and her country is being destroyed.

Ling loved her hair and I would too if I had long beautiful hair. Her hair was something that would always be hers and made her who she was. The part in the story that really broke my heart was when she slept in the lice invested room and she had to cut it all off because she had so much lice. If I lost something like my hair that I loved so much I would be devastated. I had lice once when I was a kid and remember my mom cleaning my sheets every night, and doing so much and not being able to sit many places because my lice would spread. My mom said that if I ever got lice again I would have to cut all of my hair off and I never wanted to do that. So I can’t imagine how heartbroken Ling must have been.

I think about what if America had something like the Cultural Revolution in China and how it would be the same and how it would be different. I think that if we had something like that in America it would not be as intense as it was in China. The fact that they couldn’t speak in English or listen to any type of English radio I found that weird. It shows how different our cultures are.

One thing that I really enjoyed about this book was that there was a happy ending in the story. Most of the stories we have read in class have had sad endings or left me wanting to read more and not being able to. This was an actual happily ever after and I was glad. This little girl went through so much and it was a good thing that she got her mother and her father back.