“The sound that comes from A-ma is not so much a groan as a whimper. All that work at half price.” 

This quote highlights the oppressive economic conditions under which the Akha people had to earn their living in the late 1980s. After toiling all day picking tea leaves, Li-yan’s family must sell what they harvested at half price, which was hardly enough money to buy food for the family. 

“During the long hours, A-ma’s disappointment in me continues to radiate from her body like a low fire. Perhaps she could have overlooked my lapses as part of my learning, but my purposefully trying to stop Ci-do from his duty may be a miscarriage of Akha Law from which I’ll never recover. I hate myself for failing A-ma, but I hate myself even more for not stopping Ci-do.” 

Li-yan is deeply traumatized after witnessing what happened to Deh-ja and Ci-do and their twins. Although she hates disappointing her mother, she regrets not being brave enough to stop Ci-do from killing his newborn children. This foregrounds Li-yan’s kindness and her refusal to blindly obey Akha Law. 

“But the birth of the twins and what happened to them, although traditional, has transformed me as irreversibly as soaking cloth in a vat of dye. I cannot accept what I witnessed, but while my soul has changed, my flesh and bones must still follow the course laid out for me, which means also returning to school.” 

This quote highlights how the birth of the twins becomes a turning point that determines the course of Li-yan’s life. She no longer feels like she belongs in the Akha culture, and so she decides to explore the outside world, hoping that she could build a life beyond the confines of her village.