Room to Dream

“I promised her I would as I took the notebook. I couldn’t wait to show her around my hometown and make her see, taste, and feel everything.”

When Mia leaves to visit China, her English teacher gives her a special assignment: to describe her journey in a journal and bring it back. This assignment is Mia’s first step toward becoming a columnist for the China Kids Gazette. After so many rejections from different publishers, the journal prompts Mia to write her feelings and experiences more freely with the promise that someone, if only a teacher, will read her work.

“My mom had been studying so hard. And now her dream of being a teacher in America was finally coming true!”

Mom’s path to becoming a teacher in America is one of the major subplots of Room to Dream. Throughout the book, she works hard to achieve her goal. This line utilizes dramatic irony, since teaching will prove to be more difficult than she anticipated. Even though Mia’s mom can teach now, she must continue to persevere as she fights for respect from her students. This added layer of challenge ties into the theme of The Pressure to Overperform in Oppressed Communities.

“Ever since my mom’s sisters turned her down for money when we were trying to buy the motel two years ago, things had been a little tense.”

One of the biggest family tensions in the book is with Mia’s family back in China. Mom’s sisters don’t hide their disapproval of her decision to move to the United States, and they are quick to make judgmental remarks.