STORIES

Caroline Hau
The story entitled Stories was
written by a Filipino-Chinese
author/writer, Caroline Hau.
She was known for her
works on Filipino culture
and literature.
 The story “Stories” was about the
family history of the main character
who traces her family’s migration story
from China to the Philippines.
 The story was then narrated on
FIRST PERSON Point-of-view. The
main character narrates the story by
using rhetorical strategy of description to
convey the literary language of the
plot.
STOP for a while!!
What is
rhetorical
strategy?
 Rhetorical
Strategy
The rhetorical strategy is often
employed in writing that is meant
to persuade or writing that attempts
to make a strong point.
 This means that the narrator uses
words and descriptions in the story
that was used to persuade the readers
in believing and understanding the
literal meaningof the plot.
 With this, it makes the story succinct
in depicting the comparative poverty
the family has experienced in China
and in the Philippines.
 STOP for a while!!
What is succinct?
Succinct – expressing
in few words
 The story began when the main
character narrates how his father took
care on his garden. The main character
cited the ways on how the father
planted, took care on plants, for
example – “For fertilizer, he took the
snake trail that wound through the
peanut fields”
 The main character started
narrating with the present happenings
on the father after the hungry years,
long before he left the Tang Mountains,
and joined his family in Hong Kong,
long after he settled down in the
Philippines.
 So, ingeneral, the settings of the story
started in the Philippines. The other
settings was in Hong Kong where his
family are and the other one was in
Tang Mountains where he experienced
the hungry years.
 It was then followed by the main
character narrating how she knew
the past stories of the father. The
father himself instead of raising
potted sunflower (that he could not
raise), instead he made memories
with his children with his stories.
 The father also has a peculiar way on
telling his stories. He uses pronouns
that are either he means it or he mean
the other way around.
 Let us focus on how the father
tell his stories on his children for
it follows the plot in the story.
 The father grew up without
knowing his own father. It is because
his father (the narrator’s grandfather)
was in the Philippines, managing a
flour business.
The absence of his father was then
considered for him as their hungry
 It was their hungry years because
his father has no means on sending
them money for the Japanese
blockade cut offed their
communication.
 Without the presence of men in
their households, his grandmother (the
narrator’s great-grandmother) was the
one who ruled over everything on the
house. One of those was them eating
sweet potatoes for their meals.
 Also, one of their jobs or work in
that time was making salt and the
father described that it was how low
China has fallen in that time. They have
to steal their own salt.
 “We had to steal our own salt”.
Meaning there were something about that
because he used the word to steal and
followed by their own. Do you have to
steal your own belongings?
 Then, his father (narrator’s
grandfather) went home in1946. It
was the time after the war. His father
brought things with him from that war,
everything that was useful and useless.
 After his father’s homecoming, the
hungry years ground to a hail. But he
could not shake off the habit of
poverty. He was used to eat sweet
potatoes and does not want to eat rice. As
cited, “ my grandmother would take out a
bowl of rice and exchange it for the
sweet potato””
 The father also during that time has
Pa-ak – capability, without the
confident brevity and implicit pride. He
hated school and sat through hours of
Confucius.
 The father has a lot of memories
in school. For example, the
schoolmaster teach him a lesson by
painting a black circle around his
mouth for every curse word he
uttered.
 That was the story of the father
from the past. As continued in the
story, it was backed again in the
present times. The
father loved his father (narrator’s
grandfather) so much that he kept all
the memories (like stuffs) of his
father.
 That was the story of the father
from the past. As continued in the
story, it was backed again in the
present times. The
father loved his father (narrator’s
grandfather) so much that he kept all
the memories (like stuffs) of his
father.
 The main character wants to be a
writer, but his father would tell him
that “What will you write if you
have not lived enough – hiding
yourself in the house as you do?”
 The story ended as his father told
them to bring them back in China to
show them where his past memories
happened. And the main character
want this also to not lost his father in
sepia and shadows in head.
 “to not lost his father in sepia and
shadows in head”. It means that the
main character wants to give color on
the stories he/she have heard from his
father.
 In the end, the literary use of
language of “Stories” is Hau’s
imaginative ability to present the
conjunctures or connections between the
far past of the family in China and the
present lifeof the main character as
Chinese Filipino.
THANK YOU.
GROUP 1