Summary Examples

Chapter One of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri divides its narrative between Ashima and Ashoke, as they await the arrival of their new son. When she goes into labor in the summer of 1968, Ashima recalls how she met and fell in love with her husband in Calcutta, when she was a 19-year-old English tutor. While in the waiting room, Ashoke is reminded of a tragic train accident years ago that left him partially crippled. On the train, he had met a businessman named Ghosh who encouraged him to travel the world. Ashoke stayed up that night to read Nikolai Gogol's "The Overcoat" when the train crashed. The rescuers noticed a ruined page from Gogol's story and found Ashoke among the wreckage. After his recovery, Ashoke takes Ghosh's advice to study abroad at MIT. The chapter ends as the nurse enters and breaks Ashoke's revery. He is a new father.

Chapter One of the best-selling novel The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan concerns Jing-Mei who is asked by her father to be the fourth corner at the Joy Luck Club mah jong table after her mother died. Jing-mei reminisces about her mother, a refugee during the Sino-Japanese War, who is welcomed to San Francisco by 3 other Chinese-Baptist families: the Hsus, the Jongs, and the St. Clairs. At the club meeting, Auntie An-mei reveals that her mother's twin girls (thought to have been sold and killed in the war) have in truth been found in China. Her aunts give Jing-mei the money from the club's fundraising to meet her sisters and tell them about their mother.