As soon as the narrator began talking about what it means to her to be a “chameleon”, I instantly made connections between Ha Jin’s “Woman from New York” and the movie “The Hate U Give”.
In “Woman from New York”, Jinli was definitely trying her best to be a chameleon and juggle her two worlds even though her efforts proved unsuccessful. It was clear that once she left China for the United States, she never felt quite at home in either place. In the United States she was a Chinese American and in China she was the mother who left her family. When slipping back into her life in China, she was ostracized by her in-laws and the community for things ranging from her behavior to her physical appearance. She tried to juggle both parts of her life, but it was the environment and people around her that made it so difficult to “make those around [her] comfortable”, thus making being a chameleon a truly challenging task.
In the film “The Hate U Give”, the main character, Starr Carter, finds it difficult to maneuver between the two different lives she lives at home and at school. Her friends from home in her impoverished neighborhood are predominantly black, while her friends from her private school are wealthy and predominantly white. Starr’s actions smoothly change depending on which world she is living in, just as Gigi from Cairo House changes depending on her location and the people she is around. Both Starr and Gigi realize that is not just about making the people around them feel comfortable, but also that”it is a matter of survival” (Serageldin 2).