Cultural Identity in 'Everyone Talked Loudly in Chinatown'

Everyone Talked Loudly in Chinatown is story about being split between cultures. It's a topic which has a lot of relevance in these times of globalization. The case of “forbidden love” in this story isn't a rare story in reality. There has been a lot in the media-world about cases with “honour killings”, forced marriages and such with plenty of debate following after, which has been giving horrible examples of how far out it can go, like the article Warning over arranged marriages, which tells about some specific cases and explains about the difficulty dealing with family pride and living in between cultures.

The main character Lin is a good example of a girl split between the Canadian way of life and her Chinese roots. Trough out the story you get the idea that she doesn't seem too fond of the Chinese culture. It becomes really clear when she tells about her visits to Chinatown with her grandmother “I couldn't understand why they had to be so loud. It seemed uncivilized”(Text 1, page 65, line 6-7). As she becomes older, she turn away from her background. “...I stopped going to Chinatown with her were it was too loud..I stopped spending time with her altogether” (Text 1, page 65, line 19-20) and finally “I started to play with friends who weren't Chinese” (Text 1, page 65, line 21). Her mother isn't very pleased about that, because “She was suspicious of all other cultures”. However, Lin really likes the western lifestyle, which especially shows when she describes her old best friends mother, who is German “Everything thing was neat and orderly... and her mother was a quiet, pleasant woman who offered me green apples from their tree”(Text 1, page 65, line 14-15) in contrast to her own mother “My mother only bought red ones in Chinatown”(Text 1, page 65, line 16). It shows some kind of dislike or disappointment towards her mother.