Alienation of Intergenerational Relationship in Everything I Never Told You

Abstract

Everything I Never Told You, the debut novel of Chinese American writer Celeste Ng, depicts the tragedy of a mixed-race family and subtly connects the intergenerational relationship with the reality of American society. In the Lee family, the parents' unbalanced love in family education makes the intergenerational relationship grow into a state of alienation, full of estrangement and indifference-sincere communication, which favored Lydia, neglected Nath, and invisible Hannah all lack with their parents, is replaced by silence, concealment and dishonesty. Furthermore, James, a Chinese American longing for acceptance in the white society, and Marilyn, a white female who is unable to achieve her ambition, place their dreams on their eldest daughter Lydia, making the parent-child relationship abnormally dependent on the child's self-sacrifice. Thus it reveals that parents' failures in search of self-identities have done irreparable harm to their children's growth and that their lack of family responsibility has also impacted the family model. Therefore, the novel indicates that family members need to strengthen sincere communication between generations and each should assume family responsibilities, so as to resolve family and ethnic conflicts with love and return to a normal life path.