Giselle Chin

Giselle Chin is a primary character. Her storyline features predominantly in the section “The Lost Notebooks of Giselle Chin.” Giselle grows up in New Jersey with her mother, Mercy, father, Tony, and brother, Alexander. She has a complex relationship with her mother, and quickly begins retreating into her private, artistic world from a young age. She often feels a “responsibility to remember things” and to record the “family memories” (12). She also feels that it is her “job to make sure Mercy [is] okay” (14). However, Giselle does not always agree with how her mother sees the world. She particularly disagrees with her mother’s philosophies regarding beauty and femininity, and decides that she will defy Mercy’s obsession with thinness and meekness by letting herself expand physically and artistically.

Giselle makes friends with Jackie Ong from Chinese school, but the girls do not see each other consistently throughout...