The Chinese Glass Menagerie

In Beijing this past November, my creative writing class read Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. It's a play about family abandonment, the interactions and spoiled dreams of an American mother and two children trying to survive the Great Depression. 

My Chinese students relished acting in this play.  The girls, especially, enjoyed the central character, Amanda Wingfield, a mother who clings to memories of suitors and hopes for her crippled daughter, Laura.  Tom, Amanda's son, loves Laura, but is forced to put his writing ambitions aside to support the family with a lowly job at a warehouse. Tom is poetic and bitter; his father abandoned the family long ago.  Laura is so fragile that her only friendships consist of a menagerie of tiny glass animals she keeps polished on a living room shelf.