Author's Note: This is my cause and effect piece on "Ribbons" by Laurence Yep. I tried to focus on actually writing about the cause and the effects of the story in detail.
When I read "Ribbons", I was really interested in why they bound the women's feet in China. They used to tie satin ribbons around their feet to reduce the pain. In "Ribbons", by Laurence Yep, two little kids' Grandmother comes to live with them. The kids studied the Chinese culture before she came into town. When she gets there, she favors the little boy because boys were really important back in China because they were the bread winners. The girl shows her Grandmother her ballet shoes with satin ribbons on them. The Grandmother or "Paw-Paw" gets really upset when she sees them and demands her granddaughter to hand them over. The little girl refuses to give them up until her mom comes into the living room and says something. All of a sudden the little girl started to cry and went up to her room. The climax was the satin ribbons being taken away and the separation between the granddaughter and the Grandmother.
With the kids' grandma moving in with them and the fact that Grandma took away her granddaughters ballet shoes, everything started to get heated. When the little girl noticed she wasn't getting a lot of attention from her own grandmother, she decided to show her her ballet shoes. Her grandmother wasn't pleased at all to see the satin ribbons. She actually told her granddaughter to bury and burn them! Obviously the little girl did not like hearing that something she was really passionate about was hated by her grandma. This specific part of the story was the setup of why Paw-Paw and the girl started to avoid each other. Whenever they saw one another in a room, one of them would leave room simply because they did not want to be in each others presence.
Although the grandma and the girl weren't communicating, the little girl talked to her mother about the whole situation. She was very confused on why Paw-Paw didn't like her shoes, but it wasn't the shoes that she didn't like, it was the satin ribbons. Then, the little girl talked to her mother about her grandma and why she was so mean to her about her ballet shoes. Her mother finally told her that back in the day in China they used to bind the women's feet, and the satin ribbons would stop the blood flow to keep their feet small and to reduce the pain. The little girl realized why Grandma was so protective and touchy about that certain subject. She started to feel bad about being so mean to her Grandma, so she went to talk to her. Her grandma actually began to cry because she didn't think that her little, sweet, granddaughter would understand her frustrations and pain towards satin ribbons. After they talked, it was almost like the ribbon brought them closer together. There was a metaphorical ribbon around the two in the end of the story symbolizing togetherness and friendship.
Even though the little girl talked to her mother and apologized to her grandma, the disconnection with the girl and the grandma still happened in the beginning. If that never happened, there would be no climax of the story, therefore a boring story overall. Just the fact that there was that one scene with the Grandma yelling at her granddaughter, it created a sense that there was heat between the two. If the little girl never showed her grandma the shoes, then the grandma would've never yelled, and the whole story would've been all happy butterflies and unicorns.
In conclusion, the story ended on a good note. The little girl and the granddaughter made up and built a imaginary satin ribbon around their love. Satin ribbons obviously meant two different things to the grandma and the girl, but in the end they figured out a way that they could both enjoy ribbons and be happy. Overall, I thought it was a short quick story to read that taught you many life lessons. One being, don't judge someone unless you have a really good reason to back it up. Second of all, in the end of life, you may end up liking the person you thought you would've never had similarities with.
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