Reflection

The characters we lifted out were Caroline in Caroline’s weeding, New York day woman and her daughter in New York Day Woman. The reason I choose them is Caroline’s family and the New York day woman’s family are both immigrants came from Haiti and live in the United States for a long time, so it is reasonable for them to appear in one place and know each other. Besides, I am really interested in the relationship between New York day woman and her daughter, and I am also curious about the following story of the original New York Day Woman in the book, so I make up one. Besides, I also want to show the relationship between different Haitians immigrants families. And in the play we wrote, these two Haitian families are friends because they once got into the “illegal immigrants event” together, which shows immigrants’ similar harsh experiences. And that is why they form a strong community and hold ceremonies sometimes. I think all of these settings are well connected with each other and also with the book. In our script, we also brought up some background information about Caroline, such as her mother makes her bone soup everyday, because details can make the story full and rich. 

Talking about the specific characters, we try to make the personalities of each character clear and vivid. For example, Caroline, a 6-year-old girl, is young and native, who even has not started noticing her disability will effect her life. So we add many lively words in her lines. And we even make some connections between the Night Women by talking about the little fairies. And New York day woman she is an old gentle lady. In scene 1, her daughter asks her about when did she start to do baby-sitting, she does not give any responses, and we can see she is tired of arguing and explaining. And this also shows that she scarcely speaks because of her personality and also because she has experienced many things. She does not expect her daughter’s understanding. And for Caroline, she is mature because she is a working adult, and she suppose to be able to understand her mother, but actually she still feels unfair in her mind. That is why I leave the monologue of her“ Caroline has her parents’ love, but you gave your love to those kids you’ve taken care of” as the ending of the play. This shows that even though the daughter has grown up, she still could not convince herself when she sees her mother cares more about other children.