Ribbons

Robin is the novel’s dynamic protagonist. At the novel’s beginning, Robin is 11 years old, and she lives with her mother, father, and younger brother, Ian, in a small apartment in San Francisco’s Richmond district. Dad likens Richmond to the “Silk Road, where cultures met” (19). Robin, like her brother Ian, is half-Chinese and half-American, and she’s inherited her father’s brown hair. Ironically, though she lives in a multicultural household, situated in an even more diverse neighborhood, Robin’s world view is notably limited: Her only true interest is ballet. Robin is a natural dancer and has already graduated to the lower advanced classes. Madame, too, recognizes something special in Robin: “The other students just want to wear pretty costumes,” Madame tells Mom and Dad, “but your daughter has real promise” (13). Indeed, to Robin, ballet is almost synonymous with her sense of self: “But I was a dancer,” Robin explains, justifying her instinct to move with music (82). In this sense, dance becomes like a second language, allowing Robin to better express her feelings. She uses dance, for instance, to vent her frustrations about Grandmother, focusing on her exercises so that she might “forget [her] problems” (77).