Perspectives
As with every short story, it is a very good idea to put “Gon-do-la” by Annemarie Neary into perspective to better understand the issues it explores, as well as the text’s connection to similar literary works.
Current issues
The short story explores two important issues: the difficulty of settling between past and present and the immense workload of Chinese factories.
Zhang, the main character, finds it hard to adapt to modern times while also tending to preserve her nostalgia and attachment to the past. Nowadays, the same thing happens to people who have lived during different political regimes. In Europe, you could think of Romania, for example, a country which has lived under monarchy, under communism and which is currently a democratic country.
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Literary period
Written and published in 2014, the short story “Gon-do-la” belongs to the 21st-century literary period,...
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Works with the same theme
The theme of nostalgia/past versus present has been explored in several short stories and poems. We recommend you read John Agard’s poem “Mr and Mrs Xenophobia” (Worlds of English, pp. 72),...
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