Character Clues
Character Analysis
Clothing
Clothing mainly comes into play with Waverly, who is strapped into her gear so tightly that we wonder how she doesn't suffocate. For instance, take her hair—her mother "would twist and yank on my thick black hair until she had formed two tightly wound pigtails" (9). Ouch, right? Importantly, this tells us as much about Waverly as it does about her mother. Waverly is being constrained, after all, and her mother is doing the constraining.
The constriction of Waverly's hair is just the beginning, though, and eventually it comes to encompass her whole body: "In my crisp pink-and-white dress with scratchy lace at the neck, one of two my mother had sewn for these special occasions" (50). Again we see Waverly's appearance as a tool for characterizing both her and her mother. Nothing about these clothes feels comfortable… which mirrors how Waverly herself lives under her mother.
Family Life
In many ways, the whole story is about family life. Waverly struggles to navigate her mother, who in turn pokes and prods Waverly toward her own aims. In other words, chess is simply a vehicle for exploring this tense and complicated family dynamic, and the ways in which characters—particularly Waverly and her mom—engage with the family tell us a whole lot about them.
For instance, we find out how controlling Mom is right off the bat when she says "Bite back your tongue" (2), stopping her kid's emotions in their tracks. Shortly thereafter, though, it also becomes clear that she cares about her children's welfare and wants them to do well in life, since she "imparted her daily truths so she could help my older brothers and me rise above our circumstances" (3). This maternal push and pull defines Waverly's entire world, and as we watch her shift from trying to please her mother to being completely fed up, we understand that Waverly is coming into her own a bit.
Speech and Dialogue
Waverly's mom is an immigrant, so she speaks in broken English:
"Chinese people do many things," she said simply. "Chinese people do business, do medicine, do painting. Not lazy like American people. We do torture. Best torture." (12)
There's more at work here than just an excuse to ignore good grammar: Mom's tone is always clipped and direct. She speaks with absolute certainty and knows exactly what she's saying. It's a clever writing technique. Not only does it give us a sense of who Mom is, it makes it a little harder for us to understand her—suggesting the deeper communication issues between her and her daughter.
Names
Waverly's named after the street that she lives on, and with the exception of her chess tournaments, she spends almost the whole story there. She also sports a nickname, since "My mother named me after the street that we lived on: Waverly Place Jong, my official name for important American documents. But my family called me Meimei, 'Little Sister'" (9). What dos this tell us? Well, that Waverly is connected to her home and her place in the family by more than just proximity—these things are part of who she is, so much so that they're in her name.