The Evolution of my Family

I would give the story, “The Evolution of my Brother” by Jenny Zhang a different title.
Throughout the book, we do see how her brother evolves over time, but we also see how she evolves
from her childhood years to when she became an adult in college. Additionally, even though we don’t
really see an evolution in the parents, we do see an evolution in the family relationships. Therefore,
I believe the title should be, “The Evolution of my Family.”

The reasons for this change is that the family relationships in this story are all over the place.
In the beginning, when it was just the narrator and her parents, they were very indulgent and would
spend tons of money at Sizzler, but when her brother was born, they stopped eating so much and ate
more at home. Furthermore, we can see an evolution in the family because at the beginning, we can
see that the mother doesn’t want her daughter to go away, but then at the end, it seems that the
mother’s relationship with the narrator has gotten better, while her relationship with her brother has
gotten worse. The character we don’t really see is the Father.

Besides that, the character grows up and realizes that she too doesn’t want her brother to grow up,
realizing that this is exactly how her mother felt about her when she was just younger. Her parents
have to start paying her brother to speak to her and then in the end, the narrator figures out that she
cannot control her brother, no matter how much she wants to. We see more evolution in the family
relationships than we do in the brother alone.