Jan Wong starts out as a naïve, nineteen year old, Canadian student who is displeased with the capitalistic nature of her surroundings. It was the early seventies and to the author, she was experiencing a cultural revolution all her own. Opposition to the Vietnam War was strongly prevalent, the notion of feminism was beginning to arise, and there was a strong desire against conformity of any nature. The author grew up middle class to second generation Chinese citizens and was fueled by bourgeois guilt, and by a feeling of separation from her roots. “Curiosity about my ancestry made me feel ashamed that I couldn’t speak Chinese and knew so little about China” (14). After devouring every morsel of information that she could, she firmly believed Mao and his “comrades” were the only people who had a legit shot at establishing a utopic society. It was official. Jan Wong was going to Beijing.…
In the book American Born Chinese, all 3 stories largely reflect about needing, or wanting, to fit in.…
Liu compares himself with James Baldwin and agree his statement “the world is white not longer and it will never be white again” because Baldwin was first black who step foot in the tiny Swiss village and ending up feeling not much a stranger , and liu felt that after his journey that he is not an alien but he is a citizen . Liu feel that he has neglected his heritage, and that he lost something. That even though he could speak Chinese and cook Chinese food he could not claim to be Chinese at the core. But he would not admit he is “white inside”.…
He tells us about his struggle on his love life, he cannot bring his wife from china nor marry an American women .Also how the rest of the cultures are treated much nicer than the Chinese.…
Even though there were hardships, JEU DIP, and his future family created their new life as Chinese Americans. Overall this book shows where the Chinese people fit in, in America, and what became of their lives. However, some families,…
In The Struggle To Be An All-American Girl, Elizabeth Wong writes about her personal accounts of going to Chinese school to learn the language of her heritage and wanting to become All-American. Wong's purpose for writing this essay was to inform others of how she grew up and now she regrets her discussion. The genre of the essay is a personal essay because narrative and descriptive passages are used as well as first person. This essay's audience is other Chinese-American youth that want to become all-American or other that just want insight of her life. The social context of the essay is that there are others that are required to go to Chinese school and the cultural was the enlightenment regarding that not continuing to learn the language of her heritage. Wong's essay is a simple little passage telling about her life to others in the same situation.…
The graphic novel American Born Chinese (2006), by Gene Luen Yang, is a very modern and influential piece of work that can be compared to the short indie film Two Lies (1990), directed and written by Pamela Tom, which had preceded the novel by 16 years. These two different forms of work, both utilizing their ability to teach the audience, are used as powerful venues for the topic of identity crisis among the Asian people in a majority European American world. In the film, we have Mei and her family who are all having some trouble adjusting to their lives in Southern California but more specifically we have Mei and her trouble to understand her mother 's cause and intent for having undergone double eye-lid surgery. In ABC, we have our protagonist, Jin, who is having trouble fitting into his new school in San Francisco since he is one of the very few Asian admitted to the school. Another time line in the novel is the story of the monkey king who does anything to get rid of the fact that he is a monkey in order to fit into society. The third is the story of Danny, a European American who has trouble and often becomes embarrassed with his hyperbolic Chinese cousin, Chin-Kee. This character is first introduced by saying "Harro Amellica!" while Jin 's father, carrying giant Chinese take out container says "I 'll put your luggage into your room, Chin-Kee" (48). All three of these time line show our characters having some sort of shame or embarrassment to the fact that their own image or background is different from those around them.…
How vital were the Chinese laborers in opening up the West for America through the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad?…
Amy Tan allows us to deepen our understanding of her world by finding every day items and ideas that Americans can relate to such as a mother’s desire to do the best for their children, or using meals to represent a nurturing love, or a vase to represent a rocky foundation, or the pain that comes from hiding your true self. The use of figurative language in this novel removes the barriers from both the Chinese and the American cultures and customs therefore allowing us to examine each other not through the eyes of a specific race but through the eyes of one race, the human race.…
The voice in Chang’s piece engages the reader and makes his arguments hard to disagree with. As an Asian-American, Chang puts a personal voice into the piece, which makes it almost feel like a story. “Over 100 years ago, an American myth misled many of my ancestors.” (Chang, 513) He also structures the piece in such a way that he pokes fun at the media using an almost ironic tone. “First, it lumps all Asian-Americans into one monolithic homogenous yellow skinned mass.” (Chang, 515) Many of the strategies he uses to put himself in the piece are the words like, “us”. “The Model Minority myth introduces us as an ethnic minority…” (Chang, 514) “Our”: “national magazines have trumpeted our ‘remarkable, ever-mounting achievements’ (Newsweek, Dec. 6, 1982).” (Chang, 514) and “my”: “American myth misled many of my ancestors.”(Chang, 513) This makes it sound more natural and the reader will easily to connect to the writing. Having known that the author has had a personal experience around the subject gives the reader a feeling of security that in turn, makes…
A young Chinese American woman, Jing-Mei “June” Woo, recalls, after her mother's death, her mother's sadness at having left her twin baby girls in China in 1949. June has used her mother's regret as a weapon in a battle of wills focusing on what her mother wants her to be and what she wants. June wins, leaving her mother, Suyuan, stunned when she says she wishes she were dead like the twins. Although this scene characterizes the common struggle for power between mother and daughter, the story also illustrates…
Americans had fun, doing activities besides work and having freedom, which meant using that free time to “go wild.” Another problem was that the Chinese people were trying to lay under the radar in America. As Vietnam Memorial architect Maya Lin thought at the age of 21. “I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible.” (Source G) This was how a lot of Chinese immigrants felt. They felt the need to blend in and just go through their life thinking that they need to be as “American” as possible. The point of America is to celebrate the differences in our cultures. The first amendment is the freedom of speech, assembly and religion. In America, you can say what you want to say, do what you want to do and be who you want to be. Although the Chinese immigrants had troubles during the first years of immigration, they felt discriminated against, but the truth is that hey were being just as discriminatory to the whites as the whites were to them. If both sides, the Americans and the Chinese, accept eachother for who they really are and get past prejudices that are baseless, it would be possible to have American circumstances…
1. Lon Kurashige and Alice Yang Murray, Major Problems in Asian American History (Houghton Mifflin Co., 2003). ISBN 0618077340.…
Although the immigrants contributed a lot to U.S. society, they also caused many social issues in U.S. society. For instance, the Chinese immigrants undercut American wages and brought an unacceptable culture with them. According to reading, Chinese immigrants worked for low wages and debased the American standard of living. Also, they were an alien race that could not be assimilated into America; their innate lack of morals made them as inferior race, as some Americans said. Besides Chinese immigrants, there also had other ethnic immigrants causing social issues. For instance, like Chinese immigrants, irish immigrants also lowered down the American standard of living and undercut American wages as they accpeted low wages. Also, they completed…
During the mid to late 1800’s, the United States of America underwent a crucial era of expansion and industrialization that many historians recognize as the start of major growth and transformation into the sovereign country that America is today. By the 1840’s, the industrial revolution was reconstructing the east, due to newly created railroads, textile mills, and small cities that stretched across the entire eastern seaboard. By 1860, over fifteen percent of Americans lived in cities, and a staggering one third of the nation’s income was generated from manufacturing ("Immigration: The Journey to America"). Although the east coast was rapidly expanding during this era of industrialization,…