English Essay 1

Janelle A. Carr
Prof. Edwards
ENG 110
My Great life
Coming from a family that has migrated from another country living is definitely something that is both extremely difficult and also very exciting. Being from another country parents typically expect a whole lot from their child or children, mainly because their main reasons for migrating was to have a better life from what they had growing up. Although parents who have migrated from other countries see this as a wonderful opportunity for their families sometimes it could also be the worst decision to make. In the sense that going to a different country people sometimes tend lose their sense of self or lose certain values they may have had in their country of origin. Not all people lose the values they grew up though some are able to retain those values.
In “The Good Daughter” by Caroline Hwang, the Hwang family are a set of people who have not seemed to lose certain values they’ve had from their country. The Hwang family have come from Korean in order to better their lives, however in the process of this transition Caroline Hwang has difficulty finding herself and knowing who she really is as a person. She speaks about the fact that she doesn’t even know how to say her own name, because her mother feels as though it’s not important but in fact it is. Because of that she is unable to really identify and really decide on what she wants for her life. Coming to this country her parents wanted her to be nothing but someone who was successful in life and to just make them proud. Although as she got older she saw that her “sense identity was already disintegrating” and in this point in her life she was unsure of what she wanted in life, because she always did what she thought her parents wanted her to do. As she goes into deal she speaks about this map that was her out line for her life as she dropped out of graduate school she explains that she “tore up the map to her future, the one hat said not only where she was going but who she was.”
As people come into a new country you don’t really know what to expect. You’re just ready to start a new adventure and see where it goes. Heading into the first grade in Jamaica I was nothing but excited, that summer my mom had gone to America on a work studies job to see if she would be qualified enough to work here in the States. As summer came to a close my mother told me that I would be starting school there in America, filled with joy I couldn’t wait start school. Although I really lacked the knowledge of what I was getting into I was still excited. All mother’s hard work had paid off to try and make my life better, and now it was my turn to show her that I wouldn’t take that for granted. As I grew into my middle school days though, I started to see that I was starting to really lose grasp of my culture and where I was from and my parents saw that as well. Although I didn’t forget who I was as a person as a citizen from Jamaica I lost myself. I couldn’t remember simple things that were important, so my mother started to send me back so I could get some of those things back. Although my parents wanted me to still keep some traditional values they grew up on, they didn’t force it upon on me like Caroline’s parents did. They “wanted her to go to law school” but she wanted to be a writer. So she went graduate school because she “couldn’t bring herself to disobey or disappoint” them. She wanted to meet all their expectations because she felt as though she “owed them the fulfillment of their hopes for her.” Every child feels as though they their parents. In a way Caroline parents shares some of common goals like about us being successful. There comes a point where my mother didn’t force me to be someone I didn’t want to be. She stuck by anything I chose to do or be. My mother taught me certain principles she thought were really necessary for me to really have and to stick by as I grew up.
Those principles stuck by me as I started high school. I had many paths in which I wanted to take. Although in my mother’s mind she wanted me to take the route of just math and science. I wanted a variety of things, I wanted not only math and science but I wanted music or some form of art. Rather than her telling me no because she didn’t believe it would help me in the long run, she allowed me to make my own decisions on what I wanted to do. Unlike Caroline Hwang’s mother, my mother wanted me to be the person I wanted to be. She didn’t want me to be stuck with a class I wasn’t interested in. So she gave me some leeway on certain things I would do in my life. In a sense my mother wanted the best for me but she wanted the best for me in the sense that I got to choose what I wanted to do that would make me happy. As I got into my last year in high school, here came the important question, what do you want to be when you grow up? My mother may have asked me this question a billion of times and I think I changed my mind maybe about two times. In my mother’s mind she wanted always saw me as being a teacher, a math teacher for that matter, and in my mind I did too. As I got through high school, being in different honor societies and helping others with tutoring and studying, I saw that I had a passion to helping others. Helping others was what I wanted to do but that was just not the way I intended on helping. My mom was disappointed but she understood that I just didn’t have the drive to really help in that way. So I changed my job interest to forensic science. I loved the fact that I was helping others in a productive way that helped my community keep dangerous people off the streets. I then decided to take forensics in high school and I loved it. However something told me to look into this career path deeper. My junior I decided to then take human anatomy which was about learning about the human body which I thought was amazing. That then drew my attention to forensic pathology. My mother was a little apprehensive to the fact that I would be working with dead people and didn’t really agree with my decision. But she saw that I had always had an interest with science and saw that I stuck by this choice for a while so she understood my choice and started to just agree with it. Unlike Ms. Hwang “suppressing my dreams” was something I couldn’t do so I as the year went along and I started applying for college. I stuck by my major.
As a high school graduate with my major set for the future and a college I was looking forward to start. Nothing made my mother more proud. Why? Because she could finally see, physically see that all the hard work she did had finally paid off. I knew the moment I walked across the stage and got my diploma that my mom didn’t come here for nothing. This was just one of many things or moments in life that will show that my mother’s reasons for coming to this country was not a waste. “For children of immigrants, the choice seems more complicated” which is true. You can either make the best of the new resources provided by your parents or make it go to waste. Although at certain points in my teenage life I lost a sense of what I came from, I didn’t really lose who I was as a person. The person my mom taught me to be, the person who got the chance to actually choose what she wanted to do with my life.