Suki Kim the author of the story “Facing Poverty with a Rich Girl’s Habits”, discusses the challenges and hardships she encounters on her journey to America. Suki Kim, who was born into living this luxurious millionaire lifestyle in South Korea, until her whole world gets converted upside down. Suki Kim along with her family was forced to emigrate to Queens, New York. Thirteen year old Suki Kim goes from riches to rags in her story. It begins, when Suki Kim witnessed her father go under bankruptcy. In Korea bankruptcy was punishable by a jail term at the time. This triggered the effect of Suki Kim and her dad coming to America. The realization in major culture differences between America and Korea came to the attention of Suki Kim. In Korean…
Her realization that she is not alone in her oppression brings her a sense of freedom. It validates her emerging thoughts of wanting to rise up and shine a light on injustice. Her worries about not wanting to grow up because of the harsh life that awaits her is a common thought among…
How people between the ages of 18-35 have been cheated out of our inheritance simply because we are born into the "richest" country in the world but yet we still cant afford to live properly finacially due to the outragous prices of things these days. She talks to people about economic obsticals that young people today faced. How the older generation accusses us of being "slackers", "overgrown children", and "procrastinators" as if we are intentionally dragging our heels to avoid adulthood.…
In “This is the Life” by Annie Dillard, Dillard uses a dominant magnanimous tone and she switches between a mocking tone and a provocative tone to express that humans nowadays take their lives for granted and they do not realize that not everyone in the world has such an easy life. Dillard does a tremendous job on describing the lives of humans in the past and the present, mapping out scenarios describing the “easy life” during a certain time period. As well as trying to get the reader to appreciate what they have in life, she also reminds us of how we need to challenge our worldview.…
In the first section of his introduction, King draws his audience in by giving two realistic examples of how African Americans struggle in the U.S.. He talks of both a young boy and girl to try to make a connection to his audience. By making them both young, his audience feels sympathy for the two kids. He put the children in a real life case scenario to make the reader truly realize their suffering. By asking, "Why does misery…
The protagonist lacks in all these three factors, making her stubborn, angry, and a know-it-all person. However, what she is not aware of is her family economic hardship neither the other kids. The innocence of the Protagonist is highly recognizable throughout the story, the taxi ride, the woman in a fur coat in the heat of summer, etc. The speaker has never seen someone in a fur coat during summer. She thinks is crazy, but that represents a symbol of wealth, something she was discovering through this lesson. Then they arrive at the toy store, and everyone is looking through the window amazed with the price tags. It took them a while to come inside the store, the kids know that they do not belong in there. Once inside, the speaker sees a clown, it is just $35 dollars really cheap compared to the other items in the store and pocket change for the rich folks. Going back to the slums in the train, the speaker starts to think a better use for that money, new bunk beds, food for her whole family, a trip to visit her grandfather, and even the rent and the piano bill. Through the process of analyzing, she said, referring to rich people: ” What kind of work they do and how they live and how come we ain't in on it?" Anger is flowing through her blood, and she questions herself why she cannot have a piece of the pie that represents the American wealth? Despite that other…
With regards to hooks work, she explains that though she had grown up in a poor community, she never actually saw herself or her family as poor. Yet, it wasn’t until college that she discovered how unjustly they were represented due to the fact that many of her classmates, even professors, displayed poverty as being lazy or dishonest. She was taken aback by these false accusations and by the amount of people who were manipulated into believing these stereotypes. In any sense, while some assumptions may not affect how poor individuals think of themselves, many felt as if they were worthless, according to hooks, and were ashamed to identify with being poor. As a result, hooks addresses the impact media, culture, and stereotypes have had on the viewpoint of the poor class and how those who are poor in turn view themselves.…
We all had expectations of this book, and it ended up becoming more than we had thought, as I can say the same for Barbara Ehrenreich with beginning her project and in part of the outcome with more that she thought, but as for the way she lived she was still at the bottom. By documenting this emotional experience she is connecting with the readers, as the author, Ehrenreich, exposes how being in the lower class forces you to work ten times harder while still getting low…
According to Cunningham, by showing many pictures of poor white in U.S. rural regions such as Oklahoma, Montana, Arkansas, and Dakota, Life magazine effectively aroused sympathy from readers of Life magazine who subsequently thought their poor condition was mainly attributable to misfortune. This limited a reasonable explanation of poverty of “worthy poor.” The readers of this magazine only saw the pictures of untidiness, biological unfitness, and sloth of the poor white, so only consider that they were handicapped sufferer by geographical conditions. The direct factor of this economic crisis, capitalism itself, was never involved or even considered as the cause of the poor condition in Life magazine. Thus, the readers of Life did not expand themselves as unworthy to be poor, and think of becoming destitute as a result of economic crisis. In Delph-Janiurek’s discussion of voices, although gendered dualism of voices seems obvious having distinctive characteristics…
Kingsolver uses plot points to show that people in poverty are more appreciative of possessions than others. One such example of this is when Taylor tells an anecdote about a lady that she came across in the rising action of the book. “As I left to go back to work I saw the woman with the cardboard box, still in the living room. She was sorting through a handful of possessions she had laid out on the sofa - A black shirt, a small book bound in red vinyl, a framed photograph, a pair of baby's sneakers tired together by the laces - and carefully putting them back into the box." (Kingsolver 156). This plot detail illustrates that even though this lady had a lot less possessions than someone that wasn’t effected by poverty she seemed to care more for her belongings and appeared more thankful of them because of the way she treats them. An additional plot detail demonstrates the exact same thing. This was during dialogue between Estevan and Taylor; Taylor explained her hardships she had to face as a child just for a pair of jeans. "In the fall, the kids that lived in the country would pick walnuts to earn money for school clothes." (Kingsolver 146). This dialogue displays how hard Taylor had to work to get something others may take for granted such as a pair of jeans. Taylor as well as others who suffer from poverty are more…
Kim was also amazed at the differences in Korean schools and those in America. In Korea, she describes school as being quiet and respectful, using examples of bowing to teachers and wearing slippers to avoid making marks on the flooring. In one particular example she talks of youngsters kissing in the classroom while the teacher calls out attendance, something that surely didn’t happen in Korea. A hard dose of reality soon came to Kim when she realized just how much of her life was going to have to change. Her mother, who was considered an elite citizen of…
Thought-out the essay Kim compares and describes the challenges her and her family faced when the moved from china to America due to her fathers business going into bankruptcy. At that time in South Korea filling for bankruptcy was punishable by imprisonment. I think the most important point Kim is trying to share is to be grateful for what you have and appreciate it because there are always people out there that have it worse. Kim is trying to explain to the audience is not to judge or assume that you are better then someone else based solely on yours or your families wealth, social status or personal gains.…
“Facing Poverty with the Rich Girl’s Habit” is about a young rich South Korean girl who immigrated to America at a young age and how her lifestyle has been changed. She came from rich family which didn’t bring a penny when she and her family flee to America after her father lost everything after bankruptcy. She had a tough time to assimilate into an American culture due to the language barrier and her Asian background. Her Life in America was completely different; she was living a decent life in Korea. However the brutal thing for her was facing poverty after being wealthy, but she had no choice but to adjust accordingly. Her lifestyle has completely changed now she has to do her homework by herself with no help , she has to take public transportation to school instead of being driven by a chauffeur, she has to live in old house .…
The grandmother and her daughter have differing opinions of Natalie’s husband’s actions. Natalie’s white husband, John, neither works nor cares for his daughter, choosing to go to the gym every day. Natalie doesn’t mind John’s actions because she believes “it is important for him to keep his spirits up” (Jen, 615). Despite being the only breadwinner in the family, Natalie is supportive of her husband and works hard so that he can be happy. On the other hand, her mother sees no reason for his complaining because he has a “beautiful wife, beautiful daughter, beautiful house” and “if John lived in China he would be very happy” (Jen, 615). The grandmother has worked hard her entire life in order to live comfortably so she cannot understand how a person like John, who has a family and a house, can be unhappy. While Natalie worries about John’s emotional health, the grandmother is less sympathetic because she finds John very fortunate. Natalie prioritizes her husband’s feelings while her mother places more importance on wealth and possessions. Some may lump Asian Americans into one massive group all sharing a single mindset, but Jen shows that there is no universal APIA mentality. Asian American culture is not static, rather it evolves with every new generation.…
For Amy Tan, she became comfortable with her culture years after the fateful Christmas dinner, but once she accepted her background, she had done so for good. “It wasn’t until many years later-long after I had gotten over my crush on Robert-that I was able to fully appreciate her lesson and the true purpose behind our particular menu. For Christmas Eve that year, she had chosen all my favorite foods”(Tan). Tan’s mother attempted to teach her daughter pride, and although it took several years, Tan realized exactly what her mother had strived to accomplish. In addition, the fact that Tan decided to publish her work in Seventeen Magazine displays how she’s grown and matured when it comes to her story and Chinese background. Also, the economic situations immigrants dealt with slowly ameliorated as they lived in the country for longer periods of time. In fact, at a certain point, immigrants had lower poverty rates than natural-born citizens. According to the aforementioned study, immigrants who inhabited the country for 30-31 years had a poverty rate of 13.3%, which is .2% lower than that for natural-born citizens, and that percentage only continues to decrease. For immigrants who lived in the United States for over 61 years, the poverty rate is 7.2%, which is an astonishingly diminutive number in comparison to the aforementioned statistics. That decreasing rate of poverty allowed for immigrants to ensure good, secure lives for not only themselves, but for their future generations. Newcomers to the United States may have had early struggles, but once those were over, the better lives they so heavily pursued were…