Gary Soto's Looking For Work

Is it possible for people to make comments about me for who I am as a person and not my outer appearance? This is the question I constantly asked myself everyday because most of the time I am bombarded with criticisms on how I looked. To put it bluntly, I, myself, have not met the body figure standard of what a Vietnamese woman should be. My family and relatives have always been saying that a Vietnamese girl should have a slim figure. Since I was small, I was that chubby girl, who loved to eat delicious home-cooked meals continuously and did not care about the effects of overeating. Everywhere I go, I would constantly hear comments from my parent’s friends and relatives on how obese I am and compare my figure to my cousins and friends’ appearance.
In this story, the author watched television shows called Father Knows Best that portray a normal yet perfect White family lifestyle. This made Soto to think and want to imitate the ideal White family life because it appears to be more organize compare to his loud, disorganized family. I felt the same way as Soto did with my experience when I watched Korean shows and music videos. During those moments of watching, I imagine myself living in a life where I was slim and everyone do not make any remarks on how I looked. Soto envision this too for he wants “more White people to like [his family] more (Soto 25).” In order to make his dreams come true, he asked his family members to make some changes in their family routine to be like White family. For example, Soto seek out to find work in hopes to earn enough money to become rich, for it will increase the chance Soto’s family to interact ideally like what is shown in the television. Moreover, he asked his mother if the family “could dress up for dinner” and his mother was surprise that he ask such a bizarre question (Soto 24). Though Soto find ways to make a change in his family routine, in the end, he did not get his wish