Having been an English teacher back in Latvia, she was not entirely lost with the language, but she had only learned British English, so she still had a lot of difficulty in pronunciation and unfamiliar words. She joined her sister here in their house, then owned by the brother of her father’s friend. (It has since been bought by her sister, Eleanora, who still lives there with her husband.) She considers herself a lucky immigrant for having such connections, which made their journey easier. While housing wasn’t an issue, Stella was concerned about raising her children in this new culture that she didn’t know. She considered her children a priority and worried about the amount of individuality here, unlike the expected norm that people were expected to follow in Latvia. She didn’t like what was shown on TV and worried that the extremes in the culture may hurt them. She tried to find her own way of parenting, find a place in this new country where there were more choices than she had…
This chapter started in a class at college; it continued to explain how a Hmong student spent extra time on his speech to talk about how people make fish soup in his culture. Once I finished the first page in this chapter, I understood that the young man was trying to explain to his class that we as humans should be more careful about how we select our foods because we are all connected in different ways. However, I didn’t pick up whether his class was interested after he was done with his speech. This chapter preceded to dig deeper into the Hmong history by detailing their live in north China; N. China was were the Hmong people was subjected to wars, because they did not like to be told what to do or how to behave as a people. However, the Chinese did not like the Hmong people and called them degrading names because they wanted to overrule them.…
Andrew Pham, author of Catfish and Mandala, is on a journey of self-exploration. Family dysfunction, the illusions of the past, and the inability to move forward and find meaning to life when living between two cultures, are all catalysts’ for Pham return Vietnam. Contrary to being welcomed with open arms, Andrew is referred to as Viet-kieu when he is in Vietnam, a derogatory term meaning Vietnamese-American. Vietnamese people feel that the Viet-kieu abandoned everything about their culture when transplanted to America. This is an additional layer to the struggles Andrew faces.…
As its complex structure suggests, the book tries to organize the the stories of mother and daughter with the intention of reaching the same destination: the daughter's recovery of her cultural and ethnic identity as Chinese by overcoming the generational gap and the cultural differences between herself and her mother. The mother intend to hand over their "good intentions" and "usable past" in China to their daughter in America. Amy Tan, depicts the relationship between Jing-mei, a young Chinese-American girl, and her mother, a Chinese immigrant, her mother. She does not have something special things. However, her normal life has changed a little because of her mother.…
New lessons were introduced, which means we have to tackle with new challenges in the following days. In this week, I have read the article “Growing up Hmong in Laos and America: Two Generations of Women through My Eyes” written by Pa Xiong Gonzalo, who came to the United States as refugee in the past. She is a Hmong, an ethnic group from the Asian countries. This article is about her experiences on how her life was when she first came to the United States to the success of graduating from an U.S university. During that period, there were a few cultural and tradition issues happened in her family. I did not know Hmong group before as they only constituted a small amount of population in the Asian countries. Their stories seem interesting to me as I think that some of their tradition are quite similar to the Malay’s tradition in Malaysia.…
Heidi, who was originally born Mai Thi Hiep,, was one of those mixed children as a result of a relationship her mother had with an American soldier. Even thou Heidi had been raised in Tennessee with her adoptive mother Heidi knew of her roots in Vietnam so she was determined to reunite with them. I was amazed at how Heidi had become adjusted with the white people that surround her on her daily basis like school, adopted mother and other peers she was surrounded with. So basically one would think that she was white without actually knowing her. One thing that really bothered me was that She failed to realize that her family is very unfortunate, they don’t have the same privileges she has here. In the Documentary Heidi, being accustomed to the American culture and so far away from Vietnam and her roots, suffered from culture shock. Another thing that upset me in the film was Heidi’s attitude towards her birth family’s way of…
In a strange, unknown landscape such as a new culture, individuals long since used to old customs may face challenges in overcoming these differences and succeeding in society. In a new culture, people become dependent on those around them more fluent in the new society’s ways and lose their connection to the humans around them who seem too challenging to comprehend. The excerpt from the novel Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao exposes readers to this world through the eyes of a girl from Saigon who must help her mother orient herself to American life. In the excerpt, the girl describes the contrasts between her mother’s great shopping abilities in the open markets of Saigon and the complete bafflement caused by American supermarkets. In the excerpt…
In her essay, ‘’Vietnamese Youths No longer Look Homeward’’, Wride familiarizes readers with the so-called 1.5 generation and does this by interviewing a group of California high school and college students, who share their thought about the American dream, Vietnamese ancestry, and assimilation. According to Wride the 1.5 generation are Vietnamese who immigrated to the United States of America, typically at an early age, thus most their life spent growing up took place in the U.S, and little in their homeland--Vietnam. The students in the essay all seemed disconnected to the war that forced them out of their own homeland, unlike their parents- who are first generation immigrants, they don’t share the same hatred of communism or suspicions about trading with a former enemy. I believe the 1.5 generation have a lot of cultural conflicts to overcome, like should they retain their homeland’s culture and resist conformity? What would they be giving up or gaining to do either?…
Every individual has traditions passed down from their ancestors. This is important because it influences how families share their historical background to preserve certain values to teach succeeding generation. N. Scott Momaday has Native American roots inspiring him to write about his indigenous history and Maxine Hong Kingston, a first-generation Chinese American who was inspired by the struggles of her emigrant family. Kingston and Momaday manipulate language by using, metaphors, similes, and a unique style of writing to reflect on oral traditions. The purpose of Kingston’s passage is to reflect upon her ancestor’s mistake to establish her values as an American immigrant where as Momaday’s purpose is to remember his ancestry through his grandmother to remind future generations of their family’s traditions.…
-She felt ashamed of her “culture”, and also by her mom, I think she wanted to be American just to prove others something she wasn’t. She didn’t understand that her mom just wanted her to be happy.…
When Amy Tan falls in love with the minister’s son at the young age of fourteen, she takes for granted what her mother was trying to show her about life. Young Amy’s trying to impress her boyfriend by appearing as a traditional American girl not wanting to appear in any way Chinese American. Tan, still not experiencing life yet, had not grasped that being different is what makes someone who they are. It wasn’t until many years later that she came to realize that all her mother was trying to express to her was that she should be proud of her Chinese heritage. “But inside you must always be Chinese. You must be proud you are different. Your only shame is to have shame.” (117) She was not appreciating the diversity of different cultures and how both cultures have their own richness and value. Tan was embarrassed the whole time at Christmas dinner when she was trying to impress her young love Robert not realizing that her mother was making the meal for her. “For Christmas Eve that year, she had chosen all my favorite foods.” (117)…
In “Caroline’s Wedding”, Danticat explores the issue of cultural identity. In the story, Ma, who is Haitian, is not too happy about Caroline marrying Eric, who is Bahamian. We can see that Grace is the one that holds her family together and is who her mother and sister confide in. She understands both the Haitian values of her mother and Caroline’s American independence, but struggles with her own identity. She thinks about how her father had to marry a widow just to bring his actual family to America. Grace feels she is neither Haitian nor American. She is oppressed by her inherited culture because of the thought that she’s to blame for her parents having to leave. Grace feels betrayed by Caroline leaving and starting a new life and Ma fears that Caroline believes no one loves her but Eric. They know that after the marriage, Caroline won’t be as close to them. Grace harbors jealousy and anger towards her sister because she is afraid of loss and change. After visiting her father’s grave and filling him in on all the new events in their lives, Grace gains some assurance. We eventually see that her new passport has given her a sense of American pride and belonging, which makes it easier for her to embrace her Haitian roots. Throughout this story, Ma makes bone soup which we can assume is a Haitian tradition. This soup is symbolic because once Grace is comfortable with her identity, she makes the soup with her mother which shows that she is now able to take pride in her background without guilt. This story shows that without embracing where you come from and where you are, you won’t know your place in the world.…
When an individual faces the reality of being adopted, life can become dreadful and disconcerting. Firstly, as part of Janice’s loss of culture, she will encounter herself struggling to connect with her roots by not being able to understand or speak Ojibway (native language). For instance, when Janice says “...What was that she [Amelia] said to me in that language?”, (Taylor, 80). This part expresses Janice’s desire to know and learn more about her culture. However, learning about it after thirty-six years of…
I think the author ends the story with the narrator imaging Heidi knocking on her door and saying open up because the narrator thinks that it is the time for her to put down all the hate and all the fakeness that she relied on these years, it is time for her to be happy and start to learn to love others. It seems that she felt she is too lonely or it is time for her to overcome the scars created from her mother’s death.…
In the movie, Daughter from DaNang, it demonstrates a women’s sense of reconnection with her family and cultural roots. After being involved in Operation Babylift, Heidi Bub is separated from her Vietnamese mother, Mai Thi Hiep, to live in America. As a result, Heidi undergoes a variety of developmental stages within community and cultural difference that can be understood in a social work generalist perspective.…