By telling a story of Lee’s mother, the author demonstrated that the native people looked down upon foreign people who had difficulties to live in a new circumstance and could not speak English well to express what they wanted and thought. With the discrimination from the native people, Lee’s family struggled a lot in this community. The audience is the people who did not show respect to the foreigners and did not help them overcome the difficulties.…
In this story, Tan shows that assimilation occurs gradually through understanding. She had to experience feeling degraded daily with her mother because people judged the way her mother spoke broken English. For instance, Tan explains the incident, she had with a stockbroker in New York. The stockbroker would evade every question Tan’s mother would ask about her stock and would treat her unfairly. But when Tan herself begin to speak perfect English to the stockbroker, he sees her as the normal people of society and answers to her adequately. Tan was embarrassed by the way her mother spoke, but learns to assimilate from her own experiences that not everything has to be perfect about her mother. Assimilation needs to be gradual and can not always be…
The point of this essay, “The Chinese in All of us” by Richard Rodriguez, was to show that America is one giant melting pot. That there is no such thing as an “American” culture. An American culture cannot exist as one central thing because there are so many cultures that mixed together to form what we have now. It’s a never ending cycle of growth as a country. The immigrants come to America and with them, they bring their ideas and customs. While they learn the customs we already have we, in turn, adopt some of theirs that we observe along the way.…
Today the United States is diverse with people of different ethnic backgrounds. That is since immigrants make up about 28 percent of America’s population. The struggle of immigrants is unknown until they tell their story. Such as, Elisa Gomez Cristinio, an immigrant that migrated from Guerrero, México to Houston, Texas. She crossed the border and faced several obstacles, for instance, the lack of money.…
The author believes that language likes an invisible wall that prevents her mother from getting respect from the others. “The fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her”(765). This is how the others treat the author’s mother as well as non-native English speakers. Therefore, Amy Tan understands that there are a lot of immigrants who have been like her mother: being disregarded due to limited use of English. In addition, Amy Tan’s main point of the article is letting the audience know that the way of speaking language cannot reflect someone’s competency. The second point the author tries to say that language is not just language itself; it is about culture, background, and…
Many immigrants have overcome the obstacles of not being understood. Amy Tan, an Asian immigrant, had to interpret for her mother at times. Her mother spoke English, but not clearly. She would at times feel uncomfortable because she spoke better English than her mother did. Amy Tan’s mother knew she was difficult to understand. Amy Tan explains, “My mother has longed realized her limitations of her English”, so she would have her daughter talk to others who needed help understanding her. Any immigrant knows that moving to another place will be challenging. However, Dumas’ case she did not think that it would be so difficult just because of her name. Dumas article, is an account of how Dumas and her family moved to America and faced their challenges. At a young age Dumas decided to change her name to Julie. After doing this, she felt like she connected with the people more. During college Dumas changed her name back. She could not get a job interview for anything. But, then she added Julie to her name again and the phone calls came in. If someone has a different name they will not even look through the applicants’ application even if they are the only that is qualified for the job. Having so many linguistically challenged people has caused the Americans to adapt to their needs.…
Nguyen open up with her article by explaining her way to live in Grand Rapids, Michigan as an immigrants students. She also describe living with family on a gray house on Baldwin Street, she was living with her Father, Grandmother, three uncle, her sister and her. The life was hard living because they have to deal with paranoid and struggles. It was a new world for her and her family so they were trying to adapt in this situation. For the author, living in America was confuse, she felt like living in America was a treat or her warning for people of her type. Specifically for Thai people. The author also described how she was forced to speak English. At first, she thought that they were trying to make her forget her first language so she could only speak English but she was wrong. She also realize that kids like her was living a mixture of language. They were speaking Thai at home and English at school. She felt like that way will affect a lot of things in her abilities to speak two language and it will be confuse for her. The author show us that she was a little bit curious about the living style of others kids. There is a day, she was on her way back to home, and she missed her stop bus so she had a long ride in downtown and discover the living style of other kids. The author says he was a good experience for her because she saw that some kids was living a good life and some was living a bad life. Those are the things who make her realize what is really living in America. The author also described her high school experience. She talks about the transformation from the struggle of her identity to her simply not caring of her identity. She also talks about how she discover to adapt and overcome some trouble, she achieve it by being a good immigrant students. Specially, being active in class and confidents. The author also described her…
Jen is right when she expressed that coming to America leaves most foreigners completely disoriented, more so than other cultures would. She believes this country to be so confusing because our culture in the Unite States is mostly created for a mixture of many different societies and cultures from around the would. When Jen says, “Everywhere has a somewhere else around the corner,” she is explaining how diversified our culture is here in the United States, and while diversity is a great thing, it also is confusing for an immigrant trying to learn the way of life. The hardship in immigrants trying to adapt to the single way of life in America is that there is no single way of life here.…
Like past immigrants who came from Germany, Ireland and other places around the world. Chinese people in America faced many challenges when migrating. They felt like outcasts. Some experiences for the Chinese were in racist encounters and the feeling the way that Nazli Kibra felt when she came to America. She had always thought of herself as an American when she thought of herself as “the American kid on the block,” (Source F) until she went to school and she felt outcast and that “Whites think they own the world and the rest of us are just here for them.” (Source F) They felt as though they did not fit in in America. For Kibra, the Americans that she noticed at her school were people who were “VERY white, very wealthy. These kids owned sports cars and went to Rio for the weekend.”…
All the immigrants that came made a strong local presence, even though they were poor. Each nationality had their own little place or town. That is why a lot of cities now have china towns and other immigrated towns. Most immigrants lived in tight apartments or houses, most apartments were filled with many families. One apartment held the same nationality of immigrants, an apartment that was designed for 3-4 people a group or 10 or more could’ve been there. According to document 1 (Chinese Immigrant lee chew Denounces Prejudice in America, 1882 .pg 72) a Chinese boy goes from china to San Francisco and is treated unfairly. He gets a job but is shunned upon. He gets $3.50 which he saves $3 per week. They were not allowed to bring their wives in to America and marrying an American is an outcry. Other immigrants are allowed to citizens if they pass Chinese men aren’t allowed to be, according to him all the other immigrants are below his nationality. But the Chinese are fit to become citizens if they were allowed to be.…
For example, a Polish immigrant wrote a letter in 1913; he stated that following, "I go 4 times to teacher, and must pay $2 weekly. I wanted take board [to like] in english house, but I could not, for I only earn $5 or 6 in a week, and when I pay teacher $2, I only have $4-3 and now english board house is too dear [expensive] for me." He also says in his letter, "But my friends are polish people- I must stay with them" (document 5). This letter shows how Polish people were discriminated against and had to stick together. The letter also explains the struggle that the immigrants went through to learn the language so they can communicate with the American people. They had problems with how their low income was, and it affected their lively hood. Immigrants could not afford basic luxuries. Another example, is that the typical immigrant faced nativists. Nativists are white American citizens of the United States; who believed that immigrants should not be allowed into the country and that they are ruining the country. Nativists wanted to restrict immigration to protect themselves and their children from ruinous labor and business competitions (document 4). Nativists also encouraged the Chinese Exclusion Act which is an act that excluded Chinese Labors to enter the United States and it said that any person who originated in China, and then left America would not be…
About ten years ago, my family moved to this country. As a Mexican legal resident people believe I didn’t struggle; however, I often remind them that I also come to the United States with little to no knowledge. I was expected and demanded to learn a foreign language, which was going to aim me in the future. A future that was unknown, surrounded by a different culture.…
One struggle is finding a job. When immigrants come over to the U.S. it is very hard to get a job because they don’t know the language as well as those who have been speaking English for their entire life. When employers are looking to hire they will look for someone who can do the job fast and efficiently. When people can’t speak English fluently, that lessens their chance of being able to complete the job at the pace they want it to be done. A second difficulty faced when immigrants arrive to America is fitting in. Fitting into American culture is very difficult especially if you are surrounded by people from their native land. When immigrants would come to America, they would typically live with either their close family or other immigrants who have come over to the U.S. from the same country. It is very hard to adapt when they are constantly being surrounded by and keeping their own customs (Document 6). Another difficulty faced by immigrants who come to the U.S. is that they have to stay in very small tenements. Tenements are very small multi-family apartments. There isn’t a lot of space and not a lot of room for multiple beds. This is a safety hazard as well as a struggle (Document…
For centuries, millions of people have immigrated to the United States of America. America is a colonized country. Unless one is a Native American, all people in America have had ancestors who have immigrated to America in the past few centuries. Most of these immigrants faced challenges on their road to the better life that they thought America would provide for them. The Germans, Irish, Japanese and the Chinese immigrants have all faced challenges in America. Some questions arose about whether one could keep the culture from their past country and still be given American opportunities. In the book, “The Joy Luck Club,” by Amy Tan, Lindo Jong, one of the Chinese mothers who immigrated said that it was impossible to have American circumstances…
Born to local Chinese parents in Hong Kong, I immigrated to the United States when I was 19. I decided to leave my hometown despite having an admission offer from its best university because I wanted the experience of living a new life in an entirely different culture. The transition into American culture was both fascinating and painfully difficult. The language…