Lac Su
5/18/2013
English 1a
I Love Yous Are for White People In the book “I Love Yous Are for White People” Lac’s quest for acceptance takes him through an intense journey to acquire self love and acceptance. The author Lac Su navigates through his childhood and adolescence seeking an extraordinary desire for love, acceptance and belonging he has been deprived from by his family. During his journey, Lac attempts to gain acceptance by friends and family, no matter what the consequences are. Lac Su’s upbringing was without much love and nurturing. His father was abusive, physically and mentally. For seemingly menial issues Lac would get a beating, one of those examples would be when he would get homework answers wrong. His father would grab anything that he could get his hands on to beat him. Lac stated that his father would grab “the plastic rod from the mini blinds, a spatula, a rice bowl, a fishing rod, my notebook, a radio antenna, a wooden yard stick, and a broom handle before settling on an extension cord as his weapon of choice.” (p62). Lac clearly was beaten often; his home life did not include any love, rather physical assaults and degradation. “The impact of the blows grow dull and impersonal; I feel less of each new layer he adds to the wounds.” (113) Due to the horrid amount of beatings Lac Su would have to endure, he created a surreal world when it came to his home life. He learned to cope with the pain and impersonalize it in order for him to make it through the mental and physical abuses. Lac really had no other way to cope with the abuse besides impersonalizing it. He disassociated himself from his pain both physically and internally due to the psychological absence from his family. Being a human being and needing some sort of approval, he sought after the love and attention he desperately craved for outside of his home. Outside of his home, Lac was able to exercise his other faculties which eventually made him feel more human, more loved and
English 1a
I Love Yous Are for White People In the book “I Love Yous Are for White People” Lac’s quest for acceptance takes him through an intense journey to acquire self love and acceptance. The author Lac Su navigates through his childhood and adolescence seeking an extraordinary desire for love, acceptance and belonging he has been deprived from by his family. During his journey, Lac attempts to gain acceptance by friends and family, no matter what the consequences are. Lac Su’s upbringing was without much love and nurturing. His father was abusive, physically and mentally. For seemingly menial issues Lac would get a beating, one of those examples would be when he would get homework answers wrong. His father would grab anything that he could get his hands on to beat him. Lac stated that his father would grab “the plastic rod from the mini blinds, a spatula, a rice bowl, a fishing rod, my notebook, a radio antenna, a wooden yard stick, and a broom handle before settling on an extension cord as his weapon of choice.” (p62). Lac clearly was beaten often; his home life did not include any love, rather physical assaults and degradation. “The impact of the blows grow dull and impersonal; I feel less of each new layer he adds to the wounds.” (113) Due to the horrid amount of beatings Lac Su would have to endure, he created a surreal world when it came to his home life. He learned to cope with the pain and impersonalize it in order for him to make it through the mental and physical abuses. Lac really had no other way to cope with the abuse besides impersonalizing it. He disassociated himself from his pain both physically and internally due to the psychological absence from his family. Being a human being and needing some sort of approval, he sought after the love and attention he desperately craved for outside of his home. Outside of his home, Lac was able to exercise his other faculties which eventually made him feel more human, more loved and