Summary and Personal Response
By: Elizabeth Beauchamp
English Composition 115
Professor Kirstin Leighton-Lucas
July 14, 2013
Page 2
The name of the essay is “Facing Poverty with a Rich Girl’s Habits” by Suki Kim on November 21, 2009. In this essay she is telling us about a Korean girl went from being rich to her family going broke overnight. Ms. Kim is telling us about her struggles trying to adjust to a different society. She also needed to learn English and she found difficult to learn. One main point in her life was when her father lost everything overnight that ever mattered to the family. She was then moved to Queen, New York in the 1980’s where she started Jr. High. Suki had difficulty adjusting to America, especially not knowing how to speak English at all. The supporting details is when she stated that she watched reruns of “Three Company” in an attempt to learn English. She also stated that more brutal than learning English was facing poverty with a rich’s girl memory. A second main point is that immigration is meant to be the great equalizer, yet it is not easy to eradicate the divisions of the old country. She recalled at 13, is an acute awareness of the distance between her and her fellow F.O.B.’s, and another, more palpable one between those of them in E.S.L and the occasional English- speaking Korean- American kids, who avoided them though they brought them certain undefined shame. The supporting details is that years later she learned that they were, in fact separated from them by generations. Those that sat in in huddle in that E.S.L class grew up to represent the so called 1.5 generation. Many of them came to America in their teens, already rooted in Korean ways and languages.
Page 3
The writer’s purpose in genre is that she
Cited: The McGraw Hill Guide/ 2011