“Where are you from?”
“America”
“No, where are you actually from?”
These are the two questions that I get asked regularly by non-Asians. I always reply “Well I was born and raised in America but my family comes from Hong Kong.” I grew up constantly being told to take pride in being Chinese, however, I was also consistently told by my family to be proud that I even have the opportunity to grow up in America. There was never a definite answer as to what I was, so I learned to accept both. I am Asian American. Many people have questions about what “Asian American” really means and their questions brought on questions of my own. It was not until recently that Asian American influences became more prominent in my life. I was able to find books,
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As a result, literature has to follow certain guidelines to be classified as Asian American; being placed in a box limits many great pieces of work to gain the recognition they deserve. As Wong and Sumida state, Asian American Literature is a presentation of American culture within Asian American history and culture, rather than a representation of the entire culture. “Asian Americans” is a large and complex, pan-ethnic group of people making it difficult to classify them all under the same stereotypes. Many Asian American works portray Asian Americans as “perpetual aliens or castaways whose cultures tumble nicely and helplessly” (4). This is because Asian Americans create their own culture, a hybrid of Asian culture and American culture, they don’t fully fit in with American culture just as they don’t fully fit in with Asian culture. Asian American Literature is a reflection of just that, it doesn’t fit into specific guidelines, breaking away from the labels that others create and making its own impact by culturing its readers on being Asian American. Whether the author is Asian American or is solely writing about Asian American culture, it still classifies as Asian American Literature
Wong, Shawn, ed. Asian American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology. New York: Harper Collins College Publishers, 1996.
Despite their being of the same culture, Asian American, the authors of the two texts have contrasting viewpoints. Elizabeth Wong, author of "The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl", looks upon Asian culture with eyes full of contempt and sees America culture as far superior. However, The author of "Notes for a Poem on Being Asian American", Dwight Okita, recognizes how the two cultures blend together, going hand-in-hand with one another. Wong's perception of her Asian culture as shameful is evident throughout the text. She wrote that her mother "forcibly" sent her and her brother to Chinese school (Wong 1).
Tachiki, Amy; Wong, Eddie; Odo, Franklin, eds. (1971). Roots: An Asian American Reader. University of California, Los Angeles Press.
He, Qiang Shan. "Chinese-American Literature." New Immigrant Literatures in the United States: A Sourcebook to Our Multicultural Literary Heritage. Ed. Alpana Sharma Knippling. WEstport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1996. 44-65.
Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker expresses prominent themes of language and racial identity. Chang-Rae Lee focuses on the struggles that Asian Americans have to face and endure in American society. He illustrates and shows readers throughout the novel of what it really means to be native of America; that true nativity of a person does not simply entail the fact that they are from a certain place, but rather, the fluency of a language verifies one’s defense of where they are native. What is meant by possessing nativity of America would be one’s citizenship and legality of the country. Native Speaker suggests that if one looks different or has the slightest indication that one should have an accent, they will be viewed not as a native of America, but instead as an alien, outsider, and the like. Therefore, Asian Americans and other immigrants feel the need to mask their true identity and imitate the native language as an attempt to fit into the mold that makes up what people would define how a native of America is like. Throughout the novel, Henry Park attempts to mask his Korean accent in hopes to blend in as an American native. Chang-Rae Lee suggests that a person who appears to have an accent is automatically marked as someone who is not native to America. Language directly reveals where a person is native of and people can immediately identify one as an alien, immigrant, or simply, one who is not American. Asian Americans as well as other immigrants feel the need to try and hide their cultural identity in order to be deemed as a native of America in the eyes of others. Since one’s language gives away the place where one is native to, immigrants feel the need to attempt to mask their accents in hopes that they sound fluent ...
- Asian American history is the history of ethnic and “racial groups in the United States who are of Asian descent. Spickard (2007) shows that the ‘Asian American’ was an idea invented in the 1960s to bring together the Chinese, Japanese, and the Filipino Americans for strategic political purposes”. Soon other Asian-origin groups, such as Koreans, Vietnamese, Hmongs, and South Asian Americans, were added."For example,
Wu, Ellen D. "Asian Americans and the 'model Minority' Myth." Los Angeles Times. 23 Jan. 2014. Los Angeles Times. Web. 04 Feb. 2014. .
The terms Asian American, Asian Pacific American, and Asian Pacific Islander are all used to describe residents of the United States, who themselves are from or their ancestors were from the Asian Pacific region of the world. “Although the term Asian American may bring to mind someone of Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino, or Asian Indian descent, the U.S. Census Bureau actually includes 31 different groups within the Asian Pacific designation (Sigler, 1998).” For example, someone from Guatemala, Cambodia, Samoa, Thailand, Laos, Hawaii, or Tonga would also fall into this category of being Asian American, even though ...
In this paper I will be sharing information I had gathered involving two students that were interviewed regarding education and their racial status of being an Asian-American. I will examine these subjects’ experiences as an Asian-American through the education they had experienced throughout their entire lives. I will also be relating and analyzing their experiences through the various concepts we had learned and discussed in class so far. Both of these individuals have experiences regarding their education that have similarities and differences.
[My high-level question based on the text of Trying to Find Chinatown is: what makes someone “Asian” or “Chinese” is it by the way they were
Chinese-Americans authors Amy Tan and Gish Jen have both grappled with the idea of mixed identity in America. For them, a generational problem develops over time, and cultural displacement occurs as family lines expand. While this is not the problem in and of itself, indeed, it is natural for current culture to gain foothold over distant culture, it serves as the backdrop for the disorientation that occurs between generations. In their novels, Tan and Jen pinpoint the cause of this unbalance in the active dismissal of Chinese mothers by their Chinese-American children.
The poet Li-young Lee, Asian American, depicts the struggle of accepting the cycle of life and expressing the challenges for the love of his culture and how Asian American see their place with earthly things and adjusting to the American society. His past life endured discrimination, and acceptance, in which he describes beautifully, mystical and spiritually with to the words in his writing (Bradley, 2014).
However, the idea of Asian-American community was first introduced in the year 1950. This is when all these communities were categorized to come from the same continent of Asia. These people continued to exist over the years as more of them continued to migrate to America. The community has continued to remain together over the years as they continued to increase in numbers. After the year 2000, the Asian-American community started to increase their revenue earnings. Their earnings became higher than those of the American community. Reports of successful lives by the Asians who migrated to America triggered a second wave of immigrants from the Asian continent. In the year 2010, over 40% of all immigrants to America, came from Asia. This indicated the close relationship that the Asian community had with one
Asian American Literature Asian Americans seem to be fighting an unwinnable battle when it comes to the content of their writing. Writers are criticized by whites for speaking out against discrimination, and by their fellow Asian Americans for contributing to the stereotypes through their silence. I believe that Asian Americans should include politics in their writing as they so choose, but should not feel obligated to do so, as Frank Chin suggests. For those Asian Americans who make known their discontent with the injustice and discrimination that they feel, in the white culture, this translates to attacking American superiority and initiating insecurities. For Mura, a writer who dared to question why an Asian American was not allowed to audition for an Asian American role, his punishment was “the ostracism and demonization that ensued”.
How are people in your culture viewed or treated when they have a mental illness?