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Easy of the american dream
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My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. You could open a restaurant. You could work for the government and get good retirement. You could buy a house with almost no money down. You could become rich. You could become instantly famous.
"Of course, you can be a prodigy, too," my mother told me when I was nine. "You can be best anything. What does Auntie Lindo know? Her daughter, she is only best tricky."
America was where all my mother's hopes lay. She had come to San Francisco in 1949 after losing everything in China: her mother and father, her home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls. But she never looked back with regret. Things could get better in so many ways.
We didn't immediately pick the right kind of prodigy. At first my mother thought I could be a Chinese Shirley Temple. We'd watch Shirley's old movies on TV as though they were training films. My mother would poke my arm and say, "Ni kan.You watch." And I would see Shirley tapping her feet, or singing a sailor song, or pursing her lips into a very round O while saying "Oh, my goodness."
Ni kan," my mother said, as Shirley's eyes flooded with tears. "You already know how. Don't need talent for crying!"
Soon after my mother got this idea about Shirley Temple, she took me to the beauty training school in the Mission District and put me in the hands of a student who could barely hold the scissors without shaking. Instead of getting big fat curls, I emerged with an uneven mass of crinkly black fuzz. My mother dragged me off to the bathroom and tried to wet down my hair.
"You look like a Negro Chinese," she lamented, as if I had done this on purpose.
The instructor of the beauty training school had to lop off these soggy clumps to make my hair even again. "Peter Pan is very popular these days" the instructor assured my mother. I now had bad hair the length of a boy's, with curly bangs that hung at a slant two inches above my eyebrows. I liked the haircut, and it made me actually look forward to my future fame.
In fact, in the beginning I was just as excited as my mother, maybe even more so. I pictured this prodigy part of me as many different images, and I tried each one on for size.
Dubbed as “The Greatest Country in the World” by god knows who, America is not as awesome and free as some may see. In doing a close reading of Heather Christle’s “Five Poems for America”, we can see how the author uses metaphors to portray a flawed American, specifically within its political system, religion, obsession with technology and basic human rights. Americans have been living with the oppression of these everyday issues, completely oblivious thus creating the America we infamously know today.
America was not everything the mothers had expected for their daughters. The mothers always wanted to give their daughters the feather to tell of their hardships, but they never could. They wanted to wait until the day that they could speak perfect American English. However, they never learned to speak their language, which prevented them from communicating with their daughters. All the mothers in The Joy Luck Club had so much hope for their daughters in America, but instead their lives ended up mirroring their mother’s life in China. All the relationships had many hardships because of miscommunication from their different cultures. As they grew older the children realized that their ...
Daniel Cole´s book The Talent Code is a call to all of us-MOOC students, academics, musicians, latinos, workers, blacks, and whites- to get up, go forward, and be brave, that excellence and talent is within our grasps. He throws out the window the belief that talent is produced by the combination of genes and environment, of innate talent. The author also tells us how to do it: showing methods, examples, and studies of how persons like you and me achieved excellence.
Achieving the American Dream has been the ideal for people living in the United States for decades. People believed that the way to get there was through hard work, also known as the “Protestant work ethic”. The American Dream can vary depending on the person. Some people think that owning a house with a white picket-fence is the American Dream while others think that it is becoming a celebrity with a lot of money.
The four mothers in the novel have many opinions about America some are positive, and some are negative. The mothers appreciate the female independence, that America offers, They also strongly believe in the American Dream, that their children can be anything in America, regardless of whether or not they start poor, as long as they work hard and believe in themselves. It is clear ...
In the story, the mother’s belief in this sentiment gave her hope for her daughter to become a prodigy. Therefore, the weight of the dream is left on the first-generation. The belief of endless possibilities is set upon first-generation Americans and Americans alike. From the beginning of the story, the daughter states that “America was where all my mother’s hopes lay” (491). The mother has the be...
While many people around the world look to America and see a better life waiting for them and the American Dream waiting to be lived, often times this dream never comes to fruition, even if they do reach America. Such is the case in the short story Grandma’s Tales, by Andrew Lam in which a recently deceased Vietnamese grandmother becomes reborn as a much younger and improved version of herself ready to live life to the fullest. This rebirth symbolizes the life that she wishes she lived, however due to constant conflict and famine in Vietnam, and her deteriorating health in America, was never able to do so. Instead of mourning this fact, in her final days the grandmother chooses to live her life through her granddaughters,
I walked around unsteadily all day like a lost baby, far away from its pack. Surrounded by unfamiliar territory and uncomfortable weather, I tried to search for any signs of similarities with my previous country. I roamed around from place to place and moved along with the day, wanting to just get away and go back home. This was my first day in the United States of America.
In the beginning, Ni Kan, is “just as excited as [her] mother” about the idea of becoming a prodigy (749). She imagines herself in different roles and believes that once she has “become perfect,” (749) her parents will approve of her. However, her mother’s obsession becomes extreme when she is forced to take numerous tests on a daily basis. Ni Kan points out, “The tests [are] harder- multiplying numbers in my head without using my hands, predicting the daily temperatures in Los Angeles, New York, and London” (749). Eventually, her mother persuades her into taking piano lessons, which becomes the prime focus of determination.
América’s view of the US changes drastically as the story progress. In the beginning of the story she is full of enthusiasm about coming to America with her husband Candido; due to the fact he promised they would have a better life. As the story progresses reality hits and she realizes that the American Dream isn’t easy to achieve. América realizes this by how she finds herself settling in a canyon with no clean water, not enough money and then having to work a lot after Candido is in the accident and then proceeding to steal from a garden just to have vegetables for her family.
I was blind to the fact that all the pieces I worked on improved my talent and only saw them as another task. Then, during my tenth and final year of lessons, my perspective began to change; the results of my
According to Bill Rancic, a celebrity, motivational speaker, and successful business man, “Only in America can someone start with nothing and achieve the American Dream. That's the greatness of this country.” Everybody has their own perspective of what the American Dream is. Always strive to become better than what is expected; when striving to become better than what's expected everything around becomes better too. The American dream is to be able to go to school to become educated and find a career to become successful, as well as being able to take care of all responsibilities and be able to look back on what you have achive.To succeed the American Dream it's quite simple; one must be able to remain focus, being in this big country there are a lot of things that will try to restrain you from achieving the dream. Being able to get an education and get a job is just part of being able
Once there was a little boy who loved to play sports, although he was never naturally talented at them. He was never the fastest, never the strongest, and most definitely never the most coordinated. He liked to play all sorts of sports; basketball, baseball, soccer, football, and track. But one sport stood above all, and that was basketball. Which was ironic because that was probably the sport he was least naturally talented in. That little boy was me.
Talent and skill are oftentimes mistaken and confused in perceptions and conversations. They both relate to the ability of a person to work and perform on a specific task, although the difference between the two is from where the ability originates. Many believe that people are born with a certain talent and that only these selected individuals will be successful. This, however, is not necessarily true, as the concept of talent should be open to different individuals' interpretations. No one is already born a scientist, a dancer or teacher, yet as individuals, we can develop certain skills to fit in different categories. While talent is an undoubted advantage for success in the people holding it, it is not fundamental to be considered flourishing in certain settings. Skills require determination and effort, and being at the disposal of all, can be the winning key to favorable outcomes in life.
Talent alone will allow someone to exercise any activity or subject that they are talented in, but the important factor that will get a person to achieve greatness is hard work. I have experienced this in sports, school work, and in life. My experiences and the examples of known Athletes and mathematicians have helped me understand the concept and importance of hard work over talent.