Chinese-American Culture in Understanding Bone

723 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: A comparative analysis of culture between China and the USA

What culture they had was to be forgotten – a difficult and practically impossible feat. The Chinese-Americans faced a wall of cultural difference that could only be scaled with the support of their parents and local community. The book review of Bone by Nhi Le stated clearly how “ … the first generations’ struggle to survive and the second generations’ efforts to thrive … ” made the transition into American culture possible. Overcoming barriers such as language, education, work ethic, and sex roles was just a beginning to the problems that all Asian – Americans faced.

The most obvious and one of the most difficult walls to climb was the language. First generation immigrants rarely became fluent in English and more often than not learned so little that they were entrapped in a society of working in very menial jobs and job conditions. Jobs ranging from sweatshops, dirty factories, shipyards, and railroads are prime examples of the conditions they were forced to live and work in. Fae Ng described the difficulty very well by taking a look at her mother’s job in the clothing factory and Leon’s Job on the ships. They had very little advancement in the work force because they couldn’t communicate well enough that they actually had skills. Trials in the work place helped the immigrants impress upon their children the importance of education.

Education in Asia was and is completely different ...

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of The Book Harvest Of Empire By Juan Gonzalez

    1109 Words  | 3 Pages

    The key points of the readings was to address the hardships of the immigrants, immigration trends. In Harvest of Empire the author talked about the difficult times and why his family had left Puerto Rico in the first place. The author also divided the struggles amongst generations the first generation had difficulty because of their rapid expansion. The second generation had trouble because of the remaining prejudices from the previous generation. Another key point that was brought up in Harvest of Empire was the immigration waves and the varying difficulties that each wave faced. For example the immigration trends with Cubans. The first immigration group of Cubans moving into Miami was widely successful helping to build up some of the major profitable companies in the Miami area. This group had little difficulty assimilating into the United States mainly because of their lighter complexion. In addition the second generation had darker complexions making it more difficult to assimilate. The major difficulty for both groups was trying to gain access to America. The second wave had greater difficul...

    Read More

  • Richard Aoki and The Black Power Movements

    1521 Words  | 4 Pages

    Tachiki, Amy; Wong, Eddie; Odo, Franklin, eds. (1971). Roots: An Asian American Reader. University of California, Los Angeles Press.

    Read More

  • Immigrant Reality Exposed in Bread Givers

    3301 Words  | 7 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Development of Neighborhoods in Chicago

    1872 Words  | 4 Pages

    ... many immigrants faced discrimination, thus leaving them no choice but to live in the slums of some areas and try fight their way up to success.

    Read More

  • The Struggles of Immigrant Women in the Early Twentieth Century

    866 Words  | 2 Pages

    Between the years of 1840 and 1914, about forty million people immigrated to the United States from foreign countries. Many of them came to find work and earn money to have a better life for their families. Others immigrated because they wanted to escape the corrupt political power of their homelands, such as the revolution in Mexico after 1911. Whatever the case, many found it difficult to begin again in a new country. Most immigrants lived in slums with very poor living conditions. They had a hard time finding work that paid enough to support a family. Not only was it difficult for immigrant men, but for women as well. Immigrant women faced many challenges including lack of education and social life as well as low wages and poor working conditions.

    Read More

  • A Mother-Daughter Relationship in The Woman Warrior

    1481 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested our strengths to establish realities”(5). In the book “The Woman Warrior,” Maxine Kingston is most interested in finding out about Chinese culture and history and relating them to her emerging American sense of self. One of the main ways she does so is listening to her mother’s talk-stories about the family’s Chinese past and applying them to her life.

    Read More

  • Farmer, Political Boss, and Immigrant

    960 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...rked as unskilled laborers in the new factories. Most were poor, disgruntled, and found that America was not what they had expected when they left their native countries. The city bosses provided aid to these immigrants and then gained their political support. They unfairly took advantages of the immigrants to gain power, which helped them to gain the money they were seeking. The immigrants had a difficult life because most of them were crowded into ghettos and slums. They received low wages and faced dangerous and unhealthy working conditions daily. Concentration increased and living quarter size proportionately decreased. The immigrants experienced poor sanitation and contagious diseases and most did not have any plumbing or ventilation. They had a difficult and sad life, and many were more happy in their oppressive homelands than industrialized America.

    Read More

  • Americanization in The Joy Luck Club

    1951 Words  | 4 Pages

    Oftentimes the children of immigrants to the United States lose the sense of cultural background in which their parents had tried so desperately to instill within them. According to Walter Shear, “It is an unseen terror that runs through both the distinct social spectrum experienced by the mothers in China and the lack of such social definition in the daughters’ lives.” This “unseen terror” is portrayed in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club as four Chinese women and their American-born daughters struggle to understand one another’s culture and values. The second-generation women in The Joy Luck Club prove to lose their sense of Chinese values, becoming Americanized.

    Read More

  • Mother Tongue by Amy Tan

    1081 Words  | 3 Pages

    Amy Tan’s ,“Mother Tongue” and Maxine Kingston’s essay, “No Name Woman” represent a balance in cultures when obtaining an identity in American culture.  As first generation Chinese-Americans both Tan and Kingston faced many obstacles. Obstacles in language and appearance while balancing two cultures. Overcoming these obstacles that were faced and preserving heritage both women gained an identity as a successful American.

    Read More

  • Two Kinds by Amy Tan

    966 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the short story, "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan, a Chinese mother and daughter are at odds with each other. The mother pushes her daughter to become a prodigy, while the daughter (like most children with immigrant parents) seeks to find herself in a world that demands her Americanization. This is the theme of the story, conflicting values. In a society that values individuality, the daughter sought to be an individual, while her mother demanded she do what was suggested. This is a conflict within itself. The daughter must deal with an internal and external conflict. Internally, she struggles to find herself. Externally, she struggles with the burden of failing to meet her mother’s expectations. Being a first-generation Asian American, I have faced the same issues that the daughter has been through in the story.

    Read More

  • My Immigrant Parents

    519 Words  | 2 Pages

    Affected by my family, my background, and everything around me, I was born in a family who is the first generation to get here. My grandmother, and my parents, along with some other relatives, moved here in search of better opportunities, like those from other countries for the same idea. They started out fresh but had a hard time to get started, when I was little, I assumed it had to be somewhat easy, but for people who do not know English it is like starting from scratch, but they did well, they’ve made it.

    Read More

  • Personal Statement from a Vietnamese Person

    852 Words  | 2 Pages

    Before I was five, I thought I was Chinese. However, I wondered why I couldn’t understand the Chinese patrons of Chinatown restaurants. Upon learning my true ethnicity, I pulled out a mammoth atlas we had under the bed. My father pointed to an “S”-shaped country bordering the ocean, below China. It was then that I learned my parents were refugees from Vietnam. “Boat people,” my mother, still struggling to grasp English back then, would hear kids whispering when she walked through the halls of her high school. Like many refugees, although my parents and their families weren’t wealthy when they came to America, they were willing to work hard, and like many Vietnamese parents, mine would tell me, “We want you to be success.”

    Read More

  • Immigration and Cultural Shock in the Gilded Age

    266 Words  | 1 Pages

    One of the most significant factors of immigration for America during the Gilded age was the creation of ethnic neighbourhoods. Since most of the immigrants were unskilled, they tended to find a job in growing factories located closer to the centre of the cities. The American culture was very different from the cultures in which the immigrants were raised, mainly because the Americans had noticeably different values from the rest of the world. Therefore, most of the immigrants experienced a culture shock. The language was a huge barrier to the majority of the immigrants too, because that was their main way of communication. Furthermore, the lack of language skills increased the impact of the culture shock that they were already experiencing.

    Read More

  • The Gilded Age: The Gilded Age

    780 Words  | 2 Pages

    American employers who were short of workers often promoted jobs so that the immigrants could come and work for them, they even published a guide book called “Where to Emigrate and Why”, steamship companies advertised for passengers and told them about how much faster it would be and that it is healthier/safer. Once the immigrants were down here they would write to their families and friends and describe just how good it is in the United States, which brought even more immigrants into the United States. However when some immigrants arrived they realized that it isn’t what people described nor what they expected/hoped for; the immigrants were going to be the ones doing all of the dirty work. They didn’t have the best of housing either, the bathrooms were at the end of the hall and they shared their apartment. They were filled with families in one small room; 50% of families slept three or four people to a room and 25% had five or more people per room. Each different ethnic immigrant found a different type of

    Read More

  • Indian Immigrants: The American Dream

    793 Words  | 2 Pages

    that immigrants face hurdles when they first move to a new country. However, by learning about

    Read More

More about Chinese-American Culture in Understanding Bone

Open Document