Angela Huang Ms. Smith 7/8B April 22, 2024 Life SMTH According to Sucheng Chan, a historian working at UC Santa Barbara, between 1975 and 1994, nearly 160,000 Cambodian refugees fled to the United States because of the Cambodian Civil War. One of the many who arrived was 10-year-old Loung Ung. In the memoir Lucky Child by Loung Ung, Ung writes about immigrating to the USA and struggling with the new culture while dealing with the scars of living under the Khmer Rouge’s reign. The book starts with the day she arrived in America and ends with her reunited with her family in Cambodia. Loung overcame the obstacles of PTSD, grief from losing family, and learning English, which shows that one can persevere through hardship to achieve their dreams. …show more content…
One day, while watching the news on the television, footage of an Ethiopian woman with her child reminded Loung of Keav, her older sister’s last moments. “... Pa didn’t get to bring her home and Keav died alone, scared and away from us all. On that day, Pa and the rest of us also died with her” (126). When Keav died, Loung was devastated and felt like there was no hope left. However, the traumatic experience only fueled her determination to prevail over the difficulties she faced in America so she could tell her sister's story. Over time, she slowly started to accept their death, as she and the rest of her siblings organized a big Buddhist ceremony to honor their parents, Keav, and Geak. “... my eyes stung and my chest swelled... in my silent prayers, I told my lost family only that I loved them and missed them... I looked at Chou... and we walked together back into the crowd” (265). Although Loung still missed her family, she ultimately chose to shift her focus to the present and living, away from the past. She overpowered the bitterness and anger, made peace with their deaths, and moved on. This proves that one can push through any barrier with enough strength, determination, and
Shostak’s ethnography, Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, is a collection of memories and life events recounted by a !Kung woman named Nisa in the early 1970s, and translated to English by Shostak, and published along with Shostak’s own observations and research on !Kung
I thought it would be an interesting idea to enlighten and inform people about the Lao Iu Mein and our process of immigrating to the U.S. as well as the challenges we have to overcome. I interviewed my parents, Lao Iu Mein refugees who immigrated to the United States from Thailand. Through this interview, I had a chance to hear for the first time the story of my parents' struggles and experiences as they journeyed to a place where they became "aliens" and how that place is now the place they call "home."
Kao Kalia Yang’s autobiographical novel, The Latehomecomer chronicles the journey of a Hmong refugee family as they flee from the jungles of Laos to Thailand refugee camps and the processes of transition and assimilation in the United States. Yang explains that as she becomes aware of her cultural heritage she is motivated to preserve the endangered stories of the Hmong people. Her grandmother serves as the author’s largest resource, but the memoir also includes recollections from other family members as they recount the arduous and horrific odyssey of a Hmong refugee. Terrifying descriptions of escape from Vietcong soldiers, the atrocious conditions of refugee camps, transit to the United States, and experiences as first-generation immigrants help to inform our understanding of Hmong in the twentieth-century.
The Vietnam War caused great destruction in Laos, and so the Lee family migrated to America, after spending a short time in refugee camps in Thailand. After settling in America, Foua gives birth to Lia, who unbeknownst to them will suffer from epilepsy soon after she is born. For four years, little Lia is admitted to hospital seventeen times, after suffering both grand and petit mal seizures. Through miscommunication and a failure to understand each other’s cultural differences, both the parents of Lia, and her American doctors, are ultimately at fault for Lia’s tragic fate, when she is left in a vegetative state.
The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down by Ann Fadiman is a very interesting book. It’s amazing how difficult it is for Americans to understand other cultures because the United States is such a diverse country. However, as an American, I understood the frustrations that Lia Lee’s doctors’ felt when trying to diagnose and treat her properly. In this book both the American doctors and the Hmong peoples faced many hardships and barriers when trying to communicate with each other. After having read this book I can understand where both groups were coming from and reasons for their actions. I could only imagine the level of difficulty and anger that the doctors and Lia’s parents must have experienced over that time period.
I enjoy reading Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone. I find her novel easy to read and understand. Although she included some phrases the Chinese use, I find no difficulty in understanding them, as I’m Chinese myself. The novel Bone is written in a circular narrative form, in which the story doesn’t follow the linear format where the suspense slowly builds up and finally reaches a climax stage. Rather the story’s time sequence is thrown back and forth. I find this format of writing brings greater suspense and mystery to the reader. When I read the book, my mind was always wondering what reasons or causes made Ona commit suicide, and this made me want to continue reading the book to know the outcome. The happenings in the story do portray reality of the lives of Chinese immigrants in America, their hardship and difficulty in adapting American lifestyle and culture. For the younger generations, adapting the American culture and lifestyle is much easier than for the older generations. This is shown in the book and it also happens in reality, which is another reason why I like this book. This is a fiction novel, but the story told is like a non-fiction book; giving readers a sense of realism. As a Chinese reading Bone, I understand the narrator’s feelings and predicaments. Although she is an Asian, her thinking lies more on the American side. Leila wants to move out to stay with Mason but yet she fears leaving her mother alone and also of what her mother might say in r...
The Ung’s moved from one place to another just to keep their family together. Because their father was a former government worker, the Khmer Rouge would have killed him if they found out because they think anyone with an education is a threat to their dictatorship. For months they were on the road. Walking in the hot sun, starving and it was very hard for them to stay together. It was the hardest on Loung because she desperately wanted to be somewhere she can call “home” somewhere like Phnom Penh. But that was difficult considering they had to move to anot...
When I turned to look, I was excitedly greeted by my relatives and their big signs that read: “Welcome to Korea!” What happened next was a flash of tears, hugs, and kisses. I had seen my parents emotional before, but not to this extent. This made me wonder how much my mother truly missed her family when she parted from them to move to America. It also made me consider how her relationship with her family strengthened her identity as an Asian-American.
“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.
The article “Refugee Children in Canada: Searching for Identity” states, “successful adaption can bring with it the opportunity for growth” (Colak and Fantino 589). Refugee children have a better chance of adapting to their new surroundings more quicker than adult refugees can. The authors also wrote that “settlement support services, schools, health and social services, and the community at large play a crucial role in assisting and supporting children to adjust” (Fantino and Colak 589). In Hà’s case, her family is her backbone. They support each other and keep each other uplifted. In the poem “1976: Year of the Dragon”, Lai writes, “This year I hope I truly learn to fly-kick, not to kick anyone as much as to fly” (Lai 259-260). This really shows us how much Hà has changed. In Vietnam, she was a bit rude and selfish. Now, however, she’s less violent and has really grown up a lot; she sees the world differently now. Refugees go through many ups and downs, but there will always be
Lindo Jong provides the reader with a summary of her difficulty in passing along the Chinese culture to her daughter: “I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these two things do not mix? I taught her how American circumstances work. If you are born poor here, it's no lasting shame . . . You do not have to sit like a Buddha under a tree letting pigeons drop their dirty business on your head . . . In America, nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you. . . . but I couldn't teach her about Chinese character . . . How to know your own worth and polish it, never flashing it around like a cheap ring. Why Chinese thinking is best”(Tan 289).
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.”
The main coping mechanism, then, became suppressing of the memories and emotions attached to the traumas of the Vietnam Wars. Their home served as the host of these demons, but the demons impacted parenting styles. Thi acknowledges that her parents taught her and her siblings many lessons, some intentional but others, quite the contrary. It was the “unintentional ones [that] came from their unexorcised demons and from the habits they formed over so many years of trying to survive;”(“The Best We Could Do,” 295) these lessons were indeed unintentional because just like the suppressed communication, they derived weak communication between the parents and the children. In Min Zhou’s article “Are Asians Becoming ‘White’?” she concludes by including a picture of a Vietnamese family celebrating the 1998 Lunar Year, looking happy. This happy family in the article is much like the Bui family because on the outside, they appeared happy, but inside their home and their hearts, a darkness
Knowing that it would be four years of relentless pestering, I knew that someday I would surpass my tormentors; I would keep under cover of my books and study hard to make my brother proud one day. It would be worth the pain to someday walk into a restaurant and see my former bully come to my table wearing an apron and a nametag and wait on me, complete with a lousy tip. To walk the halls of the hospital I work in, sporting a stethoscope and white coat while walking across the floor that was just cleaned not to long ago by the janitor, who was the same boy that tried to pick a fight with me back in middle school. To me, an Asian in an American school is picking up where my brother left off. It’s a promise to my family that I wouldn’t disappoint nor dishonor our name. It’s a battle that’s gains victory without being fought.
June-May fulfills her mother’s name and life goal, her long-cherished wish. She finally meets her twin sisters and in an essence fulfills and reunites her mother with her daughter through her. For when they are all together they are one; they are their mother. It is here that June-May fulfills the family portion of her Chinese culture of family. In addition, she fully embraces herself as Chinese. She realizes that family is made out of love and that family is the key to being Chinese. “And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.” (Tan 159). Finally, her mother’s life burden is lifted and June-May’s doubts of being Chinese are set aside or as she says “After all these years, it can finally be let go,” (Tan 159).