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Migration of Chinese to America
Migration of Chinese to America
Chinese immigrants to the US past and present
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Throughout the early 1900s an American immigrant experience was subject to society’s opinion and the nation’s policies. Various ethnicities endured the harsh reality that was American culture while familiarizing themselves with their families. Immigration thrived off the strength and pride demonstrated by their neighborhoods. Notions of race, cultural adaptations and neighborhood represented the ways by which human being were assessed. In a careful interpretation of Mary Lui’s “The Chinatown Trunk Mystery” and Michael Innis-Jimenez’s “Steel Barrio”, I will trace the importance of a neighborhood in the immigrant experience explaining the way in which neighborhoods were created, how these lines were crossed and notions of race factored into separating these neighborhoods. The focus of analysis will consist of Southern Chicago Mexicans and the way by which they established themselves as important features of US civilization. Within the late 1910s and early 1920s the first major waves of Mexican immigrants ventured into the Southside of Chicago. Members of the community overcame the discrimination against them while organizing themselves in way that introduced Mexican pride and community building across their …show more content…
This nation was relatively stable in the eyes of immigrants though under constant political and economic change. Immigration soon became an outlet by which this nation could thrive yet there was difficulty in the task on conformity. Ethnic groups including Mexicans and Chinese were judged by notions of race, cultural adaptations and neighborhood. Mary Lui’s “The Chinatown Trunk Mystery” and Michael Innis-Jimenez’s “Steel Barrio”, provides a basis by which one may trace the importance of a neighborhood in the immigrant experience explaining the way in which neighborhoods were created, how these lines were crossed and notions of race factored into separating these
Nayan Shah is a leading expert in Asian American studies and serves as professor at the University of California. His work, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown explores how race, citizenship, and public health combined to illustrate the differences between the culture of Chinese immigrants and white norms in public-health knowledge and policy in San Francisco. Shah discusses how this knowledge impacted social lives, politics, and cultural expression. Contagious Divides investigates what it meant to be a citizen of Chinese race in nineteenth and twentieth-century San Francisco.
The author skirts around the central issue of racism by calling it a “class struggle” within the white population of Boston during the 1960s and 1970s. Formisano discuses the phenomenon known as “white flight”, where great numbers of white families left the cities for the suburbs. This was not only for a better lifestyle, but a way to distance themselves from the African Americans, who settled in northern urban areas following the second Great Migration.
Weber, David J. Foreigners in Their Native Land: The Historical Roots of Mexican Americans. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973.
In a country full of inequities and discriminations, numerous books were written to depict our unjust societies. One of the many books is an autobiography by Richard Wright. In Black Boy, Wright shares these many life-changing experiences he faced, which include the discovery of racism at a young age, the fights he put up against discriminations and hunger, and finally his decision of moving Northward to a purported better society. Through these experiences which eventually led him to success, Wright tells his readers the cause and effect of racism, and hunger. In a way, the novel The Tortilla Curtain by T.C Boyle illustrates similar experiences. In this book, the lives of two wealthy American citizens and two illegal immigrants collided. Delaney and Kyra were whites living in a pleasurable home, with the constant worry that Mexicans would disturb their peaceful, gated community. Candido and America, on the other hand, came to America to seek job opportunities and a home but ended up camping at a canyon, struggling even for cheapest form of life. They were prevented from any kind of opportunities because they were Mexicans. The differences between the skin colors of these two couples created the hugest gap between the two races. Despite the difficulties American and Candido went through, they never reached success like Wright did. However, something which links these two illegal immigrants and this African American together is their determination to strive for food and a better future. For discouraged minorities struggling in a society plagued with racism, their will to escape poverty often becomes their only motivation to survive, but can also acts as the push they need toward success.
Los Angeles is a place with a dynamic history. It has grown to be one of the most diverse cities in the world as a whole. Despite the diversity for which it is known for, the city has always had a striving conflict due to racial and class tension. The social stratification of its past continues to take its toll as dividing lines persist in contemporary Los Angeles. Furthermore, these dividing lines redefine place in Los Angeles, whether geographically or personally, to be subject to race and class. Fluidity has become evident recently however it is more common for the identity of people to be fixed in society. Through the novel Southland, by Nina Revoyr, and various means of academic sources, one is further able to explore the subject of race, place, and reinvention in Los Angeles.
Many of these ethnic groups still reside where their relatives first lived when they arrived many years ago, whereas a majority of the ethnic groups have dispersed all over the Chicago land area, creating many culturally mixed neighborhoods. Ultimately, all of these ethnic groups found their rightful area in which they belong in Chicago. To this day, the areas in Chicago that the different ethnic immigrants moved to back in the 1920s are very much so the same. These immigrants have a deep impact on the development of neighborhoods in today’s society. Without the immigrants’ hard work and their ambition to establish a life for their families and their future, Chicago would not be as developed and defined as it is now.
The “new” immigrants came over hungry for work and were willing to work for a fraction of what the “old” immigrants would. The “new” immigrants came in unskilled and unaccustomed to American society, took the “old” immigrants jobs and shook up their neighborhoods; this created much tension between the two groups. Riis like others, hated some ethnic groups more than others, and in How the Other Half Lives establishes a general hierarchy placing the “old” immigrants on the top, groups such as Germans, Irish and the English. In the middle Riis ranks the Italians, Jews, and blacks. On the bottom of the ladder Riis places the Chinese.
These struggles of assimilation are revealed in Choy’s writing, who draws on his own experiences to provide vivid imagery and deep insight into the emotions felt by immigrants. In her analysis of Wayson Choy’s works, literary critic Deborah Madsen writes, “growing up in Vancouver’s Chinatown was instrumental in shaping Choy’s [...] writing” (101). Madsen explains that “the immigrant condition of a failure to belong, both in the nation of ethnic origin and also to the nation of residence” (101) is a recurring topic in Choy’s novels as a result of his own experiences. Madse...
Whether in the Old World of community, familial relationships and traditional values, or in the New World of non-traditional relationships, individualism and uncertainty, the struggle for survival predominates the immigrant narrative. Religious and racial intolerance, social upheaval, economic hardship, and political turmoil underscore the causes of emigration, but the New world was far from idyllic, and traces of these scourges checkered the landscape of the New World as well as the Mother land.
In “Down These Mean Streets,” D. Fine describes immigrants how “one carries one’s past into the present, and however successful one is in burying the past for a time, it resurfaces.” In other words, history, in many ways, re-emerges in people’s lives whether they want it or not. When history re-emerges, it can have both positive and negative effects on someone. In Raymond Chandler’s, “The Big Sleep,” the history of LA and the history of the characters drove and developed the plot. In the novel, several characters were immigrants from places like the Midwest and east coast. Although these were minor characters, they still represent the majority of the population in California; thus they play an important role in portraying Raymond Chandler’s L.A. Therefore, by looking into immigrants in “The Big Sleep,” readers can understand how immigrants influenced the history of California and how they transformed California into what it is today.
Gilded age San Francisco stood as a beacon for travelers bound for the western coast of the United States. The most prominent city in the developing west during the latter parts of the nineteenth century and the opening of the twentieth, San Francisco encompassed a range of conflicting identities. This time period marked a transitory stage in the development of San Francisco, evolving from a booming “frontier town” to a “civilized metropolis,” the emerging San Franciscan identity retained qualities from both poles of this spectrum. Chinatown, existing as a city within the city, shared this relationship of extremes with San Francisco. To travelers visiting San Francisco, Chinatown was a necessary stop. The writings in travelogues published during this period describe Chinatown through a mix of revulsion and curiosity, its inhabitants virtuous and sub-human. In short, within the developing city of San Francisco, an expedition into Chinatown remained a visceral exploration of a foreign and exciting environment.
The English immigrants are given a brief introduction as the first ethnic group to settle in America. The group has defined the culture and society throughout centuries of American history. The African Americans are viewed as a minority group that were introduced into the country as slaves. The author depicts the struggle endured by African Americans with special emphasis on the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. The entry of Asian Americans evoked suspicion from other ethnic groups that started with the settlement of the Chinese. The Asian community faced several challenges such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the mistreatment of Americans of Japanese origin during World War II. The Chicanos were the largest group of Hispanic peoples to settle in the United States. They were perceived as a minority group. Initially they were inhabitants of Mexico, but after the Westward expansion found themselves being foreigners in their native land (...
3. Anita Edgar Jones, "Mexican Colonies in Chicago," Social Service Review 2 ( December 1928): 39-54.
many immigrant groups nowadays, they were financially hard-hit and could only obtain the lowest jobs when moving to the United States, which in turn led to the formation of a specific type of community. They were constrained to housing in p...
The ethnic- Mexican experience has changed over the years as American has progressed through certain period of times, e.g., the modernity and transformation of the southwest in the late 19th and early 20th century, the labor demands and shifting of U.S. immigration policy in the 20th century, and the Chicano Civil Rights Movement. Through these events Mexican Americans have established and shaped their culture, in order, to negotiate these precarious social and historical circumstances. Throughout the ethnic Mexicans cultural history in the United States, conflict and contradiction has played a key role in shaping their modalities of life. Beginning in the late 20th century and early 21st century ethnic Mexicans have come under distress from the force of globalization. Globalization has followed the trends of conflict and contradiction forcing ethnic Mexicans to adjust their culture and combat this force. While Mexican Americans are in the struggle against globalization and the impact it has had on their lives, e.g., unemployment more common, wages below the poverty line, globalization has had a larger impact on their motherland having devastating affects unlike anything in history.