Asian Diaspora
Asian diaspora, or the personal and cultural implications of leaving one's homeland, is a central and reaccuring theme for Asian American writers. Diaspora is Greek for "the scattering of seeds"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora), and its ancient denotation has taken figurative meaning today as a feeling of seperation and detachment. In both Fae Myenne Ng's Bone and Chitra Banerjee
Divakaruni's Leaving Yuba City, a thematic thread of "scattered parts", outsiderness, and otherness link the characters in each, as well as the two seperate works, together. This diaspora affects each generation of immigrants in a slighly different, but no less signficant, way. As an aspect of diasora, W.E.B. DuBois's notion of
"double consciousness" in The Souls of Black Folk, takes the shape of a personal duality for the characters in Bone and Leaving Yuba City.
Their lives looking through DuBois's "veil" creates personal struggle in the character's relationship with America, maintaining two unique cultural identities simultaneously.
The characters in Ng's novel Bone work to conceive a third identity, one that maintains old traditions while being "Americanized." This stuggle is not exclusive to the first generation Chinese immigrants,
Leon and Mah, but has profoundly impacted their American raised children, Leila, Nina, and Ona. However, the consequences of this conflict is different between the generations. Leon cannot settle into one place but is "suddenly here, suddenly gone" (54). Leon's stray jobs are often on a ship, and Leila concludes that the draw of the "hollow and still center of the ocean" for him is "completion"
(150). The cause of Leon's absense, or vacancy of personal wholeness, is his Chinese self trying to chan...
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...haracters in Leaving Yuba City and Bone are connected through common seperation from their homeland, or dual selves seen in all generations. This common diaspora creates a unique and painful family dynamic for the Leong family; their incompleteness binds them together. For Sushma in "Leaving Yuba City", she does not feel seperation from homeland, but lives denying a fundamental part of herself, which is much like a homeland. Their is an incongruance or seperation between the person others can see, and the person she really is. Sushma personifies DuBois's "veil." An extremist view of diaspora is "The Maimed Dancing Men", having ghost limbs, and being physically incomplete. Ng and Divakaruni portray the same desperate and painful feelings that come with a seperation from both your homeland, and self, showing these two are inseperable and fundamental to one's wholeness.
Islas, Arturo. From Migrant Souls. American Mosaic: Multicultural Readings in Context. Eds. Gabriele Rico, Barbara Roche and Sandra Mano. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1995. 483-491.
In Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone, we are told the story of Chinese-American family that immigrated to the United States. The story deals with the loss of family, grief and the American Dream while also addressing the narrator’s ethnic background. But the one detail that really sticks out in the book is that it goes backwards in time, starting from when Leila is numb to the death of her sister to the moments after and before it happens. While this choice did stray from the normal conventions of stories, it was necessary in order to captivate the reader’s attention.
As I researched the novel I also learned that the author, Shenaaz Nanji, became a refugee after the expulsion of the Indians of Uganda. This knowledge about the author’s personal experience was a defining factor in how I related to the novel and the impact it had on me. Knowing that she went through the same thing that Sabine experienced in the novel made the story so much more than just a book.
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...
Hall, S. (1995). Diasporas. from "routes" to roots (pp. 427-428). new york: oxford university press.
Mortal Kombat, a one versus one American video game, developed by NetherRealm Studios as a whole seems to have much influence from the one versus one video game series Street Fighter made by Capcom, a Japanese video game developer. This influence is especially seen in the development of the characters of Mortal Kombat, The character Kitana (Figure 2) from Mortal Kombat displays much influence from Street Fighter’s Chun Li (Figure 1), from colors to a spin off of her clothing. Chun Li (Figure 1) has exaggerated proportions of her body that please the eye as well as Kitana (Figure 2).
In “My Two Lives”, Jhumpa Lahiri tells of her complicated upbringing in Rhode Island with her Calcutta born-and-raised parents, in which she continually sought a balance between both her Indian and American sides. She explains how she differs from her parents due to immigration, the existent connections to India, and her development as a writer of Indian-American stories. “The Freedom of the Inbetween” written by Sally Dalton-Brown explores the state of limbo, or “being between cultures”, which can make second-generation immigrants feel liberated, or vice versa, trapped within the two (333). This work also discusses how Lahiri writes about her life experiences through her own characters in her books. Charles Hirschman’s “Immigration and the American Century” states that immigrants are shaped by the combination of an adaptation to American...
Chinese immigrants to the United States of America have experienced both setbacks and triumphs in the quest to seek a better life from themselves and their families. First arriving in America in the mid-1800s to seek jobs and escape poor conditions in their home country, the Chinese found work as labors and settled in areas known as Chinatowns (Takaki 181-183). In the early years, these immigrants experienced vast legal racism and sexism as women were forbidden to enter the country and the Chinese Exclusion Act prevented laborers from entering the country for years (Takaki 184-192). Today, the modern Chinese-American experience has changed from the experience of early Chinese immigrants. Many immigrants enter the country seeking better education as well employment (Yung, Chang, and Lai 244). Immigrant women have made great strides in achieving equality to men. Despite advancements, many immigrants still experience discrimination on some level. One example of a modern Chinese immigrant is “Ruby”, a college student who, with her parents, immigrated from Hong Kong to a suburb of Providence, Rhode Island, 7 years ago. Ruby’s story shares insight on the modern Chinese-American experience and the struggles this group still faces. Chinese immigrants have long maintained a presence in the United States, and despite many struggles, have eventually began to reap the benefits of this great nation.
What will be your first thought when you hear the word “undocumented”? Immigration issue, especially undocumented immigration issue is always framed as Latino issue. On the contrary, Asian immigrants are often left out of this discussion. As the matter of fact, Asia is now the largest sending region for immigrants. Asian Americans are the fastest-growing immigrant population in the United States today. They are expected to become the largest immigrant group in the United States (Foley 16). Asian American should not be left out from the discussion of immigration reform because Asian American has made a great contribution to the history of immigration in the U.S. Many of them are still struggling with
The second and third sections are about the daughters' lives, and the vignettes in each section trace their personality growth and development. Through the eyes of the daughters, we can also see the continuation of the mothers' stories, how they learned to cope in America. In these sections, Amy Tan explores the difficulties in growing up as a Chinese-American and the problems assimilating into modern society. The Chinese-American daughters try their best to become "Americanized," at the same time casting off their heritage while their mothers watch on, dismayed. Social pressures to become like everyone else, and not to be different are what motivate the daughters to resent their nationality. This was a greater problem for Chinese-American daughters that grew up in the 50's, when it was not well accepted to be of an "ethnic" background.
Perhaps one of the biggest issues foreigners will come upon is to maintain a strong identity within the temptations and traditions from other cultures. Novelist Frank Delaney’s image of the search for identity is one of the best, quoting that one must “understand and reconnect with our stories, the stories of the ancestors . . . to build our identities”. For one, to maintain a firm identity, elderly characters often implement Chinese traditions to avoid younger generations veering toward different traditions, such as the Western culture. As well, the Chinese-Canadians of the novel sustain a superior identity because of their own cultural village in Vancouver, known as Chinatown, to implement firm beliefs, heritage, and pride. Thus in Wayson Choy’s, The Jade Peony, the novel discusses the challenge for different characters to maintain a firm and sole identity in the midst of a new environment with different temptations and influences. Ultimately, the characters of this novel rely upon different influences to form an identity, one of which being a strong and wide elderly personal
Knott , Kim, and Seán McLoughlin, eds. Diasporas Concepts, Intersections, Identities. New York : Zed Books, 2010. Print.
The air would always be humid and stuffy while riding the bus to school, and the slightest bump in the road would result in tossing up the kids like salad. The backseat would provide carriage for all the popular and tough kids shouting out at pedestrians on the street or flipping off a middle finger to the bus driver that would shout for them to calm down. I despised those kids in the back. They were the same people that made my life a living hell, while growing up and attending an American school.
Canada is very different from what they saw of politics in Hong Kong and China."
The South Asian diaspora is different in comparison to other dispersions. Due to this, South Asians migrated and relocated worldwide. These immigrants were leaving the life they knew back home in pursuit of a new and hopefully better life. It wasn’t all smooth sailing though. They faced several obstacles in their journey. Often times they were met with racism, unfair treatment, and inequality. The journey was a long and difficult one with no guarantees. Lucky for these immigrants they had people like Princess Sophia Duleep Singh there to fight for and with them. Princess Sophia may not have known, but her fighting for women equality and rights paved the way and made the transition easier for women leaving India looking for just and equal treatment. Given everything Princess Sophia did throughout her life one might argue Princess Sophia Duleep Singh was one of the most influential people that lived through the diaspora. She gave up a life full of glamour and luxury to fight for the equality and fair treatment of women.