“As we journey through life, identity and belonging must be consistently renegotiated.” Each person’s identity goes through a process of stages in order to be fully developed and be a whole identity. Some people needs more time than others to attain a full, whole identity. There are many factors which play a role in sharpens people’s identity such as the environment that the people love in and the experiences that they went through. Undoubtedly, immigrants, especially those form two different cultures, need more time to achieve a stable and whole identity as they become trapped between two cultures, unable to categorize themselves with a particular one. For instance, it is very hard for Asian Americans, especially the first and second generations, to assimilate and adjust in America as they have different culture, traditions and features. This paper will depict how Obaachan in Silver like dust and Pearl in Shanghai Girls defines their identity and belonging during their lives’ journeys.
There are different factors that shape Obaachan in Kimi Grants’ novel Silver like dust definition of self. Through the novel Obaachan tries to be a good American citizen even though she is not accepted as one. In their article Minority and Self-Esteem Porter and Washington review the theoretical models of self esteem among Asian American subgroup. There are different models of assimilation and acculturation but Obaachan apply the multidimensional or pluralistic model, Porter and Washington state in their article that in this model:
Acculturation and assimilation are treated as complex, multifaceted phenomena. The acceptance of new cultural traits or social associations and retention of traditional cultural traits and social associations are viewe...
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...ers it as a way to show her patriotism. On the other hand, Pearl move from living in the east in a western lifestyle to living in the west in an eastern lifestyle. She adjusts and assimilates as she began to feel that she belong to America.
Works Cited
Akiyama, Cliff. “Bridging the Gap between two cultures: An Analysis of Identity Attitudes and Attachments of Asian Americans.” Brief Treatment & Crisis Intervention 8.3. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 Nov. 2013.
Grant, Kimi Cunningham. Grant, Kimi Cunningham. Silver like Dust: One Family's Story of America's Japanese Internment. New York: Pegasus Books, 2012. Print.
Porter, J. R., and R.E. Washington. “Minority and Self-Esteem.” Annual Review of Sociology 19.1 (1993): 139-161. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 Nov. 2013.
See, Lisa. Shanghai Girls: A Novel. New York: Random House, 2009. Print.
As Inada points out with his analogy to a constellation, the United States government had constructed many camps and scattered them all over the country. In other words, the internment of Japanese-Americans was not merely a blip in American history; it was instead a catastrophic and appalling forced remov...
During World War II, countless Japanese Canadians, and Americans, were relocated to internment camps out of fear of where their loyalties would lie. Because of this, those people were stricken from their homes and had their lives altered forever. Joy Kogawa’s Obasan highlights this traumatic event. In this excerpt, Kogawa uses shifts in point of view and style to depict her complex attitude and perception of the past.
Myer, Dillon S. Uprooted Americans: The Japanese Americans and the War Relocation Authority During World War II. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1970. Print
Taylor, Sandra C. Jewel of the Desert: Japanese American Internment at Topaz. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Stanley, Jerry. I Am An American: A True Story of Japanese Internment. New York: Crown Publishers, 1996. Print.
Marsh, James H. "Japanese Internment: Banished and Beyond Tears." The Canadian Encyclopedia. N.p., 23 Feb. 2012. Web. 7 Jan. 2014. .
The immigrant’s journey to America, as depicted throughout history, transports culture, language, beliefs and unique lifestyles from one land to the other, but also requires one to undergo an adaptation process. The children of these immigrants, who are usually American-born, experience the complexity of a bicultural life, even without completely connecting to the two worlds to which they belong. Potentially resulting is the internal desire to claim a singular rather than dual identity, for simplicity, pride and a sense of acceptance. Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian-American author and writer of “My Two Lives” could never classify herself as.
276). Curtin’s Coculturation (2010) combats this hegemonic discourse by stating, “everyone is continually engaged in social and political processes of identification” (p. 283). Thus, one’s identity can consist of multiple cultures and they can in fact coincide. The idea that one group “belongs” in a particular imagined community is a myth, there is no single response or adaption. The theory of Coculturation ultimately accommodates to a more realistic approach to cultural adjustment where a newcomer can adopt some behavior of the host culture while still maintaining the conciliatory and subconscious aspects of their native
Identity is 'how you view yourself and your life.'; (p. 12 Knots in a String.) Your identity helps you determine where you think you fit in, in your life. It is 'a rich complexity of images, ideas and associations.';(p. 12 Knots in a String.) It is given that as we go through our lives and encounter different experiences our identity of yourselves and where we belong may change. As this happens we may gain or relinquish new values and from this identity and image our influenced. 'A bad self-image and low self-esteem may form part of identity?but often the cause is not a loss of identity itself so much as a loss of belonging.'; Social psychologists suggest that identity is closely related to our culture. Native people today have been faced with this challenge against their identity as they are increasingly faced with a non-native society. I will prove that the play The Rez Sisters showed this loss of identity and loss of belonging. When a native person leaves the reservation to go and start a new life in a city they are forced to adapt to a lifestyle they are not accustomed to. They do not feel as though they fit in or belong to any particular culture. They are faced with extreme racism and stereotypes from other people in the nonreservational society.
Arriving to the United States of America in a plane is an exhilarating experience. On the plane, everyone suffers the same fates: whether it be turbulence, bad food, or long delays. Once arriving at Customs, the real differences pop out when the passengers are separated into two groups: U.S. Citizens and Non-Citizens. Most immigrants dream of the day when they can step into the Citizen line, hand over their American passport and hear the customs officer say, “Welcome home.” To immigrants, being American equates to success, fame, and happiness. In Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds,” it follows the story of an American girl born to a Chinese mother, and their struggles to be successful and fit in. Is that not what most people seek? The pursuit
Robson, David. "Life in Camps." The Internment of Japanese Americans. San Diego, CA: Reference Point, 2014. N. pag. Print.
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.
Something that has always fascinated me is the confrontation with a completely different culture. We do not have to travel far to realize that people really lead different lives in other countries and that the saying "Home sweet home" often applies to most of us. What if we suddenly had to leave our homes and settle somewhere else, somewhere where other values and beliefs where common and where people spoke a different language? Would we still try to hang on to the 'old home' by speaking our mother tongue, practising our own religion and culture or would we give in to the new and exciting country and forget our past? And what would it be like for our children, and their children? In Identity Lessons - Contemporary Writing About Learning to Be American I found many different stories telling us what it is like to be "trapped" between two cultures. In this short essay I aim to show that belonging to two cultures can be very confusing.
Dundes Renteln, Alison. "A Psychohistorical Analysis of the Japanese American Internment." Human Rights Quarterly 17, no. 4 (1995): 618-48. doi:10.1353/hrq.1995.0039.
Baseball Saved Us exposes children to the grim aspects of the internment camps. It does not hesitate to point out the overcrowded living quarters in the desolate conditions of the desert camps or that Japanese Americans had to discard most of their belongings before leaving their homes. Yet, it is through these realistically dark details that this book teaches one of its most valuable lessons to children. Children need to know that Japanese Americans were unfairly persecuted and interned. Oftentimes history textbooks gloss over the Japanese American internment camps. Baseball Saved Us attempts to elucidate this overlooked subject and teaches children about the wrongful treatment of Japanese Americans during and following WWII. In describing the horrible conditions of the camps, this book serves as a positive ethical influence on children because it shows them how unfair it was for people to be forced to experience these hard...