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.
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).
One theme that I found to be very interesting is the struggles that Asian Americans have faced in the past and the present. I never knew about the struggles that have been happening in places like China and Laos. I never realized how many families come from poverty and violence. I have only learned very little about historical events such as Vietnam. I am only now becoming more aware about the human rights problem in China. I am so used to seeing places like Tokyo, Japan in movies and television. Everything seems so clean and the city is lit up with bright lights and amazing buildings at night. Before this course, I thought that most Asians live this kind of life. I never knew that these events had even occurred and I was amazed at some of the things Asians have had to go through over the years.
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.
The United States of America is the place of opportunity and fortune. “Many immigrants hoped to achieve this in the United States and similar to other immigrants many people from the Asian Pacific region hoped to make their fortune. They planned to either return to their homelands or build a home in their new country (Spring, 2013).” For this reason, life became very complicated for these people. They faced many challenges in this new country, such as: classifying them in terms of race and ethnicity, denying them the right to become naturalized citizens, and rejecting them the right of equal educational opportunities within the school systems. “This combination of racism and economic exploitation resulted in the educational policies to deny Asians schooling or provide them with segregated schooling (Spring, 2013).”This was not the country of opportunity and fortune as many believed. It was the country of struggle and hardship. Similarly, like many other immigrants, Asian Americans had the determination to overcome these obstacles that they faced to prove that the United States was indeed their home too.
In 1970, the term “model minority” was popularized by journalists, social commentators and some academics to refer to Asian Americans. The stereotype suggests that Asian Americans are more academically, economically and socially successful than any other racial minority groups, and it was achieved by overcoming disadvantages through hard work, thrift, strong family ties, and emphasizing children’s education. Contrary to this popular belief by Americans, the exaggerated praising of Asian Americans as the model minority is false. This positive image of Asian Americans as a model minority has a sinister core of believe about Asian Americans and other racial minorities in America: a view of Asian American as foreign. Since most studies on Asian children centered on their success stories and the realization of the invisible crisis that many Asian American children face is fairly recent, few studies have addressed the diverse and complex experiences of Asian American children, especially those who do not fit the model minority stereotype. This paper revisits the model minority myth and examines the impact of model minority myth on underachieving student who are failing schools. I will first present a contextualized understanding of the “model minority myth,” what is it and what does it mean to be model minority. Secondly, I will demonstrate that the myth has been inaccurate and invalid representation for many Asian American students. Then, I discuss the impact of the model minority stereotype on underachieving Asian American student schooling. I argue that the stereotype has pose a threat to the students’ advancement on school and society. In order to illustrate the impact of the model minority stereotypes on individual experiences, I r...
On January 13, 1903, the first Korean Immigrants set foot in Hawaii. There were eighty six people on that first voyage, and since then there have been over 550,000 Koreans who have made the journey to the United States over the past 100 years. The original immigrants and their descendants now total over 1.6 million. Korean Americans make up one of the most prominent Asian communities in the United States. Many elements of Korean Culture, ranging from Kim Chee to Tae Kwon Do, have made their way into the American Lifestyle. There have been many events that have shaped the Korean American community and there are many current issues that affect Korean Americans.
The number of Asian American communities is growing in the U.S. population, however, these groups of people are often marginalized and misrepresented in mainstream media. In today’s mainstream media, there is a visible lack of Asian American representation on film. Asian actors, when given roles in film and television, are rarely cast for central roles and form about only 3% of prime-time characters (Ramasubramanian, 2011). Not only is the number for casting Asian and Asian Americans low, the roles of these characters are often portrayed in the stereotypical ideology which has been present for decades. But why are Asians portrayed the way they are? Why has Hollywood maintained its representational practices when it comes to the portraying Asians? Why do these portrayals persist in the presence of a growing Asian population and racial diversity? What is the significance of the Asian American segment for Hollywood? To what extent does the consideration of the Asian American market influence the way Hollywood portray Asians? These are the questions that surface when watching films, and in the lens of an Asian American, many Asians and Asian American do not fit the mold created by Hollywood. First, I will introduce the range of common film representation of Asians. This literature review will focus on the negative and positive light of Asian representation , the structure of Hollywood film industry and its effect on representing Asian race, the social acceptance of Asian stereotypes, and Asian American’s social identity theories.
“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.
Asian immigrants have faced many obstacles transitioning to life in America. One major obstacle Asian immigrants came face to face with was receiving an education. Asians are known to place high value on learning and education, but many things stood in their way and hindered them from even receiving an education. Between Asian immigrants and Americans lie a language barrier, which is often seen as a set back. An example of this is Lac Su since he had to serve as a translator for his parents, which in turn affected his school work. He was forced to learn American culture and English at a faster rate than his parents because they were busy with their own responsibilities to the family. Another obstacle Asian Americans faced receiving an education was separate classrooms and segregated schools, as seen in the Tape v. Hurley case. The case followed the discrimination eight-year old Mamie Tape faced as she was denied admission to Spring Valley School on that grounds that she was of Chinese race. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Tape, however the Francisco Board of Education took it upon themselves to establish a separate school system specifically for Oriental children. Racially segregated schools deeply influence the student’s performance. Asian American children are taught different material and in a different style than their counterparts. These and many more obstacles impeded Asian Americans from receiving an education that they were entitled to.
Erika Lee’s “The ‘Yellow Peril’ and Asian Exclusion in the Americas” goes in depth on the topic of Asian exclusion in the early 1900s. As previously discussed in last week’s presentation, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act was the first antiracial law. What we did not discuss was that it was the law that set the trend for anti-racial laws against Asians in other countries as well.
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 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.
After the first wave of Chinese immigrants arrived in the United States in the early 1840s during the California Gold Rush, many Chinese people continued to travel across the Pacific, escaping poor conditions in China with hopes and ambitions for a better life in America. Many more Chinese immigrants began arriving into the 1860s on the Pacific coast for work in other areas such as the railroad industry. The immigrants noticed an increasing demand for their labor because of their readiness to work for low wages. Many of those who arrived did not plan to stay long, and therefore there was no push for their naturalization. The immigrants left a country with thousands of years of a “decaying feudal system,” corruption, a growing population, and the downfall of the Qing dynasty. By 1894, over one million Chinese lived and worked abroad with about 90,000 of those Chinese people in America. Originally, the United States had significant plans for Chinese immigration to California. These plans would better its trade relationship with Asia and further develop the still new land of the Pacific coast. The demand for jobs increased as a result. The Chinese Opium Wars with Britain, the Red Turban Rebellion, and a harsh economy all served as motivation to exit China and find a new life in Gam Saan, the Gold Mountain. For many immigrants, the Gam Saan led to possibilities of employment, higher pay, larger houses, stable food, fine clothing, and no war. These hopeful immigrants first arrived voluntarily and as free laborers.
To truly understand multicultural literature, one must first try to understand the cultural background of the author. In the case of this piece, we are examining the Chinese culture and Jen’s experiences which shaped her writing. Gish Jen is a second-generation American. Her parents immigrated separately in the 1940’s. Her mother came to America to go to graduate school and her father came as part of the war efforts during World War II. With the rise of Communism in China, both were forced to remain here and ended up building a life together and raising their 5 children as Americans. Because they came in the second of three “waves” of Chinese Immigration, their reasons for coming and the process of assimilating into the American way of life was very different than other Chinese immigrants.