In Rita Wong’s poem “Write around the absence,” it showcases the importance of having the courage to stick to one’s own cultural interpretations despite living in a country where your culture and or values are considered a minority. With the narrator being of a Chinese descent living in an English majority, she describes and questions the dominant nature English has over her thoughts, expressions, and life; despite being equally bilingual. Expressing the anxiety and oppression she feels about having the “tones” (Wong 8) she wishes to express be “steamrolle[d]” (13) and marginalized to the corner by the powers of the English linguistic. Therefore, she finds the determination to try to fight back this dominance in unique ways, not allowing herself …show more content…
As the title suggests, “write around the absence,” the English words are physically written around the Chinese language in the corner; forming an S shape around the narrator of the poem’s innermost feelings within. Showing inequality; for her mother tongue is deliberately marginalized in the corner, not alongside the rest of the words. The narrator claims to be “half-submerged” (14) in the sea of her mother tongue, giving it an ominous symbol of drowning and struggle. The dominant pressure the English language places on her, makes for a struggling battle between the two languages; competing for her Chinese to not engulfed and drowned out. With the language being submerged, we are not able to hear or understand what is trying to be said, and if it were to be drowned for too long, it might just simply die; becoming a dead language, similar to other languages that have died before in the past. The dominant presence of the English language works to effectively “assimilat...[e]”(15) and “trample” (16) the minor language, making her mother language insignificant in comparison. While physically “flatten[ing]” (12) the words by “trampl[ing]” (16) on them, forcing them to submit. In the eyes of the narrator, language is a means of communication but it is also a means of domination, for it forces an array of expressions and …show more content…
By juxtaposing both the English and Mandarin language, Wong is effectively showcasing and questioning the institutional dominance the English language may possesses over both worldwide linguistics as well as individual’s freedom of expression; Stating we may need to break free from the constraining borders English may pose on an individual, and instead write or speak in any way we wish in hopes of effectively getting our point across. The narrator wants herself and others to break free from the strict dominant borders, empowering others to live a life filled with full freedom of expression regardless of one’s style of writing or minority
Ghana was a British colony and most people there spoke English. The small native languages in Ghana were trampled because of the English language. When Ghana was able to get their independence from Britain, they rebuilt Ghana. After talking about Ghana, the video goes all the way to China. In China there are many people that speak Changsha Hua which is a dialect of Mandarin. The lady that was being interviewed in this segment talked in her native tongue, Changsha Hua. She was taught the dialect, but in school, she was taught Mandarin. The Chinese government wants people to speak Mandarin because it 's the most spoke languages around the world. Many jobs in China you have to be able to speak Mandarin. The lady in the interview said that when she has kids she will not teach them Changsha Hua because she does not think there is a need for them to know. I see how Changsha Hua is starting to become a loss
Within these four years, Yu has worked typically by enforcing his critical writing style within the cultural and linguistic traditions of both Australia and China. He explores and questions the relationship between the two as a new generation of post-colonial writing and how this influences his distressing experiences on life and work. The former events between Australia and China provide a heavy leverage towards the poet’s fault-finding attitude. Australian-Chinese are known to be the single largest minority with significant immigration during the End of the White Australian Policy by 1965 and the Victorian Gold Rush in the mid-19 century. The Chinese were independently hard workers, sending money back to their motherland. Yet these ‘differences' between the two including language barriers, religion/beliefs and lifestyle choices lead to obvious xenophobia. Even though the poem itself is written years after and being a well-established ethnic group, these influences of casual racism and unjust have accumulated the poets bleak and homesick
Imagine feeling and looking different from all those around you. Imagine if you weren’t understood the same way as the majority. In the book “American Born Chinese”, two characters, Jin and Monkey King who went through the same situations, but in different societies. The Monkey King insight into the impact of society on Jin as they both face social exclusion through experiencing internalized racism. Further as Monkey King transforms into another character, Chin-Kee, which Jin sees as an embarrassing Chinese culture.
He, Qiang Shan. "Chinese-American Literature." New Immigrant Literatures in the United States: A Sourcebook to Our Multicultural Literary Heritage. Ed. Alpana Sharma Knippling. WEstport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1996. 44-65.
Tan also reflects on how her broken English with whom she shares with her mother is her mother tongue, and how this broken English has shaped who she is today. I am able to identify with Tan’s feelings as my grandmother who is a native Puerto Rican, has her own “mother tongue” as she still speaks in broken English. After my mother passed away when I was three, my grandmother moved in to help raise my sisters and I as we were very young. My grandmother used the same broken English Tan’s mother’s had used and my feelings towards it mirrored Tan’s at an early age. I remember because my father worked during the day my grandmother had to attend parent teacher conferences in his place. As I was still too young, my grandmother dragged me along and made me wait outside. We had waited in line for about two hours before finally being called for my conference. After a few minutes in, one of my teachers walks outside of the classroom and asks me if I know Spanish, to which I reply no. As the teacher walks back into the room I hear a resounding “Ma’am we must reschedule…there are other parents waiting and we cannot understand you, and we are pretty sure you
Writers like Amy Tan, use rhetorical writing to display emotional appeal, tone, style, and even organization. In Tan’s article, Mothers Tongue, she writes about her experiences with her mother's inability to speak English. She provides examples from her childhood of being discriminated, and stereotyped because of her race. Tan addresses cultural racism without showing any anger or specifically pointing out racism. She makes the reader realize that immigrants have to deal with discrimination, and disrespect in their daily lives. She uses Ethos, Pathos, and Logos to let the reader see what she went through in her early childhood experiences. Her audience reaches out to families who speak “broken English”, and have to deal with being discriminated, and disrespected.
Amy Tan’s ,“Mother Tongue” and Maxine Kingston’s essay, “No Name Woman” represent a balance in cultures when obtaining an identity in American culture. As first generation Chinese-Americans both Tan and Kingston faced many obstacles. Obstacles in language and appearance while balancing two cultures. Overcoming these obstacles that were faced and preserving heritage both women gained an identity as a successful American.
The writings of Amy Tan and Richard Rodriguez’s depicts a bilingual story based on two differing culture. On Mother Tongue, “Tan explores the effect of her mother’s “broken” English on her life and writing” (506). On the other hand, Richard Rodriguez “recounts the origin of his complex views of bilingual education through Public and Private Language” (512). From a child’s eyes, Tan and Rodriguez describe each joys and pain growing up in a non-English speaking family. Hence, may be viewed that cultural differences plays a major role on how one handles adversities.
The scene is always the same: the three of us sitting in a room together, talking. I see her from the corner of my eye, glancing for only a second or two, but always long enough to notice the look on her face, the expression I’ve become so painfully familiar with over the years. I am forced to turn away; the conversation resumes. She is a few feet from us. She hears everything, and understands nothing except what she can gather from the expressions on our faces, the tone of our voices. She pretends not to be bothered, smiling at us and interjecting random questions or comments in Chinese—a language I was raised to speak, a language I’ve slowly forgotten over the years, a language that is now mine only by blood. It is an earnest but usually futile attempt to break through the invisible barrier that separates her from us, and in spite of all her efforts to hide it, that sad, contem...
In Maya Angelou’s Champion of the World and Amy Tan’s Fish Cheeks both convey their struggles with identity. Both authors are from minority cultures, and describe the same harsh pressures from the dominant culture. They share situations of being outcasts, coming from different racial backgrounds and trying to triumph over these obstacles. Tan and Angelou speak about the differences between their childhood selves and white Americans. Tan talks about the anxiety of a teenage girl who feels embarrassed about her Chinese culture, and who wants to fit in with American society. Angelou’s explains the racial tension and hostility between African and white Americans.
Have you ever wondered how your ethnicity can impact the way you interact with people? What about the conversation you might have with people? Do you have a voice in our society that allows you to speak for yourself or a group of people? In the poem “Sure You Can Ask Me a Personal Question” by Diane Burns, the author focused on showing the importance poetic devices have through allusions, repetition, and imagery. Through poetic devices, author of “Sure You Can Ask Me a Personal Question” shows how stereotypes from societies and her ethnicity affects her life. Diane Burns uses three poetic devices to communicate her tone throughout the poem.
In Maxine Hong Kingston’s autobiographical piece “Silence”, she describes her inability to speak English when she was in grade school. Kindergarten was the birthplace of her silence because she was a Chinese girl attending an American school. She was very embarrassed of her inability, and when moments came up where she had to speak, “self-disgust” filled her day because of that squeaky voice she possessed (422). Kingston notes that she never talked to anyone at school for her first year of silence, except for one or two other Chinese kids in her class. Maxine’s sister, who was even worse than she was, stayed almost completely silent for three years. Both went to the same school and were in the same second grade class because Maxine had flunked kindergarten.
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar pursue a definition for what it means to be an authoress in a male dominated culture of writers. The central question for Feminists, according to Gilbert and Gubar, is: “Does the Queen try to sound like the King, imitating his tone, is inflections, his phrasing, his point of view? Or does she ‘talk back’ to him in her own vocabulary, her own timbre, insisting on her own viewpoint?” However, I cannot overlook the prospect of a man feeling just as mad and cooped up writing a text that others would view as out of his league. Chinua Achebe is the epitome of this Madman in the Attic. Born and raised in London, and brought up Christian he was as far away from being Okonkwo as I am as a white middle class American female. If Gilbert and Gubar are accusing women of feeling out of place writing in what then was a man’s field of expertise then Achebe masterfully channels the feminine madness into Things Fall Apart by writing a culture of strong independent women masked by silent passive girls.
It is as though Asian Americans are succumbing to the thought that America is the only place to be and that they should be grateful to live here. On the other hand, keeping silent due to pressures from the white population means being shunned by the members of the Asian American population. I disagree with Chin’s assertion that “years of apparent silence have made us accomplices” to the makers of stereotypes (Chin 1991, xxxix). I agree with Hongo’s argument that the Chin viewpoint “limits artistic freedom” (Hongo 4). Declaring that those writers who do not argue stereotypes of the good, loyal, and feminine Chinese man or the submissive female, are in any way contributing to or disagreeing with them is ridiculous.
The purpose of Amy Tan’s essay, “Mother Tongue,” is to show how challenging it can be if an individual is raised by a parent who speaks “limited English” (36) as Tan’s mother does, partially because it can result in people being judged poorly by others. As Tan’s primary care giver, her mother was a significant part of her childhood, and she has a strong influence over Tan’s writing style. Being raised by her mother taught her that one’s perception of the world is heavily based upon the language spoken at home. Alternately, people’s perceptions of one another are based largely on the language used.