A Metaphor for the Dimensional Concept of Home

974 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Benefits and challenges associated with expression of cultural identity

Movement is only as good as the stillness you can bring to it to put it into perspective. Leslie T. Chang’s travel narrative Factory Girls not only: exonifies the discussion, but is also a metaphor for the multidimensional concept of home. Chang considers many perspectives but chooses to only focus on a select few- all of which bring contrasting and often immiscible arguments only to initiate an vision inward of Chang’s own development and ultimately an emulsified concept her readers can resonate with.

Chang’s writing speaks a lot of the contrast between the village immigrating girls leave from and the city they arrive in. She defines them as two separate an immensely different places before we can even learn the names of the girls who are partaking in the journey. In the chapter entitled, “Going Out,” Chang begins her discussion of home will a clear and well-defined location. Home is where you leave from and come back to, home is the place you are born.

The girls Chang follows embody this notion; they’re leaving home as to discover themselves. There was nothing to do at home, chuqu, so I went out [13]. The idea expressed in the passage is one of progression when polled the chief purpose of migration in the book according to the women is, “more experience in life.” [57] They’re intention is to live and they can’t do that at home so they leave. Serwani Venkata Swamy discusses this diaspora of Chinese women as voluntary, “showing a deliberate immigration and thus occurrence of a whole hearted adaptable attribute towards change.” These girls leave with a notion for a better life but leaving has no meaning if they don’t have a home to go back too.

The Factory Girl’s test their theory, they leave and come back and leave again the ...

... middle of paper ...

... about. Even Min is only interested in the derivative of her existence (the rate at which she has changed) [77] and is surprised to realize that she isn’t the person she used to be. A universal expression is experienced by those who haven’t the time to look back; those that are rooted in the future rather than the past. Home isn’t just the place where you’ve grown up, sleep or even where you long to be- it’s where you stand. It’s less about where you come from, and where you are now and more about where you are going.

Works Cited

Chang, Leslie T. Factory girls: From village to city in a changing China. Random House LLC, 2009.

Teng, Emma J. "Reinventing Home: Images of Mobility and Returns in Eurasian Memoirs."

Swamy, Mrs G. Serwani Venkata. "IMMIGRANT IDENTITY, NOSTALGIA FOR HOME AND HOME LAND: A PERCEPTION IN CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI’S THE VINE OF DESIRE."

Show More
Related

  • The Secret Life Of Bees Home Essay

    663 Words  | 2 Pages

    Lily’s idea of home is having loving parent/mother figures who can help guide her in life. Because of this desire, she leaves T. Ray and begins to search for her true identity. This quest for acceptance leads her to meet the Calendar Sisters. This “home” that she finds brightly displays the ideas of identity and feminine society. Though Lily could not find these attributes with T. Ray at the peach house, she eventually learns the truth behind her identity at the pink house, where she discovers the locus of identity that resides within herself and among the feminine community there. Just like in any coming-of-age story, Lily uncovers the true meaning of womanhood and her true self, allowing her to blossom among the feminine influence that surrounds her at the pink house. Lily finds acceptance among the Daughters of Mary, highlighting the larger meaning of acceptance and identity in the novel.

    Read More

  • Theme Of The Destination By Wang Anyi

    1006 Words  | 3 Pages

    There might be an emotional response at the tragedy of thousands of people plucked from their homes to live in a foreign place, but it is far more effective to show these struggles through the eyes of one person, rather than from an economic or or national viewpoint. Anyi does exactly this in “The Destination”. Anyi never forgets the individual hardships of each character, she demonstrates what “It was not easy to live in Shanghai” (Anyi 137) means to each person. Characterizing their hardships with compassion and understanding that, young or old, changes in China had an effect on all, and all have the right to acknowledge

    Read More

  • The Secret Life of Bees Movie Review

    633 Words  | 2 Pages

    As they reach Tiburon, they stop at a convenient store and Lily notices that the same picture that is on her wooden picture is also on the honey jars. They investigate and are led to a house where the “Calendar sisters” live.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Strategies in Advocacy Against Child Labor

    633 Words  | 2 Pages

    She shows the jobs young girls do in the factories, “They spin… they weave… They stamp” By showing a list of work the young girls do, Kelley appeals to her audience’s emotional sense in order to deliver message of dissolving child labor. She also uses rhetorical questions followed by solutions in order to question what must be done and how to do it. She states, “what can we do to free our consciousness?... we can enlist the workingmen… to free the children”. By doing this, Kelley forcefully suggests that her audience consciousness are enslaved with the idea of child labor. She states her and her audience must solve the problem with unity to enlist the workingmen on the jobs. This gets back to to Kelley’s purpose of destroying child labor. By offering

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Childhood Dreams By Jennifer Yee

    854 Words  | 2 Pages

    Standing in the front of the mirror every day, people see themselves gradually become an adult from a little boy or a little girl. In “Childhood Dreams”, Jennifer Yee describes a story that her father and she used to spend a lot of happy time in the amusement park together, riding carousels and so on, but now she felt lost and uncertain about her life. The reason why the author felt she was smothered by the real world was probably because she found out that as growing older, life became more complex, and she did not have as much time as she used to have to enjoy life in the childhood, and therefore felt quite depressed about the way she was.

    Read More

  • Theme Of A Pair Of Tickets By Amy Tan

    869 Words  | 2 Pages

    June-May fulfills her mother’s name and life goal, her long-cherished wish. She finally meets her twin sisters and in an essence fulfills and reunites her mother with her daughter through her. For when they are all together they are one; they are their mother. It is here that June-May fulfills the family portion of her Chinese culture of family. In addition, she fully embraces herself as Chinese. She realizes that family is made out of love and that family is the key to being Chinese. “And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.” (Tan 159). Finally, her mother’s life burden is lifted and June-May’s doubts of being Chinese are set aside or as she says “After all these years, it can finally be let go,” (Tan 159).

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Novel 'Children At War'

    773 Words  | 2 Pages

    Amela Kamenica wishes she could “stay there, watching the war, rather than be here safe, but without friends” (Brice 25). She wants to go back country, where she won’t be lonely. Shows how unhappy she is in her new home since she rather go back where her life could possibly threaten in the hazardous war. Ha, emotional feels, “fire, sourness, weight, anger, loneliness, confusion, embarrassment, and shame” (Lai 207-208) These powerful emotions all of a sudden overwhelm her. Primarily, Ha doesn’t fit in with her classmate and is treated like an outcast. Like many refugees when they enter a foreign country, they many not always be accepted by their peers. Furthermore, their lives turn “inside out” when they are rejected by their peers and feel sad that they are treated like an outsider. Ha wants to “choose wartime in Saigon over peacetime in Alabama” (Lai 195) Ha would want to stay in a dangerous place, where there are bombs and a possible chance of you dying than being in a calm place like Alabama. Home is like your comfort zone, and where you can relax and relate to people in your home town and feel like an insider. Because Ha doesn’t get the home/welcoming feeling in Alabama she decides she wants to go home. To conclude, Ha and Amela lives turn “inside out” when they want to go back home where it is dangerous, however, home has familiar faces.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Chinese Mothers In America

    699 Words  | 2 Pages

    As the four women entered America, which is far from their motherland China, they experience a change of culture, the American culture, which was dominant than the Chinese. The Chinese mothers are faced with a difficult task of how to raise their American-born daughters with an understanding of their heritage. The daughters clearly show a gap in culture between the Chinese culture and American culture. The mothers wanted their daughter to follow the Chinese traditions, but the daughters followed the American traditions and even some of them got married to American men. The mothers tried to tell their daughters the story about the Chinese ancestors but the daughter could not follow them and the daughters thought their mothers were backwards and did not know what they are saying. As much as the mothers tried to show love to their daughters, the daughters usually responded negatively. They often saw their mothers’ attempts to guidance as a failure to understand the American culture. Being Chinese and living in America, both the mothers and the daughters struggle with many issues like identity, language, translation, and others. The mothers try to reconcile their Chinese pasts with their American presents; the daughters try to find a balance between independence and loyalty to their heritage

    Read More

  • Mother Daughter Relationships - The Mother-daughter Relationship in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    821 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Identity In The Jade Peony

    1240 Words  | 3 Pages

    This is evident in the persistence of elderly characters, such as Grandmother Poh-Poh, who instigate the old Chinese culture to avoid the younger children from following different traditions. As well, the Chinese Canadians look to the Vancouver heritage community known as Chinatown to maintain their identity using on their historical past, beliefs, and traditions. The novel uniquely “encodes stories about their origins, its inhabitants, and the broader society in which they are set,” (S. Source 1) to teach for future generations. In conclusion, this influential novel discusses the ability for many characters to sustain one sole

    Read More

  • Americanization in The Joy Luck Club

    1951 Words  | 4 Pages

    Oftentimes the children of immigrants to the United States lose the sense of cultural background in which their parents had tried so desperately to instill within them. According to Walter Shear, “It is an unseen terror that runs through both the distinct social spectrum experienced by the mothers in China and the lack of such social definition in the daughters’ lives.” This “unseen terror” is portrayed in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club as four Chinese women and their American-born daughters struggle to understand one another’s culture and values. The second-generation women in The Joy Luck Club prove to lose their sense of Chinese values, becoming Americanized.

    Read More

  • The Change In Jaimaica Kincaid's New Phases Of Life

    490 Words  | 1 Pages

    As in most other novels that talk about new phases of life, Jaimaica Kincaid’s novel is about new phases of life, Kincaid’s novel is about the change in percption of her sense of self. In this novel, Kincaid is introduced to a much safer place yet desires to go back home- “I wanted to be back where I came from(line 55).” As this general feeling of homesickness continues, Kincaid uses nature and color to help portray how she feels at her new “home.” For example, “but a pale-yellow sun, as if the sun had grown weak from trying too hard to shine (line 20).” The sun, usually a symbol of hope throughout literature, in this case, has faded leaving behind only despair and homesickness.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Factory Girls By Leslie T. Chang

    1391 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Factory Girls” by Leslie T. Chang provides an inside look on migration in the inner cities of China. The book follows the lives of women who have left their home villages to work in factories. Primarily, Chang focuses on the lives of two women, Min and Chunming. Min left her village at the age of sixteen with her older sister to chuqu, or to go out, and see the world. She often changed jobs while in Dongguan because she is never satisfied with her position. Chang met Chunming at a dating agency where men and women could mingle with one another. Chunming began her career at a toy factory. In her diary, she often wrote out the goals she wanted to accomplish and how to accomplish them. She was very determined to become successful. Her persistence

    Read More

  • Homesickness: A Refugee's Struggle

    540 Words  | 2 Pages

    If people are forced to flee their homes for the fear of being persecuted, they are labeled as refugees. Many of these refugees will go through a stage of homesickness as they began to adjust to their new community. Ha also experiences this hardship when she flees from Saigon to Alabama. When refugees first arrive in their new country, like Ha, they are often troubled with homesickness until they make new friends and acquire new possessions.

    Read More

  • The Definition of Home

    659 Words  | 2 Pages

    A home, many people spent their whole life in search of his or her home. It has many different definitions to different people. To some people it may be their home country, to some it may be where they were born, to some it may be where their family is. home's most basic trait is its ability to provide shelter from weather. Rain or snow, a house will always be there to shield the elements from the family. In the cold times of the year, the heater will be there to warm the house. The heat of the summer is no problem for a good home. The ideal dwelling definitely must have a dependable central air conditioner. When located in an area abundant with tornadoes and hurricanes, a home must have a safe place. A storm shelter or a basement is an excellent place to hide. But to most people home has more meaning than just dwelling it should be a place where their family is, where they could have family times together.

    Read More

More about A Metaphor for the Dimensional Concept of Home

Open Document