An Asian Growing Up in America 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. My parents sometimes got the notion that they knew everything in my life. They constantly advised me to eat my vegetables, do my homework, and put the toilet seat down after going to the bathroom. Yet, I felt as if my mother and father never understood what I went through in school due to the fact that they grew up in a totally different country. I’m sure that if I were raised in an Asian country, no one would pull their eye sockets back and start singing some gabble that didn’t even include a real character in any Asian alphabet, because we would all have the same face. My folks just moved to the “land of opportunity” in hopes of getting me a bright future; a land that has high school kids shooting up fellow students and teachers. Some future. Everyday was the same for me, having to deal with racial slurs that would otherwise imprison someone for a hate crime if we were adults. All through out freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior year, people gave me nicknames like Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan. It’s a shame that those names never really held up it’s title, due to the fact that I didn’t know anything about Kung Fu or any fancy martial arts. One cold December morning of my 7th grade year in mi... ... middle of paper ... ...t out, I figured what I wanted to do. Knowing that it would be four years of relentless pestering, I knew that someday I would surpass my tormentors; I would keep under cover of my books and study hard to make my brother proud one day. It would be worth the pain to someday walk into a restaurant and see my former bully come to my table wearing an apron and a nametag and wait on me, complete with a lousy tip. To walk the halls of the hospital I work in, sporting a stethoscope and white coat while walking across the floor that was just cleaned not to long ago by the janitor, who was the same boy that tried to pick a fight with me back in middle school. To me, an Asian in an American school is picking up where my brother left off. It’s a promise to my family that I wouldn’t disappoint nor dishonor our name. It’s a battle that’s gains victory without being fought.
Despite their being of the same culture, Asian American, the authors of the two texts have contrasting viewpoints. Elizabeth Wong, author of "The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl", looks upon Asian culture with eyes full of contempt and sees America culture as far superior. However, The author of "Notes for a Poem on Being Asian American", Dwight Okita, recognizes how the two cultures blend together, going hand-in-hand with one another. Wong's perception of her Asian culture as shameful is evident throughout the text. She wrote that her mother "forcibly" sent her and her brother to Chinese school (Wong 1).
‘The Harmful Myth of Asian Superiority’ by Ronald Takaki and ‘Growing up Asian in America’ by Kesaya E. Noda are both essays that depict the state of Asian immigrants in America. The authors are both Asian Americans themselves and their words bear fruit from a lifetime of personal experiences of being a viewed upon as an alien in their own land.
How White people assumed they were better than Indians and tried to bully a young boy under the US Reservation. Alexie was bullied by his classmates, teammates, and teachers since he was young because he was an Indian. Even though Alexie didn’t come from a good background, he found the right path and didn’t let his hands down. He had two ways to go to, either become a better, educated and strong person, either be like his brother Steven that was following a bad path, where Alexie chose to become a better and educated person. I believe that Alexie learned how to get stronger, and stand up for himself in the hard moments of his life by many struggles that he passed through. He overcame all his struggles and rose above them
The people of Waknuk are not accustomed to change. The Old People and the people of Waknuk "stamp on any change: they close the way and keep the type fixed because they've got the arrogance to think themselves perfect" (Wyndham 154). The Waknuk people believed that by living like the Old People, life would be perfect. In order for the Waknuk to do so they referred to Nicholson's Repentances, as it was the only place the true image was described that "And each leg shall be jointed twice and shall have one foot and each foot 5 toes. And any creature that shall seem to be human, but is not formed thus, is not human" (Wyndham 13) and the book that they turned to for guidance. The true image is based on the description given by God, and was believed that if a person was not created in the true image of God they were against God's will as well as not deemed fit to be human. They did not accept deviants because they were not considered pure, and existed due to the radiation from the nuclear apocalypse. Accepting the mutant...
date with the latest software and security patches. Reputable antivirus programs such as Norton Security, McAfee Antivirus, and Bitdefender Antivirus and firewall programs should be installed and kept up to date for maximum protection.
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.
To begin with, one important character in this book, Joseph Strorm, believes that everyone in Waknuk should look according to “The Definition of Man,” but this “perfection” definition means the loss of strong values humans need in their everyday life. The Definition of Man is how people in Waknuk believe every human should look like. Firstly, Joseph Strorm was a man that followed religion above ever...
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 this paper I will be sharing information I had gathered involving two students that were interviewed regarding education and their racial status of being an Asian-American. I will examine these subjects’ experiences as an Asian-American through the education they had experienced throughout their entire lives. I will also be relating and analyzing their experiences through the various concepts we had learned and discussed in class so far. Both of these individuals have experiences regarding their education that have similarities and differences.
In the short story, "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan, a Chinese mother and daughter are at odds with each other. The mother pushes her daughter to become a prodigy, while the daughter (like most children with immigrant parents) seeks to find herself in a world that demands her Americanization. This is the theme of the story, conflicting values. In a society that values individuality, the daughter sought to be an individual, while her mother demanded she do what was suggested. This is a conflict within itself. The daughter must deal with an internal and external conflict. Internally, she struggles to find herself. Externally, she struggles with the burden of failing to meet her mother’s expectations. Being a first-generation Asian American, I have faced the same issues that the daughter has been through in the story.
After reading the novels assigned in this Asian American class, it seems that many Asian American experiences are similar. One similarity that is outstandingly prominent is how an outside culture impacts either directly or indirectly a foreign society. Often, the influences of the powerful yet glamorous American lifestyle lead to self-hatred of one's own society and culture. We see this in "Obasan," by Joy Kogawa, and in "Dogeaters," by Jessica Hagedorn, where many of the characters cease to acknowledge their own identity by living vicariously through movies, music and other American influences. In this essay, I will compare and contrast the portrayals of this self-hatred, and analyze how America influences it. I will also discuss resolutions, or escapes that these characters use to counteract this self-hatred.
Before I was five, I thought I was Chinese. However, I wondered why I couldn’t understand the Chinese patrons of Chinatown restaurants. Upon learning my true ethnicity, I pulled out a mammoth atlas we had under the bed. My father pointed to an “S”-shaped country bordering the ocean, below China. It was then that I learned my parents were refugees from Vietnam. “Boat people,” my mother, still struggling to grasp English back then, would hear kids whispering when she walked through the halls of her high school. Like many refugees, although my parents and their families weren’t wealthy when they came to America, they were willing to work hard, and like many Vietnamese parents, mine would tell me, “We want you to be success.”
At first, my very first experience in the United States is so bored, depressed, and hopeless. It was a new journey for me, I learn a language that I had never learned before, I get bullied just because I am the only one Asian who do not speak English. However, my life has become better when I realized that the “American Dream” is possible. Well, for me, the term “American Dream” is fitting for the one who attends at school, who has confidence and hard work. It might be a dream for my generation but not my parents. I saw my parents struggle to keep my brother and I fed. They worked more than two jobs, just to help us finish our education, paying our rent, and everything. I saw them suffer in tears, to sacrificed their future to let my brother and me to get a better education and opportunities to
The creators of Nike Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman began in 1964, they used be name Blue Ribbon Sports. Little be known an athlete and track coach at University of Oregon would be on their way to create one of the most well known athletic brands today. At first, they began as an athletic Japanese shoe supplier and then eventually became what we know now as Nike. To this day they are the main supplier of athletic clothing, shoes, accessories today! Nike is one of the top sponsors for athletes, to name a few Michael Jordan, LeBron James, and Kobe Bryant are all phenomenal basketball players. Although Nike continues to revolutionize athletic wear and staying as number one on the leader board, such achievement wasn’t always there
With these steps in mind, McAfee have helped businesses protect not only themselves, but the customers they provide customer service to. They also believe that as a business you should be looking out for employees, shareholders, and communities. In order to help small business McAfee had come up with a number of products, ranging in different prices and options, but McAfee Desktop Protection Endpoint Protection Advanced would be the ultimate protection for not only a small business, but an enterprise.