My character is a young girl in her early 20’s growing up in Flushing, New York. She currently attends Baruch College and is a senior who is majoring in finance. Her name is Jane Chang. She is an average looking girl with brown hair and brown eyes. She is an average height of 5'5 and fairly skinny. She wears black plastic frames. She lives with her family and has a younger brother. She identifies herself as a student and places a heavy emphasis on schooling and graduating college since it is her last year. She is Asian American and has strong cultural values. Asian American values are based on traditional Confucianism origins and placed heavy emphasis on family ties. Being a Chinese American, Jane values the role of family and respects elders …show more content…
According to Shields, intersectionality is the mutually constitutive relations among social identities. (2008). This is significant to individuals because this suggests that different social environments can impact gender identities. This impacts Jane because her cultural values conflict with her identity roles. Jane's many identities intersect because strong Asian values and Western images of beauty both affect her. Her struggle to oblige with Asian values and yet fulfill the Western images conflict which lead to different perceptions of beauty. Cultural values also impact images of beauty and push towards thin bodies yet she is thought of as too thin and therefore her body is not perceived as attractive. This impacts performance because as an individual, her self-esteem is significantly impacted and it changes her lifestyles and choices. My character has to wear certain clothes that will not perpetuate the thin and anorexic image but also maintain a normal body image. She also does not engage in sexual activities or interact with boys because she was discouraged by her elders to stay away from romantic relationships. She also has a dual identity outside of home because she acts like her non Asian American friends in order to assimilate to Western culture. Shields also states that “Identities are fluid in that they can change over time; at …show more content…
According to Wood(2011), “when mothers talk with daughters about sex, the daughters are more likely to delay sexual activity and to engage in safer sex when they decide to be sexual.” This shows how mothers often communicate to their daughters behaviors they deem to be gendered. It is also important to see the communication that parents will use to enforce rules on their children. Because of Jane's culture and her mothers parenting style, she doesn't really speak of sexuality
One of the characters is a little girl who dreams and fantasizes about who and what she wants to become and this also is interpreted in her reality. The little girl reads her favorite comic book called “Supergirl” From the events that take place in her dream it is noticeable that the little girl is insecure about her appearance. In her recurring dream she changes into someone she is not, “my legs would grow long, my arms harden to steel, and my hair would magically go straight and turn a golden color” (Par. 1). Her view on beauty is distorted due to her fixation on fictional characters in a book. The little girl wakes up every time aware she cannot change her physical
The theory of intersectionality is one put forth by the feminist theorist known as Kimberlé Crenshaw. Crenshaw developed this theory as a critique to what she called a single-axis framework. A single-axis framework is one that considers an issue, be it feminist or otherwise, as a product of a single aspect. To be clearer, and to provide an example, a single-axis framework would consider the experiences of a woman of colour as either those experienced by an individual of colour, or those experienced by a woman. Crenshaw introduced the concept of intersectionality to explain that some experiences are unique to those who fall under a combination of these categories. In her article, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex”, Crenshaw describes intersectionality as “the combined effects of practices which discriminate on the basis of race and on the basis of sex” (385).
The tenth case study, “Falling from My Pedestal” explores the troubling family life of a girl named Chhaya. Her story details how her relationship with her family influenced and affected her identity and later her health. In the case, Chhaya adopts an identity in order to please her parents and gain their love while saving her parents’ toxic relationship. All the while, the fake persona causes her not to develop a real one of her own. When Chhaya fails to uphold her perfect child identity, she feels as if her perfect identity was factitious all along and that everyone would find this out. Despite that, Chhaya manages to lose a few extra pounds which causes her to believe that her body weight is the only thing that she can control and perfect.
This essay will be unpacking and analysing the different elements that create my own intersectionality in my life. This essay will be discussing how class, gender/sex and race have influenced who I am and the experiences I have had throughout my life, and how various structures impact these experiences, with reference to the Crenshaw and Dill and Zambara articles, I will connect their thoughts and ideas to the intersectionality of my own life.
Similarly, Wong also grew up in America with a traditional Chinese mother. In contrast, Wong’s upbringing involves her mother forcing her into attending two different schools. After her American school day, Wong continues on with Chinese school to learn both cultures. Her mother felt it was her duty to “[. . .] learn the language of [her] heritage” (Wong 144). This puts a burden on Wong as she starts to despise the Chinese culture.
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.
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.
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.
Intersectionality according to Patricia Hill Collins is the “theory of the relationship between race, gender and class” (1990), also known as the “matrix of domination” (2000). This matrix shows that there is no one way to understand the complex nature of how gender, race and class inequalities within women’s lives can be separated; for they are intertwined within each other.
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.
Amy Chua’s Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior was in “The Wall Street Journal” on January 8, 2011. She calls attention to the differences in parenting between cultures and why Chinese children are more successful. Chua is a famous author who written many books such as “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” and her newest book, “The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America.” She has a bachelor’s degree in economics and a Juris doctorate from Harvard.
Although it often goes unknown, Allison wrote Two or Three Things I Know For Sure and it shares experiences that reveal intersectionality and it addresses how her life experiences and environment shaped her into who she is now. This book also reveals the juxtaposition between how people identify themselves with intersectionality and how society or others view and hold them to specific standards. This book reveals how history can repeat itself, how others can be impacted by the intersectionality surrounding them and how they feel pressured to stick to a standard placed upon them such as the reoccurring idea of being “pretty”. The book ends with Allison and her sister addressing Allison’s niece as being “pretty” and Allison breaks down the walls surrounding her allowing herself to see the battles she’s faced in the
Intersectionality is a term used to describe a situation whereby an individual has multiple identities and as result, the person feels that he or she doesn’t belong to one community or another. Because of the many conflicts in an individual’s identities, he or she could be a victim of multiple threats of discrimination (Williams, 2017). The discrimination could be a result of race, gender, age, health and ethnicity among others. To give an example, a black transgender woman could be discriminated in the workplace because of being black and also because she is transgender. From an intersectionality perspective, the woman faces multiple threats of discrimination because of the overlapping identities of gender and race and therefore the transwoman faces a bigger struggle (Barber, 2017). Transwomen of color will most likely encounter prejudices in the form of homophobia, racism or sexism in many dimensions of their life. The perspective of intersectionality is not only applicable to women but it can also be applied to males. For example, a gay Latino man could be discriminated based on race because he is an immigrant into
Intersectionality was one of the greatest concepts this course shed light on, intersectionality is can be broadly defined as the coming together of various social groups to work together to fight against forms of oppression. In the conceptual frameworks portion of the book Readings for Diversity and Social Justice, they talk about the importance of privileged identities and disadvantaged identities coming together to work towards solving a particular issue. While before taking this course I was somewhat aware of the various forms of oppression, I never gave much thought to how I could help combat forms of oppression that I did not necessarily experience with my own identity.
Intersectionality also known as intersectional theory originally was a theory which was encoded in feminism. Intersectionality was a term in which feminists developed to explain how they were being socially oppressed because they were woman, in particular this theory addressed issues of the women’s suffrage movement and women wanting to retain the same rights as their male counterparts. As time progressed it became more common to see see it branched out into multidimensional levels of institutions such as- race, class, sexism, culture, religion, and even biological transgender. Intersectionality by definition aims to analyze multiple identities exposing different types of discrimination and disadvantages that occur