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The good daughter essay by caroline hwang
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The Good Daughter, written by Caroline Hwang, is a story about her own struggle between two generations: her parents’ and her own. Being a second generation American, she reveals to the readers the problems she’d dealt with in her life through stylistic techniques. In her story, she refers to herself as well as to other children of immigrants as “living paradoxes” as she states, “ Children of immigrants are living paradoxes. We are the first generation and the last.”(18) This comes to show the cultural challenges that most children of immigrants face as they balance their ethnic identities with the cultures they are exposed to.
Hwang started her story with an encounter between her and the dry-cleaning lady. Since she knew that the lady was
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She paired the tone with her mom through the context, “ When I got home, I called my parents to ask why they had never bothered to correct me. ‘Big deal,’ my mother said, sounding more flippant than I knew she intended.” In her mom’s dialogue, she gave off a tone of indifferent which reveals to the reader that her mom doesn’t seem to worry about the fact that Hwang can’t pronounce her own name. The shows that it is because of her parents that Hwang is feeling lost. As the story goes on, Hwang talks about having a ‘normal’ childhood, but ‘normal’ to her is the American childhood; not a Korean one. Through her approach with tone, the readers begin to feel her craving to fit in with one culture perfectly, but is not able to. The tone that her mom uses suggests that her parents did not want her to keep their korean culture. Instead, they want her to assimilate into the American one.
All in all, even though The Good Daughter is based off of Caroline’s experience, it is a story that almost all of the second generations can relate to. Through stylistic techniques, her story allows the children of immigrants to compare her experience to their own lives, and also, gives those who aren’t children of immigrants a peek into the confusing life of
Immigrants come to America, the revered City upon a Hill, with wide eyes and high hopes, eager to have their every dream and wild reverie fulfilled. Rarely, if ever, is this actually the case. A select few do achieve the stereotypical ‘rags to riches’ transformation – thus perpetuating the myth. The Garcia family from Julia Alvarez’s book How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, fall prey to this fairytale. They start off the tale well enough: the girls are treated like royalty, princesses of their Island home, but remained locked in their tower, also known as the walls of their family compound. The family is forced to flee their Dominican Republic paradise – which they affectionately refer to as simply, the Island – trading it instead for the cold, mean streets of American suburbs. After a brief acclimation period, during which the girls realize how much freedom is now available to them, they enthusiastically try to shed their Island roots and become true “American girls.” They throw themselves into the American lifestyle, but there is one slight snag in their plan: they, as a group, are unable to forget their Island heritage and upbringing, despite how hard they try to do so. The story of the Garcia girls is not a fairytale – not of the Disney variety anyway; it is the story of immigrants who do not make the miraculous transition from rags to riches, but from stifling social conventions to unabridged freedom too quickly, leaving them with nothing but confusion and unresolved questions of identity.
Chang Rae-Lee, author of "Mute in an English-Only World," moved to America from Korea when he was only six or seven years old. He adopted the English language quickly, as most children do, but his mother continued to struggle. "For her, the English language…usually meant trouble and a good dose of shame and sometimes real hurt" (Lee 586). It is obvious, though, that his mother was persistent in her attempt to learn English and deal with her limited culture experience, as Lee accounts of her using English flash cards, phrase books and a pocket workbook illustrated with stick-people figures. Lee sympathetically connects with the audience through his mother, and forces them to make a personal conclusion when he ends the article with a lingering question in the reader’s mind; what if they had seen her struggling? Would they have sat back and watched or stepped up to help?
Sandra Cisneros born on December 20, 1954 grew up in Chicago settling with a neighborhood known with Hispanic immigrants. Until then her migrating with her six brothers, from different communities in Chicago, and visiting her grandmother in Mexico, she has never really make ones home in. Being the only girl with no sisters, Cisneros only way that would deprive her from loneliness, is by reading books where she found her talents in writing. Fast forwarding to college Sandra Cisneros worked on her master’s degree at University of Iowa Writers Workshop where found her interest as Mexican-American woman with a self-reliant passion and how being a Hispanic were different in the American culture.
Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker expresses prominent themes of language and racial identity. Chang-Rae Lee focuses on the struggles that Asian Americans have to face and endure in American society. He illustrates and shows readers throughout the novel of what it really means to be native of America; that true nativity of a person does not simply entail the fact that they are from a certain place, but rather, the fluency of a language verifies one’s defense of where they are native. What is meant by possessing nativity of America would be one’s citizenship and legality of the country. Native Speaker suggests that if one looks different or has the slightest indication that one should have an accent, they will be viewed not as a native of America, but instead as an alien, outsider, and the like. Therefore, Asian Americans and other immigrants feel the need to mask their true identity and imitate the native language as an attempt to fit into the mold that makes up what people would define how a native of America is like. Throughout the novel, Henry Park attempts to mask his Korean accent in hopes to blend in as an American native. Chang-Rae Lee suggests that a person who appears to have an accent is automatically marked as someone who is not native to America. Language directly reveals where a person is native of and people can immediately identify one as an alien, immigrant, or simply, one who is not American. Asian Americans as well as other immigrants feel the need to try and hide their cultural identity in order to be deemed as a native of America in the eyes of others. Since one’s language gives away the place where one is native to, immigrants feel the need to attempt to mask their accents in hopes that they sound fluent ...
A mother sees her children off to school at the school bus stop; however, they would never see each other again. The mother’s trip to the immigration check-in has caused a dramatic change in both her’s and her family’s lives. A story such as this, one where a parent is taken away and deported, is far too common in the U.S.A. An unsympathetic system of deportation has torn many families apart and has thrown away all the effort that immigrants have put into coming to America. Throughout the novel Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario, a young boy named Enrique struggles to immigrate to the U.S. and faces many obstacles that infringe on his right to immigrate. The right to immigrate is threatened both in the U.S. and around the world by corrupt dysfunctional
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
Family dynamics present interesting revelations, especially regarding the relationship between parents and children. While most families undoubtedly encounter dysfunction at some point throughout life, immigrant families seemingly experience such stress continually. A handful of short stories, including “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, “Who’s irish” by Gish Jen, and “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers” by Yiyun Li, demonstrate how strained relations erupt in immigrant families. Familial tension noticeably arises because of the immigrant parents’ inability to fully adjust to the American way of life. Further, immigrant parents adhere to strict expectations in an attempt to uphold the family’s conservative heritage. Finally, immigrant parents typically
While the mother felt she was cultured she never fully understood what she was reading and learning, and could only name the classics. This difference between mother and daughter is what created a gap between the two. While the daughter had the knowledge to self-educate herself, her mother would never meet these standards no matter how hard she persevered. There was a generational gap between mother and daughter created by the change in social and cultural norms. For the daughter’s generation it wasn’t unheard of for a woman to continue her education and strive for social advancement through knowledge. For the mother’s generation social mobility was almost impossible even if one worked every day of her life, and children did what they were told to do by their parents. This wedge created a series of rebellious years by the daughter, leading her to ask permission to study in
The Chinese mothers, so concentrated on the cultures of their own, don't want to realize what is going on around them. They don't want to accept the fact that their daughters are growing up in a culture so different from their own. Lindo Jong, says to her daughter, Waverly- "I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents' promise. This means nothing to you because to you, promises mean nothing. A daughter can promise to come to dinner, but if she has a headache, a traffic jam, if she wants to watch a favorite movie on T.V., she no longer has a promise."(Tan 42) Ying Ying St.Clair remarks- "...because I remained quiet for so long, now my daughter does not hear me. She sits by her fancy swimming pool and hears only her Sony Walkman, her cordless phone, her big, important husband asking her why they have charcoal and no lighter fluid."(Tan 64)
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 first Memoir of 1795 was addressed to the heir of her natal family and took the form of a public appeal in her effort to reestablish her family’s moral legitimacy and honorable family tradition. Before we explore her memoir, it is important to note that she felt responsible for her family’s downfall – believing that her marriage into the royal house had led to directly their suffering and decline. Beyond the scholarly merit of her stories, they are important in the view Lady Hyegyong provides of the court life and the strict Confucian beliefs that stress filial piety, loyalty and virtue. To being with, the move from
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.
Bestseller journalist, Sonia Nazario, in her literacy non-fiction, Enrique’s Journey, describes a young man’s journey trying to reconcile with his mother in the United States, but has to go through many obstacles to reach her. Nazario’s purpose is to inform readers about how immigration affects children and their mothers in Central America. She adopts an optimistic/determined tone in order to reveal to her readers the difficulty and bravery the children have to face to get to the United States. Nazario begins her credibility with ethos to retrace an abandon teenager’s journey through Central America, pathos to follow the mother son relationship, and logos by giving facts and statistics for illegal immigrants in the U.S.
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.”
This story is a small image of what generally happens to an a child of an immigrant family. Among many immigrant families, younger family members tend to adapt to the culture faster than members of older generations. Members of the older generation may dislike the influence that American culture has on the younger members. On the other hand, the younger generation may view their elders as too set in their views and beliefs. Because of this, arguments can occur and can create divides among family