The Fifth Chinese Daughter by Jade Snow Wong is an autobiography about her being the fifth daughter of a Chinese family. The novel is written in the third person as she tells the readers her story of being born and raised in Chinatown, San Francisco. Throughout her story we watch her grow as she portrays her life growing up as kid and becoming an adult. Education plays the largest role in Wong’s journey to adulthood in both a formal and informal manner. She helps the readers understand the morals of Asian families, and the conflicts that the normal Chinese community and person may face when dealing with foreign issues. What I liked the most about her book was that even though it is her autobiography she chose to write it in third person in …show more content…
Specifically, in Chapter thirteen, I knew from the chapter heading she would start to rebel against her parents especially her father’s wishes. “A Person As Well As A Female” is the chapter heading and we see Wong affirm her independence with the closer she gets to her high school graduation. When she asks her father about continuing her education past high school he says, “You are quite familiar by now with the fact that is the sons who perpetuate our ancestral heritage by permanently bearing the Wong family name and transmitting it through their blood line, and therefore the sons must have priority over the daughters when parental provision for advantages must be limited by economic necessity” (Wong 108-109). She later told her parents that she would be going to a junior college and then go on to transfer to a university. After a stimulating sociology class, she changed her major to social studies. Wong spent her last two years of college at Mills College in Oakland, attending on a full-tuition …show more content…
World War II began, and she found employment in a shipyard, she started off as a clerk and eventually worked her way toward special research projects. Wong worked on a project called “Absenteeism—Its Causes and Cures” which initially went ignored until she placed a revised essay of her project into the newspaper. She won the contest and earned national recognition for herself as well as for her family name. This was the first time Wong had seen any sign of excitement and respect from her father. In the last chapter, she realizes that in her father’s own way he also rebelled against Chinese customs. He left China and moved to America where he soon after became a Christian, where he then made sure his daughters had more than at least a middle school education. He made sure his family was not only educated in Chinese but in American customs as well. Despite many differences he had with Wong he did not try to stop her on her path but instead find her own way. In a since, she was much more like her father than she thought she
"The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" by Jamie Ford is a captivating coming-of-age story that follows the life of Henry Lee, a Chinese-American boy growing up in Seattle during World War II. Throughout the novel, Henry experiences profound personal growth and self-discovery as he navigates the complexities of racial tensions, family expectations, and first love. This essay will explore how four quotes from the book exemplify the transformative journey of Henry's coming of age. Paragraph 1: In the early stages of the novel, a young Henry grapples with his dual identity as an American-born Chinese.
Qian Julie Wang’s memoir, “Beautiful Country” portrays her experiences immigrating from China to the United States at a young age. She discusses her challenges in adapting to a new culture and school system, changes in her family’s financial situation, and the constant fear of deportation as an undocumented immigrant. Through her personal story, the author sheds light on the struggles faced by immigrants in the United States, particularly those who are undocumented, and the emotional toll these experiences can have on individuals and families. In her memoir, Wang describes several biographical disruptions she experienced as an immigrant to the United States. These include the sudden switch in the family’s economic status, Julie’s transition
They were not wanted in “white stores”, “white schools”, or even “white towns”, and they were tormented daily because, simply, they were not like the vast majority of people that lived in that area. Most of the Chinese who lived in Chinatown were destined to wash laundry, plant gardens, and chop wood because it was nearly impossible for them to get an education higher than the eighth grade. Stacey Lee, a Chinese-American author, brings all of these cultural issues to life in her novel Outrun the Moon. Her main character, Mercy Wong, faces bigotry every day. Despite this, she is unwavering in her quest to break through the barriers that have been placed in order to get a higher level of education and “become useful”.
As a side note, it is important to realize that college to the Chinese community is essential; in order to create honor within your family, you must pass a series of intensive testing and attend university. Unfortunately, for Joy Zhou, the odds were stacked against her, and she was unable to meet the passing requirement. She immediately breaks into a series of ethos driven statements saying, “I failed my parents and myself. After that, I lost all confidence in myself.” In such a dark and devastated mindset, pulling together all the strength left in her heart, Zhou embarks on a journey to America with her mind set on opportunity.
Many of her experiences during the Cultural Revolution changed how she thought, and it helped her to realize who she was. Her intelligence, conflict between pursuing politics and staying loyal to her family, and her devotion to her family have made Ji-Li into the experienced and successful person that she is today. Her experience and success is shown through her novel’s success and her care for her family when she moved to the United States. The Cultural Revolution changed Ji-Li in many different ways, and those changes improved her morale, there are many times that are very formative throughout our daily
Asian American Cathy Song drew closer to her Korean-Chinese ancestry, and was able to describe in a clear image of the two women she represent, one being the industrial American women and the other one being the Chinese caretaker. Cathy Song was born and raised in Hawaii making her an American by birth right. This fact did not keep her from engulfing her Korean-Chinese heritage. In the poem “Lost Sister”, Song isolates a young girl who struggles to find who she truly is in China, because of all the restrictions. The young girl wants to go to America to seek a needed fulfilment.
Through analyzing the stories about their lives’ hardships and experiences, it is revealed that Suyuan’s American Dream is achieved by Jing-mei by going back to her own country, retrieving her two sisters, and makes the family whole again. The story of Suyuan and Jing-mei chasing their American Dream teaches us a lesson: Never gives up your dreams casually. One day, you will be thankful for your persistence, when the dream comes
Jin is faced with being one of the very few Asians at his Junior High School, while everyone else is American. Of course Jin is going to feel out of sorts, especially when his teacher introduces him to the class as “Jin Jang”, and saying “He and his family moved to our neighborhood all the way from China”, when Jin’s real name is Jin Wang and his family moved from San Francisco (30). Gene Luen Yang uses this humility to display that it takes a considerable amount of open
This peculiarly specific list showed that as a first-generation American, she was constantly scrutinizing the small actions that her mother demonstrated, and she was embarrassed, although it is not likely anyone else ever noticed. However, as she got older, Jing-Mei realized the fact that she was “becoming Chinese.” She still did not truly understand her mother or the beauty of Chinese culture, but her acceptance was the first step of the long excursion of
Throughout the entire novel, the mothers and daughters face inner struggles, family conflict, and societal collision. The divergence of cultures produces tension and miscommunication, which effectively causes the collision of American morals, beliefs, and priorities with Chinese culture which
The Woman Warrior is a “memoir of a girlhood among ghosts” in which Maxine Hong Kingston recounts her experiences as a second generation immigrant. She tells the story of her childhood by intertwining Chinese talk-story and personal experience, filling in the gaps in her memory with assumptions. The Woman Warrior dismantles the archetype of the typical mother-daughter relationship by suggesting that diaspora redefines archetypes by combining conflicting societal norms. A mother’s typical role in a mother-daughter relationship is one of guidance and leadership. Parents are responsible for teaching a child right from wrong and good from evil.
Amy Tan is a Chinese-American author who was born on February 19, 1952, in Oakland, California. In Tan’s early life she had many struggles because her parents desired for her “to hold onto Chinese traditions and her own longings to become more Americanized” (Encyclopedia). While she wanted to become a writer when she was still young, her parents wanted her to become a neurosurgeon. When she got older and went to college she majored in English then started her career in the 1970’s. She was a technical writer and then started writing fiction stories.
Mother Knows Best Often times in literature, character relationships change and evolve. “Two Kinds” written by Amy Tan, is a story about a daughter’s uncertain feelings toward her mother. Overtime, the mother-daughter relationship gets ruined when the daughter does not believe in her potential to be a child prodigy as strongly as her mother does. After an attentive analysis of the story, the reader is aware of how Jing-mei’s feelings toward her mother changes, why they did so, and how those changes affected the entire story.
Jing Mei, while portrayed as an obedient child, is only willing to listen to her mother to a certain extent. Throughout the story, it is consistently hinted that Jing Mei would eventually explode against her mother as an attempt to free herself from her mother’s chains. In addition, after the fiasco at the piano recital, she eventually derives further from her mother’s wishes as she “didn 't get straight A...didn 't become class president...didn 't get into Stanford...dropped out of college.” (54). On the flip side, Jing Mei’s mother is a stereotypical Chinese parent who is fully determined to ensure her daughter’s success in a new environment.
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston addresses prevalent topics faced in America today. How should women act? Should women be treated differently from men? In her memoir, Kingston faces many obstacles with her Chinese-American identity such as finding her voice as a young woman. In “White Tigers,” Kingston tells her own version of a popular Chinese ballad, “Fa Mu Lan,” while incorporating her own reality back into the section.