Analysis Of The Oriental Contingent

In The China Coin Leah was strongly rejected her Chinese identity at the beginning when she said “couldn’t the women see? She was not Chinese, not even an ABC-Australian born Chinese” to herself. The use of rhetorical questions demonstrates how Leah disagrees with her identity. Her acceptance of her Chinese background was growing during the exploration in China. After Leah found her mother’s long lost family, she started to accept her Chinese identity,“I am definitely not a Chinese, but I am not not a Chinese”, the high modality of “definitely not”shows her confusion of her self identity, it also illustrates Leah was beginning to accept her Chinese identity as her discovering in China.

Jay’s struggles begin after his cousin in the Philippines, Jun, dies under suspicious circumstances. Jay wants to discover what truly happened to his cousin, but he cannot do that in America, so he travels to the Philippines to get answers. While in the Philippines, Jay is reminded of his shortcomings as an Asian American when his uncle, Tito Maning, points out Jay’s inability to speak Tagalog. Tito Maning tells Jay that if he does not “know [his] mother tongue, [he] cannot know [his] mother. And if [he does] not know [his] mother, [he does] not understand who [he is]” (Ribay 96).

This story that Suyuan Woo tells her daughter shows how deeply the Japanese invasion of China affected the identity of many Chinese people. They were forced to flee their homes and their lives with only a few of their valuables, but eventually they had to give up those up too. Those few items were all that they had left to define themselves and remind them who they were so when they lost them they lost a significant part of who they were. Suyuan Woo lost more than just her past identity, she actually had to leave her twin babies on the side of the road in the hopes that someone could save them. This shaped her identity because throughout the remainder of her life she had to wonder if leaving them behind was the right choice and if they were

“Lorraine wanted to be liked by the people around her. She couldn’t live the way Tee did, with her head stuck in a book all the time. Tee didn’t seem to need anyone. Lorraine often wondered if she even needed her. But if you kept to yourself all the time, people started to wonder, and then they talker.

Living as a Chinese-American, the narrator had to take on American attributes in order to be accepted -- for example, while normal Chinese women spoke with strong and assertive voices, the narrator adopted a whisper in order to appear “American-feminine. ”(1) As a result, however, her shy demeanor caused her to be an unpopular outcast. She saw herself in another Chinese-American girl at her school, as they had certain, negative similarities. “I hated the younger sister, the quiet one.

Because Henry’s father was a first generation immigrant to the United States from China, he had an extreme sense of national pride. On the other hand, Henry is extremely open to all things American which is a catalyst to the formation of a divide between Henry and his father. This difference between them all starts because in an effort to protect his son from discrimination; Mr. Lee sends Henry to an all white school and refuses to let him speak Cantonese at home, even though Cantonese is the only language Mr. and Mrs. Lee can speak. The separation causes Henry to grow up almost without any parental help. Mr. Lee also despises Henry’s friend, Keiko, who is a Japanese-American girl also going to school with Henry.

The production of Smart People uses specific acting choices to convey certain messages to the audience and only enhance the overall meaning of the play. In Smart People, Ginny, a Chinese-Japanese-American individual, uses prominent choices when conveying messages about racism in the Asian-American culture. Her use of different vocal mannerisms helps to create her character and her ensemble powerfully heightens the character of who she is trying to deliver. The manner at which Ginny carries herself and her use of vocal inflections only support the theme of identity in racism.

In Amy Tan’s short story, Two Kinds, there are not just two kinds of conflict but many.. These include; American versus Chinese cultural differences, a parent’s wishes versus a child’s wants, and the pursuit of material success versus personal contentment. However, the most obvious is the conflict between Jing-mei and her unnamed mother’s personalities. Jing-mei is a young Chinese-American grade school girl with a modern independence. Her mother on the other hand, is a old-world Chinese immigrant who left everything behind in order to make a better life for herself and her only child.

This paragraph from Kesaya Noda’s autobiographical essay “Growing Up Asian in America” represents the conflict that the author feels between her Japanese ethnicity, and her American nationality. The tension she describes in the opening pages of her essay is between what she looks like and is judged to be (a Japanese woman who faces racial stereotypes) versus what she feels like and understands (life as a United States citizen). This passage signals her connection to Japan; and highlights her American upbringing. At this point in the essay, Noda is unable to envision her identity as unified and she describes her identity as split by race.

Her greatest fear in this struggles was the ability to lose control over the influences school versus home played in writing. She would always go back and second guess herself in making sure that her views were not conflicting with the other so much that it stood out, which would confuse her. She grew up learning that these conflicts of interest in political views should not happen. Min-Zhan Lu says “Despite my parents ' and teachers ' attempts to keep home and school discrete, the internal conflict between the two discourses continued whenever I read or wrote. Although I tried to suppress the voice of one discourse in the name of the other, having to speak aloud in the voice I had just silenced each time I crossed the boundary kept both voices active in my mind.

Anne Fadiman, author of the book, ‘The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” reveals the negative effects of no cross-cultural communication in the medical profession. Lia Lee and her family had no previous experiences in an American hospital, America no less. This proved to be difficult, leading both sides (Hmong family and doctors) to misinterpret what both are doing and saying. This book summary summarized the book, the qualifications of the sources used, and critiques the book as a whole.

For instance, her famous novel ‘The Joy Luck Club’ depicts the Chinese mother and her American daughter relationship where they go through various circumstances trying to understand each other including the evolvement that comes in their relationships as the daughters know more about their mother’s life stories. Secondly, Tan considers the theme of identity in terms of Chinese immigrants and their life experiences as an immigrant in the United States. She reveals how the children born to the immigrants strive in an environment which is a mixture of American and Chinese influence. Moreover, Tan is found to have explored identity issues through her fictive creations and tackled the issue of authorial identity (Becnel, 2010). Similarly, romantic love is another subject included in the literary artworks of Amy Tan which considers the relationships and romance an important aspect of human’s life.

In Asian customs it is considered inappropriate to live with a man before being married and getting your hair done at a salon was wasteful when you could do it yourself at home. Lindo didn’t approve with Waverly’s lifestyle and criticized it; since she tried her best teach Waverly about Chinese character. Whenever her mother tried to teach her, she said it was to old fashioned and never took an interest in her culture. Waverly identifies and an American, even though she has a strong Chinese

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

Generation after generation, from the early ancient civilizations to the modern day, twenty-first century world, the society has deprived countless individuals of their inner self, forcing many to lock away their creativity and individuality deep within themselves. In the short story “Two Kinds”, Jing-Mei, a Chinese-American girl, struggles with independence and the development of her identity. As the story advances, Jing-Mei learns how to balance her mother’s wants with her own needs. The story is set in an American-Asian immigrant family, with Jing-Mei’s mother pressuring Jing-Mei with the heavy burdens of her own childhood, which had been spent back in China where she blamed her incompetence in life all on the nonexistence of the “American Dream”.