Gran Torino Sociology

Being a Hmong-American in the United States was hard. Growing up in a community that was full of Americans, and being in a private school in my early years, (consisting mostly of Americans and little diversity) was difficult. In that kind of environment, I never saw each person differently. The characteristics that I saw were our skin color, and another distinction that I saw was our religious and cultural backgrounds. I started to lose touch of my own culture and identity as a Hmong-American girl. My family told me that in the stages of my toddler years, I used to be good at speaking my native tongue until I started school.

     The Hmong had trouble adapting to American life. With no driver’s license or bank account, they had to make a living doing whatever they could. Not knowing the language in a foreign land doesn’t help either. The Hmong women adapted much more quickly than the men did because of the fact that they interacted more with English-speaking people. While the men were at work, the women were spending time interacting. The Hmong men also refused to change more that the women did. This shift of power caused a lot of changes in Hmong households. What even caused more of a power shift was the fact that the Hmong children learned about the culture easier than the women did. Instead of the father having control over the family like it was back in Southeast Asia, the children now had the upper edge. The children could communicate, interact and even drive with Americans. You could see a 16-year-old Hmong

The aim of this paper is to study the interpersonal communication taking place in a cultured shocked neighborhood. The findings of these studies are applied to the film Grand Torino. In addition, this study will discuss the communication styles applied by the characters of the movie. I believe they are essential to understanding the reasons why in general individuals are racists, stereotypical and unable to adapt to different cultures as well as living with those who are different to us. We will first examine how Walt’s character adapts to the cultural

Firstly, increasing one’s cultural competence is instrumental to becoming a more empathic and understanding person and teacher. Cultural competence involves understanding another person’s culture without judgement and realizing that even if their ideas or beliefs are different, that does not mean they are wrong. If one learns about their students’ cultures and backgrounds, they will be able to speak and interact with these students in an appropriate way. If the students are refugees and come from a traumatic past, teachers should approach any personal questions they have sensitively. Sometimes people have prejudices or believe stereotypes and they may not even realize it. The Hmong people were widely dispersed and no two Hmong people will be the same. It is crucial that teachers do not assume that each person has the same values and

Along with the stubbornness of the Hmong is my last point that the Hmong and Americans have cultural misunderstandings. Fadiman came “to believe that her [Lia’s] life was ruined not by septic shock or noncompliant parents but by cross-cultural misunderstanding” (Fadiman 1997:262). Hmong once believed some crazy things about Americans. “It was said that Hmong women were forced into slavery, forced to have sex with American men … and with animals; that dinosaurs lived in America, along with ghosts, ogres, and

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, her American Dreams, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman

This source provided by Coffee House Press has included an interview with Annie Choi and Kao Kalia Yang. Choi has asked about Yang memoir of her well-known book, The Latehomecomer, has started. During the secret war, her Hmong family went through difficult times. Coming to America, Yang had to learn English and it became a challenge. However, she was able to learn it and grew a passion to write more on papers. When writing her book, she ties in how love and Hmong family relationships are like others making it a universal theme. She hopes that the readers would get an understanding of the Hmong culture and state that it will strengthen America as unique. This is important because we get an insight of Kao Kalia Yang inspiration when writing a book of the Hmong culture and tying it together of being an American.

The Hmong people do not call any one country home, but have relocated several times throughout history due to war and political oppression. An article published in the Journal of Multicultural counseling and Development finds that the Hmong primarily lived in Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. They had a great impact in helping western forces during the Vietnam War, and wars in Laos in efforts to end Communism. The article continues and describes how many tried to escape from Laos; those that survived settled in refugee camps that had terrible living conditions. (Tatman, 2004). Although the Hmong are diffused around the world, their distinct cultural traditions and customs create a strong cultural identity. After discussing of the traditions and social customs of the Hmong culture learned through two different interviews, the cultural traditions and social customs will be compared and contrasted with European-American culture, and will be concluded with the impact that Hmong culture has on today’s society.

What is it like to be born in one country and then grow up in another where people speak a different language and follow different traditions? And is it easy to grow up in another country where members of the native country pressure one to be "one of their own"? If anyone wishes to find insightful and interesting answers to these questions, one should go no further than read Lac Su's I Love Yours Are for White People. In this book, Lac tells the story of his child- and adolescent-hood, growing up in "urban" Los Angeles as a Vietnamese living with a "traditional" Vietnamese family. As Lac demonstrates in the book, he once was between two worlds, sometimes unable to figure out who he was, and sometimes rejecting one or the other altogether. After going through difficult and painful experiences, Lac learns to embrace his ethnic identity. He realizes that he is a Vietnamese-American who belongs to both cultures. He learns to appreciate his Vietnamese background but also acknowledges that he is partly American because some Vietnamese habits are so uncommon for him.

Social scientists believe that there are anywhere between six and seven million Hmong around the world. The Hmong never had a country that they could call their “home” country and to this day this is still the case. Until relatively modern times, the majority of the Hmong people resided in the mountains of Southern China, Laos, Thailand, and northern Vietnam. As an ethnic group, the Hmong are fascinating in this sense. Today there is a large Hmong population in the United States. However, unlike a majority of the other Asian American communities present in America, the Hmong reached American soil through much difficulty and hardships. As observed in the experiences of many other immigrant groups, becoming a part of American society is not an easy task. In order to understand the circumstances of Hmong Americans today, one must comprehend the different political, economic, and social pressures that may have aided or hindered these people’s integration into American society. The first part of my paper will consist of a brief background of the Hmong. Grasping the background will allow for a thorough analysis of the reasons for Hmong immigration and the issues that they may have faced attempting to establish their own individual identity in the United States.

"I have nothing with which to start a family. I am all alone in this life and land." The common thoughts of Hmong refugees as they began to settle in refugee camps and America are that of deep alienation and uncertainty. When the Hmong first entered the U.S., they were strategically dispersed across the country to promote faster assimilation. However, the stark contrast between the Hmong and America's cultures has made this move backfire. The integration of the Hmong has been especially difficult when compared with other immigrants, leading some Americans to believe that it is the fault of the Hmong. In reality, the problem was that their culture was unlike any of the other immigrants that the America has been exposed to. In order to examine any transition that the Hmong have undergone in America, we first must define, what it means to be Hmong and what it means to be American. Several texts have attempted to answer these questions and I will use them to correct the prevailing misconceptions of the Hmong. It is common belief that Hmong's culture is one of primitivity, dependency, and close-mindedness; I will show that these beliefs are not only false but also propagated by cultural oppression and ineffective resettlement policies.

Even though I am a Hmong person, I still need to do more research about the Hmong Population in Minnesota. At the University of Minnesota, Morris, I took a class called Southeast Asian’s history, which the professor went over a brief history of Hmong people. In this class we had to do a presentation and write a paper at the end, so I chose to do my research on Hmong people. By doing this research I learned about their history and why they came to the United States. In addition, I learned about other Southeast Asian’s history from the dominant groups to the minority groups. At ILCM, I was not working with Hmong clients only, I helped other immigrants coming from Africa to Asia. “Minnesota is home to more than 400,000 immigrants and refugee”

Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino (2008) is a portrayal of human sacrifice and the racial intolerance that still exists in modern America. The film is set in a poor neighbourhood of Detroit. Clint Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a war veteran who has brooded over his experiences in the war for decades. Past trauma has caused him to believe that he cannot trust anyone, and he has therefore developed a deep racism. Eastwood uses many different techniques, including lighting, camera angles, and dialogue to show how the man Walt Kowalski develops throughout the film. Kowalski begins as an angry,

‘Gran Torino’ is a film directed by Clint Eastwood who also plays the main character, Walt Kowalski. The film is set in Detroit, Michigan where a car manufacturing factory has just closed, therefore, former workers moving away and immigrants such as the Hmong people moving in. Walt is a veteran of the Korean war where he won the silver star medal in 1952. The penultimate scene is the climax of the film where Walt confronts the Hmong gang, this holds a lot of significance. The gang has been hassling Thao who Walt has taken under his wing.

The film Gran Torino allows Clint Eastwood directs and plays a role that depicts an older man dealing with lost love, life and death, hauntings from the past, and managing his own racial biases. All of these obstacles come to a harsh reality with the changes taken place in his mid-western home town. Eastwood plays the widower, Walt Kowalski, who is highly racist and prejudice. His character was a former Korean War veteran and Ford factory worker that believes all things should be kept American, especially his neighborhood. With his cynical mind set on the world, each day slowly becomes darker and darker for him as more and more Hmongs and other mixed races