The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker Summary Essay

After reading Chapter 8, “Asian American” I learned about the struggles that Asian American had during their arrived to the United States and the discrimination that Asian Americans have face throughout the past years from the white dominant group. In addition, I learned that the dominant group has used legislation to slow down the progress of Asian Americans, simply by not allowing them to marry white women with the purposes of slowing down the process of assimilation and to also slow down the process of acquiring a higher status in society, since married would give early Asian immigrants citizenship and citizenship leads to legal rights. I also read that despite the needed labor for the country to progress in the mid-nineteenth century white

Jin Wang was born in America but is also Chinese. He faces some difficulties with racism and stereotypes as he grows up. He just moved to a new school from San Francisco. The teacher introduces him to the class and says,” Class, I'd like us all to give a warm Mayflower Elementary welcome to your new friend and Classmate Jin Wang...He and his family recently moved to our neighborhood all the way from China!”(30). Jin has this look on his face of annoyance. Like, did she actually say this. She is too ignorant to ask so she just assumed that since he is Chinese, that he must be from China. He was born in America. This just shows how ignorant people are about other cultures. It makes it even harder to fit in if people don't even care where you're from and just make assumptions. Jin now experiences this first hand. He tries so hard to fit in and be normal. He goes as far as changing his hair to match the guys hair that Amelia likes. When he isn't noticed as much he wants to become someone else, someone who will fit in. He wakes up in the morning a new person, as he has transformed into someone he is not, he thinks to himself,”A new face deserved a new name. I decided to call myself...Danny”(198). He changed his race he didn't like his heritage and cultures so much

Through the personal stories of his hair, love life, and behavior, Liu is able to show the effects of his assimilation. The second section deals with Liu’s struggles to conform to white stereotypes as an Asian American. With his personal anecdotes, he establishes himself as a more credible source to speak on the subject of assimilation. The second section uses narration to provide evidence about Liu’s definition of assimilation.

Stories and stereotypes make many people want to change themselves negatively and assimilate just to fit in with society. As time passes, society’s stereotypes for how people of each race should be, which race is more dominant than others, and which race you should be, all play a role in impacting someone’s self-esteem and their insecurities. This is portrayed through Jin Wang, a main character in Gene Luen Yang’s “American Born Chinese” when Jin Wang thinks his crush, Amelia, he instantly becomes happy. But then he thinks about Greg and Amelia together and gets mad. He finally zooms into Greg’s blond hair. The next day he goes to school with the same hairstyle. The hair symbolizes Greg’s all American identity because the stereotypical American is portrayed with blond hair and blue eyes. To Jin Wang, this hair symbolizes what he wants to be, so he changed his hair to an “American” hairstyle to get Amelia to like him. Due to stereotypes about how Americans are suppose to look like, Jin Wang feels insecure about himself and wants to change his identity and himself as well to assimilate into American culture and stereotypes. These stereotypes and the Anti-Asian stereotypes impact Jin Wang greatly and make him hate himself as well as his background and where he came from because he believes that in order to be AMerica, you have to be white. Another way that this is portrayed is from a personal experience I had as a kid. Growing up as an Asian kid in America, I didn’t really know

Many new arrivals still struggle to survive and often Chinese Americans still encounter suspicion and hostility. Chinese Americans have achieved great success and now, like so many others, they are stitching together a new American identity. As Michelle Ling, a young Chinese American, tells Bill Moyers in Program 3, “I get to compose my life one piece at a time, however I feel like it. Not to say that it’s not difficult and that there isn’t challenge all the time, but more than material wealth, you get to choose what you are, who you are.” (www.pbs.org)

In his essay “Paper Tigers,” Wesley Yang discusses his own experiences as an Asian American, tying them into the larger picture of Asians functioning in American society today. Yang’s argument is that even though Asian Americans are one of the most successful ethnicities in the country, stereotypes that Asian Americans are exposed to affect the way other Americans view them. Because of personal bias and racism, human society fails to see other people for who they are and put too much emphasis on what they are supposed to or not supposed to be in America today. Stereotypes cloud people’s vision and judgment and keep some from achieving their goals because others have a pre-created

The air would always be humid and stuffy while riding the bus to school, and the slightest bump in the road would result in tossing up the kids like salad. The backseat would provide carriage for all the popular and tough kids shouting out at pedestrians on the street or flipping off a middle finger to the bus driver that would shout for them to calm down. I despised those kids in the back. They were the same people that made my life a living hell, while growing up and attending an American school.

The tale “American Born Chinese” by Gene Luch Wang depicts the story of three characters, Monkey, Jin, and Danny. They all have the problem of fitting into their new environments. Jin Wang has to deal with Asian stereotypes. Danny has to deal with embarrassment of his cousin. Lastly, Monkey has to deal with the fact that there is no position for him in the heavenly ranks. However, over time, these characters have to come together to fit in. Yet the question remains: what exactly about fitting in is the problem? Although Jin Wang takes the form of Danny to reject his Chinese roots, the embarrassment of Chin-Knee shows he cannot hide behind a false American identity, thereby delineating that race is the source of his problem.

THESIS - When evaluating Arnold “Junior” Spirit from Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Jin Wang from Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese, similarities radiate in both characters as their disparity in race deem the two of them as outcasts in the entirety of society. In addition to their lack of social interactions, their uniformity in their impulsive decisions cost them each a dear friend. Although Junior and Jin are quite similar, they share differences in the way Junior tries bettering himself by fitting into both his Indian and Reardan culture whereas Jin changes himself in every possible way to become Americanized.

Although Asian Americans comprise only about 5% of the U.S. population, this group is the fastest growing segment of American society. Despite such rapid expansion, Asian Americans are widely underrepresented throughout media, whether in television, cinema, or literature. Moreover, there are different stereotypes associated with Asian Americans. One of the most pervasive stereotypes details how Asian Americans are a “model minority”. In essence, this myth describes how anyone who is Asian American will become a successful individual able to achieve the “American dream”.

Another question arises: what is a “narrative of ethnicity” in diasporic context? Choy explains how immigrants are to preserve their ethinic identity, yet they adapt to their social context. The children feel the same resentment and distaste for Chinese. Jook-Liang forces herself to speak English at home in her efforts to be more like Shirley Temple. She speaks to herself in English while practicing her dance routine (Choy, 36) and uses it as a tool to feel less Chinese. The children have jarring associations to learning and speaking

Frank Chin has been the most vocal critic of Kingston's who accused her "of reinforcing white fantasies about Chinese Americans" (Chin, 1991) and claimed that writers like Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan and David Henry Hwang who won approval of the American white readers deliberately distorted the image of Chinese American to reinforce stereotypes and cater to the fantasies of American readers about a traditionalist Chinese culture. (Frank Chin, 1991, pp. 3-29)

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

As the immigrant population currently projected to overtake latinxs and hispanics as largest group of residents in the United States of America, Asian Americans have shown their will to survive in a way that many groups have not, and that is by banding together in order to achieve the life they deserve. Taking the overgeneralization of pan-ethnicity and using it as a device for increased numbers and support for the causes of a group of people who otherwise may not have much to do with each other, is a testament to how vulnerable they must have felt as well as how successful they have managed to be many aspects of progress. What I have gained from this course is the understanding that at the root of ethnic studies and the Asian American community is the “for us, by us” sentiment that contributed to the blurred lines between the different part of their communities as social, political and cultural, structures, collectives and groups which came out of an obligation and necessity to protect those immigrants and their future generations from a country which has always pushed European superiority in all aspects of society.

His father invested in Liu’s education so that “he would be an honor to his family” and learn to become a better man. Throughout Liu Dapeng’s life, though, he struggled with the tension of “education as a means to social mobility” versus “education as a for of moral indoctrination” (25). He believed that his education would bring him honor to access government office, but his primary goal was live out the Confucian morals he studied. Liu believed that “nothing was more important than moral principles and filial piety was the most important moral principle of all” (52). He placed his relationships with his parents above all else and aimed to serve them, just as a government official should behave toward the emperor. This commitment to practical studies caused him to fail the examinations multiple times and to be teased by his peers, but it eventually served him well. In 1905 when the Qing government abolished the examination system, Liu’s “hopes for an official career [were] completely vanished” (86). Even though Liu eventually loses his job as a tutor, he is offered other opportunities “as a result of his reputation” (188). Since Liu was a respected man with “Moral integrity (119), he was asked to sort out the finances of the Shimen mine. He continued involvement in business through 1920s, which suggests “that the Confucian self-presentation of businessmen continued well after such