A Cultural Rhetorics Methodology : Making Research Matter With Multi Generational Women From The Little Traverse Bay Band

Historian Daryl Joji Maeda called the The Asian American movement “a multiethnic alliance comprising of all ethnicities by drawing on the discourses and ideologies of the Black Power and anti-war movements in the United States as well as decolonization movements around the globe.” By the 1960s, a new generation, less attached to the ethnic differences that plagued Asian immigrant groups, began to grow and work together. The black and white binary race treatment in the US alienated Asian-Americans as an other, causing some to begin their own rally for Asian-American civil rights.

America has come a long way since the Reagan era, because “twenty-five years ago, the greatest strength of the Asian American movement was the ability of activist to organize the unorganized and bring new political players in community politics” (Omatsu). During a current era there are problems with lack of knowledge of what happened to Asian Americans, because those who were not around to see the struggles with racism. “However, by stimulating the discussion over how Asian American define community problems, the neoconservatives bring a vibrancy to community issues by contributing a different viewpoint” (Omatsu). Young political activists voices are the solution to end the struggle against racism for as long as there is activism that thrives our voices will be heard in

The intersection of dominant ideologies of race, class, and gender are important in shaping my social location and experiences. By exercising my sociological imagination (Mills, 1959), I will argue how my social location as an Asian American woman with a working class background has worked separately and together to influence how I behave, how others treat and view me, and how I understand the world. The sociological imagination has allowed me to understand my own “biography”, or life experiences by understanding the “history”, or larger social structures in which I grew up in (Mills, 1959). First, I will describe my family’s demographic characteristics in relation to California and the United States to put my analysis into context. I

Although one’s racial and ethnic identities are predetermined due to genetics, attachment to a particular culture is not a birthright; one has to accept and understand the community in order to fully identify with it. When Robert Chang writes “one is not born Asian American, one becomes one”, he means just that. In Chang’s opinion, having Asian blood and living on American soil is not sufficient to call oneself Asian American, but the connection to the community allows one claim to the title.

Amy Tan’s ,“Mother Tongue” and Maxine Kingston’s essay, “No Name Woman” represent a balance in cultures when obtaining an identity in American culture.  As first generation Chinese-Americans both Tan and Kingston faced many obstacles. Obstacles in language and appearance while balancing two cultures. Overcoming these obstacles that were faced and preserving heritage both women gained an identity as a successful American.

To be young and Asian in America is a special brand of torture. There is an unspoken dictum of silence that grips Asian youth, a denial of our place in popular culture. Asian youth walk in America not quite sure where we fit in-black children have a particular brotherhood, Hispanic children have a particular brotherhood, white children own everything else. We cannot lay claim to jazz or salsa or swing; we cannot say our ancestors fought for equality against an oppressive government or roamed the great hallways of power across the globe. We do not have a music, a common hero, a lexicon of slang. Asian youth experience personal diasporas every day.

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)

Along with strong ethos appeals, Tan also effectively makes use of logos. Tan has mentions her mom “reads the Forbes report, listens to Wall Street Week, converses daily with her stockbroker, reads all of Shirley MacLaine 's books with ease-all kinds of things I can 't begin to understand” (Zapico, 30). It is reasonable to think someone who reads the Forbes report is intelligent or at least knowledgeable. However, the truth is this reader of the Forbes report is a “broken English” speaker. She continues “Yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese” (Zapico, 30). This use of statistics gives her audiences an inside look into her world and provides evidence that she really knows what she is trying to convince. The mother in the essay represents for the Asian American community as first-generation. Tan evokes an image in the American readers’ mind that first-generation Asian Americans are much more intelligent than what they can convey through words. For this reason, they deserve to be treated the same as others. Although Tan doesn’t focus on using much logos in this essay, all her arguments are logical, and perhaps the audience are able to be

The United States is the "land of the free, and the home of the brave" according to the song, but there is a dichotomy that exists between those who have called the United States their home for a long period of time, and those who are immigrating to the US. Asian Americans are a group that very few think of as having difficulties because the stereotype is of a group that is intelligent and is actually doing better than the average American. While this may seem to be true, better grades in a school setting does not mean that people who come from other countries are not experiencing racism (both overt and subtle), stereotyping and alienation in this country. Although there has been some difficulty, many groups are experiencing newfound hope because of the actions that they are taking. The plight, and the hope of the Asian cultures are being documented by artists of different stripes who are eager to depict what has happened to Asians as they try to build their own America, and assimilate into the one that was built before they came. In this paper, the Asian American cultures will be examined through the art that has been produced over the many years that Asian people have striven to make their way as new Americans.

Sitting in a circle, most of those who were staring at me also looked like me – black hair, squinted eyes, and yellow skin. Not twenty minutes ago, I paced around the heart of a predominantly white college campus. Now, I was introducing myself to the members of Asian Students United (ASU). While I was never a part of ASU, I asked one of the organization’s executive board (eboard) members – Tien, who happened to a Facebook friend – if I could attend a couple of their meetings to conduct research on Asian American identity. He delightfully agreed. After all, from an outsider perspective, I would fit right in. At these meetings, I participated in many of their activities, which included making a quilt and participating in discussions. Yet, I was always observant and somewhat detached because this was all new to me, making me an observer-participant. This allowed me to observe a range of details; however, because I was so new, such details may have been unimportant to those whom I studied. On the other hand, my Vietnamese church was all too familiar. As a full participant in the church and a former participant in Youth for Christ (YFC), I was pressed to critically observe and dissect these interactions. While I still asked the group leader for a chance to observe YFC meetings, data from this second site may be more biased toward the way I have known people in this institution from prior years. As a tradeoff, though, being a participant-observer may have allowed me to note more

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.

     The focus of our group project is on Chinese Americans. We studied various aspects of their lives and the preservation of their culture in America. The Chinese American population is continually growing. In fact, in 1990, they were the largest group of Asians in the United States (Min 58). But living in America and adjusting to a new way of life is not easy. Many Chinese Americans have faced and continue to face much conflict between their Chinese and American identities. But many times, as they adapt to this new life, they are also able to preserve their Chinese culture and identity through various ways. We studied these things through the viewing of a movie called Joy Luck Club,

Displacing and Disrupting: A Dialogue on Hmong Studies and Asian American Studies [on line]. In: Hmong Studies Journal. Volume 16(2), 2015, 24 pp. Available at: (Accessed November 25, 2016).

The formation of grassroots organizations in the mid twentieth century proved to be an essential driving force of the Asian American movement, mainly due to their ambitions and ability to attack racial problems in communities. At the height of the 1960’s civil rights movement, the Asian American Political Alliance, and the I Wor Kuen were notable grassroot organizations. The AAPA, for short, was birthed on the campus of UC Berkeley in California, while the I Wor Kuen was formed in New York City’s Chinatown. Their core goal is notably identical; their desire to create a utopian society separate from “white America”. Ultimately, the organizations of the AAPA and the I Wor Kuen coincide in their ambitions to create their own absolute society, but differ in their strategies to demobilize the forces standing in their way. The discrepancies occurring in both organizations between their planned actions and final accomplishments reveal the common nature of these two grassroots organizations.

In this essay I am going to examine examples of multiculturalism and polyculturalism from the novel “I Hotel” by Karen Tei Yamashita. For the examples I choose I am going to explain why and how these are examples of multiculturalism or polyculturalism. Also, I am goint to explain how the novel presents a new form of identification and how the examples of polyculturalism are related to such a new form of identification. I Hotel: A Novel, consists of ten novellas. Each novella introduces interesting stories of various social and ethnic movements, comprised of diverse participants, such as Asian Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, Latino Americans, Russian immigrants, college students, factory workers, intellectuals, etc., which orbit around a shelter in San Francisco for new immigrants and low income working class people of color, called the I Hotel. Based on then years of research and over 100 interviews with real people who were involved in the multi ethnic political movements, Yamashita seeks to illustrate people’s struggles to create strong political grounds for “hyphenated Americans,” as well as their frustrations toward the bureaucratization of ethnic identification as a tool for dividing people. In particular, Yamashita represents this period of civil rights movements as linked to the critiques of capitalism and solidarity along class lines, instead of focusing only on the cultural heritage of race and ethnicity. Now let start defining what is