When newcomers come to the United States, they are still on a journey of pain and suffering. Even if they can get to the United States they still must go through the trail of owing nothing in a world where everything is against their odds. This is the journey that author Lac Su wrote in his memoir I Love Yous Are For White People which is about when he and his family immigrated to the United States during the aftermath of the Vietnam War and their new life in LA county. His journey is not a unique one as many refugees and immigrants experienced what he and his family experienced in their new lives. In their new lives, many different events occurred that tells the problem all immigrants encounter when adjusting to life in America. Using Lac …show more content…
Professor Vo mentioned the idea that many immigrant families whose descendants grow up in the United States as opposed to their home country tend to grow up differently. An example is the multigenerational Japanese families living in the United States as growing up the first generation made their entire families and future generations act very Americanized to assimilate into the community. This idea is not forgotten in Su’s memoir when he talks about wearing a suit at Bob Big Boy’s, ‘I don’t want to wear my suit. … We are going to be eating with white people. If you don’t look nice they will look down upon you’ (Su 57). Here Su mentions about how he does not want to wear his suit for something that seemed so trivial while his father insists he does so that they impress the white people that they can act and look like them. It can then be assumed that early on in his childhood, his family wanted to be like the white community so that they could better fit in when living in America. However, this proves to become contradictory later in the memoir when Su tells his father that he loves him. His father’s response, “Are you trying to imitate those white people by telling me those fucking words?” (Su 150). This proves to become quite a contradictory response to what he previously told his son before of not being looked down by the white people, yet his very actions here is one that is
Liu opens his essay by cataloging ways that he could be considered “white” in order to inform the reader about the similarities the author shares with white people, even though he is not white. The purpose of the list is to convey the message that Liu shares similarities with white people, and introduce the audience into his personal story about his integration into the white culture of America. The list is not specifically meant to be humorous, yet it has that effect, due to the generalizations and stereotypes that Liu states, like “I wear khaki Dockers” or “I vacation in charming bed-and-breakfasts” (1). Liu may have included these exaggerated stereotypes of white Americans for a humorous effect in order to engage the
“The Arrival,” by Shaun Tan, is a wordless novel that depicts the experience immigrants go through when vacating their home countries to start new in a different country. Readers can see that on the first page there is a collage of headshots from multiple people of different ethnicity and religion. The first image page of the wordless novel helps viewers get a clearer image of what the novel is about. In “The Arrival,” Shaun Tan depicts the hardships and enjoyment that immigrants experience when moving to a new country, since the piece was written in 2006, there seems to be more hardships than enjoyment when coming to the United States, which means the idea of the United States being a melting pot is flawed.
Everyone has a different story of how they ended up where they are. But in many ways, people’s stories are all similar. There are many hardships that every family has to deal with when immigrating to a different country that they are not a citizen of. There are barriers and pulls, but there are also bridges and pushes. Even though people are from different countries immigrating to the United States, they all experience almost all of the same hardships, as displayed in the Pechota Family, John, and René’s immigration stories.
Since Amin Ahmad immigrated into the United States from India, he has real life experience that contributes to his claims. He is able to connect specific occurrences he faced with immigrants like himself, and their comparable situations. He explains that, “my passport tells the story of my immigrant life: my student and work visas; all the entry and exit stamps as I traveled between India and the United States” (Ahmad 38). His passport is a constant reminder of the journey he has traveled and the experiences that define him as a person. Ahmad demonstrates a perspective of immigration that is unique to many. Not only has he made the steps towards leaving his country, he has successfully created a life for himself. He has lived in the United States for a long period of time and even has an American fiancé. With this unique situation, he can connect with a vast amount of different people, both citizens and immigrants.
Immigrating to America is a process in which many people all across the world entrust as their one way ticket to a better life. Whether they do so legally or illegally, coming to the United States ensures better opportunities, economically, politically, and so on, to people who would have otherwise been worse off in their countries of origin. Even so, the common understanding of being “better off” can be considered a misconstrued concept when it comes to living in the states. Many families that choose to immigrate to the U.S. fail to realize the cultural hardships that newcomers tend to face once on American soil. Anything from racial discrimination or bias at work, in neighborhoods, at school, etc., can all be challenges that people encounter when making a move to the U.S. Such challenges are described by Richard Rodriquez in his autobiography Hunger of Memory. In this passage, he explains how cultural differences between Mexican and American ways of life have shaped him into the person that he is today. He also chooses to highlights the problems that he faces growing up in a predominately white neighborhood, while attending a predominantly white institution. Much of his writing consists of the cultural differences and pressures he feels to assimilate to Western culture and how this process, in turn, changes him into the person that some may find to be unethical, but nonetheless, someone he is proud of.
These immigrant children did not choose to come to America, they came with their parents. Most of these American are trying to make a good life for themselves. In the first person account “Amy’s Story” Amy, an undocumented Taiwanese immigrant, tells of her struggles to make a life for herself in the United States. When Amy is fifteen, she discovers that “California Proposition 187 took away access to public services, including driver's licenses, from undocumented immigrants.” Later, as she struggles to find a job, she is told by her attorney that marrying an American citizen is “the easiest way to become legal in this country.” Despite her many challenges, she writes about how despite everything [her] family has experienced in this country, [she] would not choose to be anywhere else” (“Amy’s Story”).
" I love Yous Are for White People" is a memoir about Lac's journey and his family immigrated to America from Vietnam, after the Vietnam's War. Lac's family had to deal with cultural shock, language barrier, and difficulty finding jobs. As a Vietnamese immigration myself, I feel like Lac's experiences live through me because there were a lot of similarities in his memoir compared to my past experiences with my parents. Lac's family and many immigrations families had the same circumstances, that had a hard time adapting to a new cultural, and establish a new life in America. As the result, this environment played a
As a first-generation American I’ve had to face certain challenges that people from non-immigrant families wouldn’t have to face. The most obvious challenge is subtle racism. I’ve had people, speaking directly to me, imitate the way other Indian people speak, make racist jokes (some people think racist jokes are validated if they’re speaking to someone from the race in question), justifying themselves by telling me things like “but you’re not like that.” I come from people who are “like that.” I may be an American but that doesn’t mean anyone can make comments about my family and where they come from. Another such challenge is that my parents often can’t help me navigate American life. But their experiences, the difficulties I’ve seen them face in their lives, and the values they’ve picked up and passed down to me have shaped how I approach life’s problems. Seeing their struggles to create a good life for our family in the US has taught me the importance of education, hard work, risk-taking, and optimism.
Through interviewing my roommate Linda Wang, I have gotten the opportunity of hearing a first-hand account of what it is like being a young immigrant living in the United States. At the age of eight, Linda, along with her father, mother, and aunt, emigrated to America. Linda’s family currently resides in Bayside, Queens and she is a student-athlete on the St. John’s women’s golf team. Linda was kind enough to share her immigration story with me so that I may use it as a manifestation of what life as an immigrant, and the immigration process itself, entails.
Traditionally immigrants are faced numerous challenges on a daily basis. America is known as the place where there is a chances to succeed, a place where you can be free. Numerous Immigrants came to America with the goal that they could have a more noteworthy plausibility at prevailing in life. Settlers went out on a limb a when coming to America, for some it worked out well however for others they had a troublesome time here. Regardless of the battles that the outsiders experienced, for example, emerging from others, being isolated from their families, and breaking their way of life, the settlers are as yet thankful to be in America since they were in preferable conditions over they were in their country.
The first day in the United States is one of the best day and most thrilling days in my life. My father and my older sister move to Malaysia to get a job and support our family due to financial difficulty and lack of job opportunity in Burma. After a few years, my father and my sister were able to enter as immigrant and they were sent to the United States as immigrants through United Nation. After being apart with my father and my sister for more than a decade, my parents decide to move completely to America where more opportunities are available for a brighter future. My family faces many obstacles during the process of migrating to America. Despite all the struggle that are on our way, my family finally arrives in the United States and face major changes in life.
Immigration makes up of the United States. The life of an immigrant faces many struggles. Coming to the United States is a very difficult time for immigrant, especially when English is not their first language. In Oscar Handlin’s essay, Uprooted and Trapped: The One-Way Route to Modernity and Mark Wyman’s Coming and Going: Round Trip to America, both these essays describes the life of immigrants living in America and how they are able to make a decent amount of money to support their families. Handlin’s essay Uprooted and Trapped: The One - Way Route to Modernity explains how unskilled immigrants came to adapt to the American life working in factories to make a living. In the essay, Coming and Going: Round Trip to America, this essay describes the reality of many immigrants migrating to the United States in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. Many were living and adjusting to being transnational families. Both these essays show how the influx of immigration and industrialization contributed to the making of the United States. With the support from documents 3 and 7, Thomas O’ Donnell, Immigrant Thomas O’Donnell Laments the Worker’s Plight, 1883 and A Slovenian Boy Remembers Tales of the Golden Country, 1909, these documents will explain the life of an immigrant worker in the United States. Although, the United States was portrayed as the country for a better life and a new beginning, in reality, the United
“Mom, will I ever be treated as a regular person? When will I be like the others without people look at me in a strange way and make fun of me, when mom? When?” Those were the questions I did to my mom almost every day after getting home from school. Fourteen years ago that my parents brought me to this country offering a better life with better opportunities than where I was born. I was seven years old when came to the United States, but I still remember the happiness I felt when I first step in this country. Throughout the years, I have realize that not everything is easy and simple as I imagined. My parents worked in the fields because of the lack of a social security and not knowing how to speak English. Many Americans do not know how hard it is the life of an immigrant, they should have a consideration for us and not just blame us for the deviance of the United States.
Simply put, America is the land of opportunity. In the past, immigrants have left most of their family, memories, and familiarities with their homeland in search of a better life in America, where jobs were easy to find and the economy was booming. These immigrants formed almost the entire American population, a demographic anomaly in which people from nationalities separated by land and sea; these people come from countries separated by expansive distances can live within the same neighborhood. Both Anna Quindlen with her essay “A Quilt of a Country” and John F. Kennedy with his essay “The Immigrant Contribution” have documented the story of these immigrants and
As an immigrant myself, I know the struggles, hardship, and the difficulties that come with being accepted to the United States, as well as the struggles with becoming a citizen. The many barriers and the conflict that my family and I had to endure were very exhausting. For example, the many denials, then anticipation but finding out we weren’t accepted. Dealing with the rejection was especially hard for us. However, that didn't stop us; we knew that there will always be a chance as long as we kept on trying. The wait was well worth it because I can honestly say that my life has changed for the better. Even though I was too young back then to really understand the situation, I could still realize that there was something wrong every time I