China to the United States: Angela’s Assimilation Process The person I am interviewing is a 1.5 generation female immigrant, which means that she was born in a different country, but grew up in the United States (Feliciano Lec.1/4/16). For my interviewees privacy, I will refer to her as Angela throughout the interview paper. I will be talking about the experiences and the difficulties she has had assimilating to the United States. I will also be analyzing and comparing these experiences to our lecture notes and readings we did in class. Angela’s parents divorced when she was a little kid. After divorcing, Angela’s mom decided to move to the United States. She filed her papers for residency and waited for a response. In 1999, her papers …show more content…
This doesn’t apply to Angela because she is a 1.5 generation immigrant and the Fishman Model doesn’t account for the 1.5 generation. Although it doesn’t exactly follow this model, her language patterns follow a similar pattern compared to the Fishman Model. Angela’s mom, who is a first generation immigrant, knows little to no English as she did not attend school in the US, while Angela, who is a 1.5 generation immigrant, is bilingual. The first two generations in Angela’s family follows the Fishman Model similarly, but when it comes to the third generation, it will be the opposite. She says, “In the future, I think I would speak mandarin with my kids”. This also doesn’t follow the Asian language assimilation, which says that by the third generation, over 90% speak only English (Feliciano …show more content…
Females were expected to be morally superior and were expected to do household chores (Feliciano Lec.2/17/16). Ever since she was a kid, she learned how to become independent. While she was living with her aunt during the 8 years her mom went to the US, she “helped with household chores and prepared meals”. She was held to the gender double standard. Girls were also offered less freedom compared to boys. In Espiritu’s article, “We Don’t Sleep Around like White Girls Do”, she talks about how girls were expected to stay home to do chores and how girls didn’t have as much freedom as guys; they weren’t allowed to go wherever they wanted (2001). Similar to this, Angela says that she is expected to do more compared to boys. She says “Compared to my cousin, who is a male, I am expected to do more. I am expected to do more household chores and to take care of my younger sibling. While, my cousin has no responsibility of doing chores and has all the freedom he
Women were expected to do so much but at the same time so little. They had no power to do what they desire because men had all the power to control them. Society had an expectation of how women were supposed to act. For instance, Mary’s father cared for his sons education he wanted them to know how to read, write, and to do sums, as for his daughters he only cared that they knew how to read and sew. That is the basic that women were allowed to learn it was not important for them to know more since all they were going to work for is taking care of children. Here is an example, “…Gender roles within those families the reinforcement of gender ideals such as “helpmeet” and “notable housewife” by religious and civil authorities, and the simple
Growing up with parents who are immigrants can present many obstacles for the children of those immigrants. There are many problems people face that we do not even realize. Things happen behind closed doors that we might not even be aware of. Writers Sandra Cisneros and Amy Tan help us become aware of these problems. Both of these authors express those hardships in their stories about growing up with foreign parents. Although their most apparent hardships are about different struggles, both of their stories have a similar underlying theme.
Another reason is that children learn a language by imitating the sounds they hear (mimicry) without an accent. This enables children to obtain a correct diction. Here a child has a positive experience and is able to assimilate with ease. On the other hand, an elderly person will find the learning process a challenge and to a certain extent the situation might even be so burdensome that one loses interest in learning. In Amy Tan?s speech My Mother?s English, she explains the difficulties her mother faced because she (Tan?s mother) was unable to clearly express herself. She (Tan) also felt the effects of this as a child. Not only did Tan?s mother find speaking English a barrier in the process of assimilation, but Tan herself felt her mother limited her perception (Tan 45). Since Tan?s mother was unable to speak English properly people would not give her good service and would not treat her seriously even to the extant that people ?pretended not to understand her or even acted as if they did not hear her,?(Tan 45). This is just one example of many that shows how some people have had negative experiences assimilating into American society.
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)
I am a U.S. born citizen. My parents moved to the United States in 1984 without knowing anything about this country. Looking for a fresh start and new opportunities, my parents settled in Houston. With hardly knowing any English, my parents knew this was the place to make dreams become a reality. Luckily, I had older siblings to look up to whenever I needed help. Like Lahiri, I was trapped in between two different cultures while I was growing up. At home, I only spoke Spanish, but in school it was English. My habits and customs were different than others. Life as an immigrant’s offspring can be very difficult. As I grew older, I allowed myself to open my eyes and see the beauty of being an American from Hispanic descent.
It is expected that ultimately there will be a loss of ethnic distinctiveness for immigrants in the U.S., meaning the lack of attachment to the country of origin. (Golash-Boza, 2006) It is argued that all ethnic distinctiveness will no longer exist by the seventh or eighth generations. Before exploring the influence of foreign born vs. U.S. born parents on their children’s cultural assimilation; the different theories of assimilation will be explored. The idea of Assimilation came about in the early 20th century. (Golash-Boza, 2006) Assimilation is surrounded by two theories, the first that all immigrants will assimilate sooner or later and that the generational status of the individual is one of the main factors in determining the
The only time women were treated like ladies were when they wore skirts. People looked at these women as “working class,” and they were always being ignored and disrespected. Women were not taken seriously or given much attention. Employers denied women positions of power excluding them from the decision-making process of the company. Women wanted to be treated like the male workers and not given special consideration just because they were women.
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.
Assimilation is the manner in which people of a cultural group start to lose their individuality that makes them different from the more dominant culture, as they seek to fit in. America has been a melting pot of different cultures for centuries, whether it was by choice, forced or for a better life. History has proven that assimilation in America was not acceptable but that has changed over time.
Immigration has a great impact on first generation immigrants. Studies show that acculturation and assimilation have wide-ranging effects on the groups involved, but mostly on the immigrants' lives. There are positive and negative attributes. Attributes that are due to the issues associated with integrating cultures, and broadly related to the greater issue of immigration. The issues and discrimination towards first generation immigrants cause them to have limitations throughout their lifetime, in the country that they have moved to. Furthermore, the Hispanic and Latino community have lived through this problem for so long. They are always the group to be affected by it because they lose a sense
All throughout history, women have been thought of to be “weaker” and “not as capable” as men have always been thought to be. Due to this, gender roles were
Given the difference in culture from immigrant women how are their issues and problems connected? What idea do these women all share after dealing with the stress and hardships from immigration? Explain why others might be more successful in chasing the “American dream” while others endure prosperity handicaps due to communication?
“In 2009, 33 million people in the United States were second generation immigrants, representing 11% of the national population. The children of such immigrants in the U.S., also known as "second generation immigrants," experience a cultural conflict between that of their parents and that of mainstream U.S. society” (Wikipedia 1). Amy Tan the author of “Two Kinds”, and the young character in the story both are a second generation immigrants, who have struggled in their life with parents, about the culture they assimilating and their real culture.
family, age, or culture, their general lifestyle. This story is about an immigrant looking to
The only other person that was Asian was her sister, so starting school in the United States wasn’t as fun and easy, as it was for other kids. Through the years Angela has been able to use what she knows from the past, to her job. The author states, “Almost all of the people I know who work in my field have a personal passion and stake in fighting injustice. I want to change the world so other people don’t have to experience some of what I have, both as a child and even now, as an adult.” Angela is showing a different way that she can cope with her situations.