Chinese-American Interview Report

Could you take a guess and tell from what culture a person is from by just listening to their voice? Could you also tell by looking to their appearance; The way they dress, the color of their skin, facial features? What about the way they carry their selves? Just like “The Chinese in All of Us” by Richard Rodriguez where he explains that he feels connected to all the cultures around America, with its “culture, a sound, an accent, a walk.” (Rodriguez 730). It does not mean and require that you must look a certain way to belong to a certain culture.

People always seem to be changing themselves because they want the approval of others and are worried what others think of them. They aren't happy about who they are, maybe its looks, or maybe its race that they are concerned about, either way people try to change who they are. In ABC, the author Yang reveals many common stereotypes about chinese people and the struggle they might have in fitting in. Chin-kee one of the main characters is very stereotypical and impacts Danny and Jin’s life greatly. Jin Wang the main character faces some problems fitting in because of his race and the stereotypes associated with it and changes himself in order to fit in.

Within the graphic novel American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, the reader is demonstrated with three essential protagonists throughout the book, known as Jin Wang, Danny, and the Monkey King. Though, these individuals are not associated with each other throughout the graphic novel and their surroundings impact them in different ways; they all possesses one imperative objective, which is to identify their true identity as an individual. For example, the Monkey King searches for his identity amongst the other deities. As seen here, “You may announce that I am the Monkey King of Flower Fruit Mountain! Yes, Yes. I apologize profusely sir, but I cannot let you in, you have no shoes” and “I demand to be let into this dinner party!... Look. You may be a king-

Every time I come home from college, my family and I would go out to yumcha or, as directly translated from Cantonese, to “drink tea. However, drinking tea is only one component of yumcha. To yumcha is to converse with company over a meal of many small dishes and hot tea. Going yumcha is social activity brought to the United States by the people from the Guangdong region of China, also known as Cantonese people. When they immigrated to the United States, yumcha became an important tradition because it also enabled Cantonese parents to socialize their children into the Chinese culture through the language and social practices involved in the meal and the ritual and meaning surrounding the tea. However, to Chinese-Americans such as myself, going yumcha with native Chinese people also emphasized my American identity due to my food choices. Yet when I go yumcha with non-Chinese people, I become distinctly aware of my Chinese identity when they fail the language or rituals of this tradition. The only time when I do not feel alienated during yumcha is when I go with my other

There were many reasons for the Chinese to come to America. Overcrowding, poverty, war, and other catastrophes in China were all reasons (push) for traveling to America, as well as effective external influences. The discovery of gold was a major pull for Chinese peasants in coming to the West Coast. America's labor needs were the most important external catalyst for immigration. However, there were very few ways of traveling to the United States. With loans from the Six Companies, Chinese were able to afford fare to America, and they traveled here to work primarily as gold miners, fishermen, or agricultural workers; later settling into laundry services and restaurant work (Tsai, China overseas 12-13).

Gene Luen Yang presents a graphic novel, it talk about three different stories that are separate and yet related to each other. The way he presents the characters helps him to show his audience stereotypes in American born Chinese. The author uses the three stories and revolves around people working towards their cultural identity. He successfully creates a story about racial identity, and he does not merely concentrate on stereotypes that define the American-born Chinese.

I am a first generation Chinese American and to go to college. My parents immigrated here from Vietnam for my brother and I, they both came here working low wage jobs with very little school education. Back in Vietnam, when education wasn’t accessible to everyone, my dad dropped out of school in fifth grade and my mom dropped out in ninth to work for the family. Because they weren’t able to achieve the American dream for themselves, they decided to give my brother and I the best chance to have it for ourselves.

The book American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, had three distinct main characters, but each plot line held the same message: be yourself. This message is one that resonates due to the pressures that everyone faces to conform to societal norms. I, as an introverted female, feel pressured often to go and be around many people and be outgoing to fit in and find friends. It took years to learn this lesson, which the book conveys in a few hundred pages. This is an important not just for myself, but for anyone experiencing pressure to belong.

Paper sons and daughters created the next generation of American born Chinese. Chin and his wife Laura Elizabeth Eubank had their first daughter Sheila in 1950 and then a second born child a son a few years later.[1] By this, Chinese paper sons and daughters comprised of transnational families mixing the Chinese born in China with their offspring being Chinese Americans. Thus, redeeming the Chinese as a vital class of people as their children were not subject to the exclusion law.

Bora and I become friends since we took the same class together. She is originally from South Korea and started to study at Old Dominion University before three years ago. One year ago, she married her husband who originally from South Korea too but immigrated to the United States fifteen years ago. After they got married, Bora and her husband started to work on those immigration procedures, but they just put the formalities done last month. I came from China and I speak Mandarin Chinese, so we have a lot of cultural differences with each other. In order to get a better understanding of South Korea’s culture and gain multi-cultural competence as a human service professional in the future, I decided to conduct my interview with Bora.

I jumped and hastily removed my earbuds, startled by the man standing inches away. Suddenly he spoke: “Is that Stromae?” I followed his gaze to my phone, where “Ta fête,” a song by Belgian-Rwandan rap sensation Stromae, was playing. The man in front of me, who I learned was a recent immigrant from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), intimated excitedly that French was his first language. I enthusiastically told him that I had been learning French for six years. Our shared language had broken down the heavy silence.

Carly how are you? I thinks you had makes good experience for life after you living and working in San Jose, CA. I glad that not get the job from Chinese Woman, because she may be is one of Slave owners in America's like other Chinese criminal...

In much contrast with the graphic novel, “American Born Chinese” however, in which also incorporates the narrative of The Monkey King in one of its many short stories, the relevance of his nature as monkey appears to completely unrelated to his deceitful behavior, but rather appears to be used to set him apart from the other deities in Heaven. Here, the monkey character in the graphic novel appears to serve as a metaphor for race through its three interwoven stories, as two out of the three narratives are directly related by character and time. One being the story about The Monkey King, and the other, a story of Jin Wang, a boy of Chinese descent living in modern America. Together, they work together to show a parallel connection to one another

From the American Born Chinese, the text and image shared the equal and precise time in moments on every page of the book on what happened in the story, and how the author and the book relate the reader to his or her experience. The text and image affect my reading experience in more entertaining ways of understanding the story and how do I feel about reading the book. For people like the graphic novel, it helps them to read and imagine easily toward them. Also, the text and image of this book American Born Chinese show three different stories. But in the end, it actually the one-story headline. The three different stories show the ideas of how discrimination affects Chinese people are like. It also shows how we had been discriminated by their

Thank you for the opportunity to conduct this research. I’ve enjoyed learning the major cultural differences between America and China and ways in which to improve cross-cultural communication between these two countries. If you have any questions about the material in this report, please call me.