Cultures And Stereotypes In The Good Daughter By Caroline Hwang

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.

In “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria,” the incidents on the bus, in the hotel, and at the poetry involved prejudice and stereotypical misconceptions of Puerto Rican women. While Cofer was on a bus trip to Oxford University, a man “broke into an Irish tenor’s rendition of “Maria” from West Side Story” (Cofer 103). This implies that Latinas dealt with people who automatically assume that a Latina’s name is “Maria” or “Evita” based on a fictional movie. While at a hotel with a colleague, a middle-aged man called Cofer an “Evita” and he “began shout-sing a ditty to the tune of “La Bamba”---except the lyrics were about a girl named Maria” (Cofer 107). Then Cofer realized that “[she] was just an Evita or a Maria: merely a character in his cartoon-populated universe” (107). The men that sung stereotypical songs viewed Cofer as a sexual object and referred to her as an image displayed by the media.

Stereotypes have a way of getting inside your head, and sometimes you end up in a tough situation without even knowing it. In the novella, House on Mango Street, author Sandra Cisneros describes the lives of several women of who live on Mango Street. In the community, stereotypes are given to women, which most of them succumb to. The girls tend to get married young to someone they do not love and end up trapped. Very few women actually made the smart decisions and made a successful life for themselves without a man. Despite the power of negative stereotypes given to women in Esperanza’s community, individuals who are strong and determined enough can overcome the unfavorable outcomes.

Stereotypes are dangerous weapons in our society. “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria” is a short essay in which the award winning poet and professor of English, Judith Ortiz Cofer, wishes to inform and persuade the audience that labels and stereotypes can be humiliating and hurtful. The author targets the general public, anyone that doesn’t understand that putting someone in a box because of a stereotype is wrong. Cofer starts out the essay by telling the reader a story with a drunk man who re-enacted “Maria” from the West Side Story, and how angry that made her feel. She continues by explaining how she grew up in the United States being a Puerto Rican girl trying to fit in, but always being labeled as an island girl. Cofer carries on by explaining why Latin people get dressed and act a certain way. Then she recalls some more stereotypical incidents.

In this article, “The Myth of the Latin Woman” Cofer has talked about many incidents from her life where she was talked about, from a young girl the adult life. Ortiz Cofer is so ardent about this topic of stereotyping Latin women because she was a native women of the Puerto Rico area who really grew up in the United States. There is how she witnessed firsthand how hurtful stereotyping could be. In “The Myth of the Latin Woman”, She has repeated use of Spanish words in the essay to shows her audience how proud she is of the Latin heritage. she continuously uses other words, such as Puerto Rican, and Latina to stress the names she heard growing up. Because she has been brought up to love her Latin culture, she was often stereotyped here in the United States. As you can see, this is why she became so involved with trying to bring people so much awareness to the

“Mixed cultural signals have perpetuated certain stereotypes…”(Page 372, paragraph 2, line 1). The Myth of the Latian Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria, by Judith Ortiz Cofer is about how Judith Ortiz Cofer was discriminated because she is a Latina Woman. She describes about several people treating her differently than others, through song, through looks, and through sexual thoughts and actions towards her. Even after all the discriminating actions persisted upon her, she still pursues on to help others learn that Latinas are not always like the movies say they are or should be like. Judith Ortiz Cofer does this by writing poetry and novels. “My personal goal in my public life is try to replace the old pervasive stereotypes and myths about

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.

This can be a humiliating experience for many parents, which is worsened by their lack of knowledge about the English language. Along the process, most Vietnamese parents must deal with the unfamiliarity of U.S. culture, values, and rules in the working environment and the potential for discrimination.".This section of the article is discussing how Vietnamese immigration parents can be overly stress , and add to the authoritarian parenting method. This kind of behavior from parents can have a negative affecting on children. In fact, it only discourage children from striving for success knowing that there will be no rewards but only criticism. This is reflected Lac's experiences throughout his memoir.

“The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.” (-Mark Twain) Being a child of immigrant parents who move to American can be hard. There is a lingering feeling of not feeling like a child belongs. They are stuck in the invisible world between where their parents came from, in this specific case, Asia and where the child lives now. It can be difficult to be raised as an Asian American and learning both culture and traditions. Many Asian American kids end up deviating from the Asian culture and embracing the American culture. However, children of immigrants should embrace their own culture in order to keep traditions alive and be proud of who they are.

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

The teenage years and transition to adulthood is in itself a very difficult period. Blending or fitting in are omnipresent issues that must be dealt with. For children of immigrants, this difficulty is only intensified through language. Both Amy Tan and Khang Nguyen strategically use narrative anecdotes and employ several rhetorical devices to illustrate this struggle in their works, “Mother Tongue” and “The Happy Days,” respectfully. Amy Tan chooses her childhood home as the primary setting of her work. This allows her to focus primarily on her conversations and interactions with her mother. However, she also gives several anecdotes in which her mother’s background and improper English negatively affected her, outside the home. Through

In “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria” the main argument made is that Hispanic women often struggle being identified. Judith goes on talking about her experiences with men and how they identify her as “Maria” because of her Hispanic heritage. They also identified her as a person she really wasn’t because if the way she dressed up. She talks about her Puerto Rican culture and how her mother made her dress and act like a woman at a young age. Later on in the reading passage she says a story about a job interview in high school and how they had to dress up. For her, dressing up was different from the other girls because of her heritage. The day of the interview they were identified as negative models and the whole day they were steered at. They also called her a “Hot Tamale” which is a stereotype for Hispanic women and a couple of other stereotypes were said to her. One of her most memorable incident was when she was at an event in a boat in Miami and a women called her over because she thought she was waitress. Those rough times didn’t stop Judith from wanting what she wanted to do which was to fit in the American culture. She accomplished to get an education and to set the reality of who Latina women are despite the stereotypes and myths.

Many second generation minorities from immigrant parents are driven subconsciously to conform to new culture and social norms. For foreign born parents and native born children integrating the two cultures they inhabit brings about different obstacles and experiences. In Jhumpa’s “The Namesake” the protagonist Gogol is a native born American with foreign born parents. The difference with birth location plays an important role in assimilating to a new society in a new geography. The difficulty for parents is the fact that they’ve spent a decent amount of time accustomed to a new geography, language, culture and society which makes it difficult to feel comfortable when all of that changes. For Gogol the difficulty only lies with the cultural norms imposed by his parent’s and the culture and social norms that are constantly presented in the new society.

Higher expectations by first-generation immigrant parents also involve as intergenerational conflict in forming the American identity. In the article “Intergenerational

In the personal essay “The Good Daughter” by Caroline Huang, she uses hyperbole and paradox to show that being the child of an immigrant is difficult because the parents have high expectations for their children . First, Caroline uses hyperbole when explaining how her leaving school affected her and her parents. She says that when she left school they were “disappointed but since it wasn't what they wanted her to do they weren't devastated”, while she felt like she was “staring at the bottom of the abyss.” She obviously wasn't at the bottom of an abyss, but her exaggeration shows that her emotions were bringing her and her mood down ta low point of her life. Since her parents have always had high expectations of her, she feels like she has