Essay on Ethnic Literature

“The History, Development and Future of Ethnic Studies” by Evelyn Hu-DeHart mentions several issues young scholars faced during the time of need for multicultural curriculum in higher education. Young scholars were demanding to uncover the missing facts and accredited sources that American history, culture, and society have left out for centuries. The solution the students concluded in solving this dilemma was to bring attention to the need of ethnic studies programs. With enough support from the student body and willingness of universities, institutions were able to recruit professors and thus create ethnic studies programs. According to Hu-DeHart, by providing ethnic studies programs and departments, the academic field would provide, “…a

The American Minority Authors opens the reader eyes of the struggles of acceptance within the society, and how their heritage and their American culture can coexist. Minority writers, Cisneros, Eastman, and McKay, through their stories, give us insight of their cultural heritage and the struggles they have with society embracing diversity. In Sandra Cisneros, story “Geraldo No Last Name”, speaks of a Latino immigrant who does not speaks English living in America. The narrator of the story even put a label on him calling him a ”brazer”(Cisneros,1989, para 4), is a slang word for a migrant worker(Garling, 2007).

Upon entering the class I was anxious, curious, and also oblivious to the ideas I would be encountering. Like other students who had not previously spent time discussing topics of race and ethnicity, I myself had nervous tendencies in assuming that such a class may not strengthen my understanding of ethnic and race relations. I realized I knew little about race or ethnicity, and even the possible similarities or differences. However, I welcomed the opportunity to further discover the possibilities of the class. My understanding of race was concentrated in a definition that could be understood as different skin colors. My limited conception of ethnicity applied to people’s origin or where they lived. It seemed as though my lack of

Anthropologists have always had their discrepancies with the word culture and its background significance. There have been numerous definitions that have filtered through the field, yet not one that everyone can accept or agree with. Franz Boas, an anthropologist in the early 20th Century, and his students, had a difficult time figuring out the objective of what culture is. Culture is about learning and shared ideas about behaviour. Although Boas and his students had a slightly different idea in mind. They ultimately reached a conclusion, a definition of culture in their view that is a contradiction in terms. Boas sates that, “ culture was expressed through the medium of language but was not reducible to it;

In her 2009 TED talks presentation,” The Danger of a Single Story,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explains how a single story presented by the media and books can affect the way a person may perceive others, places, and cultures (Adichie). Adichie is the daughter of a professor and an administrator from a middle-class family born in Nigeria. As soon as she began to write she believed her stories needed to contain foreigners that lived a diverse life, but discovered African books that changed her perspective on literature. She goes into details explaining her point through personal experiences where she falsely misunderstood someone based on a single word she heard

I believe that this book is a good representation of a multicultural text when basing it off Professor Boyd’s qualities. The book was written in the year

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.

Question one is what is the African diaspora? (Who should be considered in the African diaspora? How is this like the black Atlantic and how is it different?). Students should use the Colin Palmer piece to answer this question.

For example in the essay An Indian Father’s Plea, the unknown ethnicity of the teacher, the native american ethnicity, and culture of the father have a slight conflict, when talking about the father's son. In the story her customs were different from the boys. She didn’t understand his way of life and why he didn’t learn like the other kids. She was confused on how he knew numbers but couldn’t point them out by themselves.

I would like to consider my cultural heritage as diverse, but this is far from reality. Over the years as I matured through my teenage years, I was exposed to different cultures by life experiences and travel. I struggled to create both a personal and cultural identity while trying to adjust to my sight loss and with the support of my family I traveled overseas to experience other cultures for the first time. My family opened up their home to a foreign exchange program in turn allowing me the opportunity to travel over to Europe at the age of 16 years old. This opportunity started the slow progression of experiences that would open my mind to others who are unlike myself, especially traveling to a strange place and feeling different in

The earliest inhabitants of Britain for whom there is compelling evidence are bands of hunters living in Southern and Western England during the Hoxnian interglacial (about 380,000 to 400,000 BC). (Some very recent excavations of stone tools on the East Anglian coastline suggest human presence as early as 700,000 years ago). However, as temperatures again dropped, Britain was abandoned. Although there are signs of human habitation during later interglacials, it was not until roughly 14,000 years ago that occupation became permanent. Some of the first things that Mesolithic Britons did, were to wipe out the lion, the elephant, and the hippopotamus, and to domesticate the dog. By about 6000 BC the melting of the ice sheet had created the English

When reading The School Days of an Indian Girl by Zitkala-sa, it shows us a view of ethnic identity. By telling us how a little girl is in a home, away from her mother, while learning how to adapt to the new culture she’s in. In Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, it shows us a different view of a man in another form of an ethnic identity. It shows us that the man is seen as a different person then who he really is, instead of a black man who isn’t seen as what he actually is. In Why I am A Pagan by Zitkala-sa, it used cultural identity by focusing on how the world lost the connection it was given thousands of years ago. How the world is not as one with nature as it should be. It’s as if the world is a person itself, who

Ethnicity is defined as the fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition. While this definition suggests a black and white concept, ethnicity is often complex and misunderstood due to the breadth of the topic. Frequently in society, young people inherit their ethnic identity at birth based on the culture they are born into. However, during puberty they often begin to doubt/explore their identity and strive to discover what ethnic group they belong in and not just the one they were assigned. This complex process has spurred psychologists to delve into the phenomenon of how differing cultures undergo this process of “finding themselves”. This research has culminated into a theory based on stages of ethnic development by Phinney & Ong. This paper will investigate further into this topic, in concern to Scarlett O’Hara, a fictional character portrayed in the film classic “Gone with the Wind”.

I get asked about my ethnicity all the time and whether or not I’m Asian or Mexican, even though I am both. A lot of people ask me on the daily what race I am, and it’s kind of annoying. It really gets on my nerves when people try to tell me that I’m not a race even if I am or I’m not. For example, some kid tried to tell me that I wasn’t asian and that I was full Mexican. How can someone tell me what I am and what I am not?

The definition of orientalism takes up no more than two sentences in the dictionary. Coincidentally, Orientalism came to be such a complex and deep concept which Said devotes his entire book in discussing about it. His book – Orientalism unfolds the history of the Orientalism, reveals the “dark” side of an orientalist’s mind and describes the different dimensions of Orientalism. He also attempts to expose the truth of the Orient, which he warned that: “One ought never to assume that the structure of Orientalism is nothing more than a structures of lies or of myths, which were the truth about them to be told, would simply blow away” (Said). In order to understand the truth Said`s referring to, one ought to first understand the origin and