Identity Crisis In Caroline Hwang's 'The Good Daughter'

Amy Tan’s ,“Mother Tongue” and Maxine Kingston’s essay, “No Name Woman” represent a balance in cultures when obtaining an identity in American culture.  As first generation Chinese-Americans both Tan and Kingston faced many obstacles. Obstacles in language and appearance while balancing two cultures. Overcoming these obstacles that were faced and preserving heritage both women gained an identity as a successful American.

To be young and Asian in America is a special brand of torture. There is an unspoken dictum of silence that grips Asian youth, a denial of our place in popular culture. Asian youth walk in America not quite sure where we fit in-black children have a particular brotherhood, Hispanic children have a particular brotherhood, white children own everything else. We cannot lay claim to jazz or salsa or swing; we cannot say our ancestors fought for equality against an oppressive government or roamed the great hallways of power across the globe. We do not have a music, a common hero, a lexicon of slang. Asian youth experience personal diasporas every day.

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)

In the short story, "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan, a Chinese mother and daughter are at odds with each other. The mother pushes her daughter to become a prodigy, while the daughter (like most children with immigrant parents) seeks to find herself in a world that demands her Americanization. This is the theme of the story, conflicting values. In a society that values individuality, the daughter sought to be an individual, while her mother demanded she do what was suggested. This is a conflict within itself. The daughter must deal with an internal and external conflict. Internally, she struggles to find herself. Externally, she struggles with the burden of failing to meet her mother’s expectations. Being a first-generation Asian American,

Growing up as an Asian American, I often struggle to identify my own cultural identity. Being the first generation of both my mother and father’s side of the family, I more than often get confused between American and Asian culture when applying them to society or at home. While being raised at home, I am largely influenced by culture and traditions from Asian parents and relatives. However, when I go to school or someplace else, I am heavily judged for practicing part of my Asian culture because it is entirely different than western or American. With that being noted, I began to learn and adapt to the western culture in hopes of fitting with society as well of trying to keep my Asian culture intact. As can be seen, this situation I dealt with is the same problem the whole Asian American community faces. Mainly focusing on younger generations like me for example, the Asian American community struggles to adapt to the western culture because they were raised with an Asian influence. Wishing to fit in society and be part of the social norms, the Asian Americans community faces issues that identify their cultural identity.

Hmong families, like the Lees in the novel “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” have been immigrating to the United States since the end of the Vietnam War. The majority of the Hmong living in the U.S. are now located in specific cities and regions of California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin (Lee and Green 2010). The Lee family moved to the Merced, California in 1980 and has had to adapt to life in a new host country (Fadiman 1997). Acculturation is used to describe how the culture of immigrants changes over time as they adapt to living in a new country (Vang 2013). Fadiman’s depiction of Nao Kao and Foua Lee’s life Merced indicates the couple resisted shedding any aspects of their culture in favor of Western culture, which is typical of first generation Hmong living in the United States. This paper will discuss why Hmong families left Laos, the findings of two acculturation studies of Hmong living in the United States, and a discussion of possible reason(s) why it has been difficult for first generation Hmong like Nao Kao and Foua to adapt to life in the United States.

What is it like to be born in one country and then grow up in another where people speak a different language and follow different traditions? And is it easy to grow up in another country where members of the native country pressure one to be "one of their own"? If anyone wishes to find insightful and interesting answers to these questions, one should go no further than read Lac Su's I Love Yours Are for White People. In this book, Lac tells the story of his child- and adolescent-hood, growing up in "urban" Los Angeles as a Vietnamese living with a "traditional" Vietnamese family. As Lac demonstrates in the book, he once was between two worlds, sometimes unable to figure out who he was, and sometimes rejecting one or the other altogether. After going through difficult and painful experiences, Lac learns to embrace his ethnic identity. He realizes that he is a Vietnamese-American who belongs to both cultures. He learns to appreciate his Vietnamese background but also acknowledges that he is partly American because some Vietnamese habits are so uncommon for him.

“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.

When the Koreans are forced to change their family names to Japanese ones, their Korean identity is weakened. Going through this traumatizing experience is

If one does not look Caucasian and are believed to be seen as different or an alien, then it is more difficult to claim that one is truly an American native. Chang-Rae Lee points out that if one does not look like a typical white American, people use different criteria to judge whether or not one is truly an American Native. That criterion is nativity of language. Since America was made upon immigration, many people in this country consists of different cultural backgrounds and races. The collective language of America buttresses the common ground among its native people. Therefore nativity of language is a set criterion of determining a person’s “native-ness” of a certain place. Native Speaker gives the reader a perspective on the extent of what immigrants go through in order to be accepted or claimed as a native of America through language and suppressing cultural identity. Chang-Rae Lee demonstrates what Asian Americans experience in order to be deemed as a native of America and to fit and have a place in American society. Chang-Rae Lee uses the themes of language and identity throughout the novel as he impressively exemplifies the experiences that Asian Americans undergo as an immigrant in the land of the free.

Even though there is a slight gap between acculturation, the younger groups still maintain their traditional Hmong lifestyle that their ancestors withhold by attending Hmong New Years, weddings, speaking the native language and eating Hmong food. Most parents aren’t accustomed to their children’s lifestyle and create fear that their children will completely disregard their Hmong heritage. Most adolescent to younger adults identify themselves American compared to their parents because they were born in America and been exposed to institutionalization. While their parents are still holding on to Hmong cultural beliefs and values, they feel as though it doesn’t apply to them.

Written by Margaret K. Pai, the Dreams of Two Yi-min narrates the story of her Korean American family with the main focus on the life journeys of her father and mother, Do In Kwon and Hee Kyung Lee. Much like the majority of the pre-World War II immigrants, the author’s family is marked and characterized by the common perception of the “typical” Asian immigrant status in the early 20th century: low class, lack of English speaking ability, lack of transferable education and skills, and lack of knowledge on the host society’s mainstream networks and institutions (Zhou and Gatewood 120, Zhou 224). Despite living in a foreign land with countless barriers and lack of capital, Kwon lead his wife and children to assimilate culturally,

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.

Elizabeth Wong is a Chinese-American playwright who wrote “The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl”. In her essay, she describes her resentment of her Chinese roots and her protest against her parents who want her to learn and appreciate her heritage and culture. Her essay exposes the pressure that society places on immigrant children to fit into the dominant culture. The proposed solutions to fixing this problem is thinking and implementing long term plans. I make the argument that his ethical problem of society placing such a heavy burden on immigrant children to fit into the dominate culture can be solved with the implementation of multicultural classes, language classes, additional counselors and child psychologists in public schools.

Caroline Hwang made the point in her essay "The Good Daughter" that as a first generation American her parents expected her to marry a Korean man. Hwang decided to only date the non-Korean men which she knew she could "stay clearheaded about” so she could fulfill her parent’s wishes and bear children that looked Korean.