In The Land Of The Free By Sui Sin Far Analysis

For millions of immigrants, America has been seen as the land of opportunity where anyone could become anything he or she wanted to be. A family that believes strongly in the American dream can be found in Amy Tan’s short story, “Two Kinds.” The story centers around the daughter of a Chinese immigrant who desperately wants her daughter to become successful. In the story, the author shows the difficult lives immigrants face when moving to a new culture. In this short story, the theme shows the protagonist’s conflict with her mother on the type of daughter her mother wants her to be. The author establishes the theme of how difficult mother-daughter relationships can be through characterization, setting, and symbolism.

The Chinese Experience records the history of the Chinese in the United States. The three-part documentary shows how the first arrivals from China, their descendants, and recent immigrants have “become American.” It is a story about identity and belonging that is relative to all Americans. The documentary is divided into three programs, each with a focus on a particular time in history. Program 1 describes the first arrivals from China, beginning in the early 1800’s and ending in 1882, the year Congress passed the first Chinese exclusion act. Program 2, which details the years of exclusion and the way they shaped and distorted Chinese American

When thousands of Chinese migrated to California after the gold rush the presence caused concern and debate from other Californians. This discussion, popularly called the “Chinese Question,” featured in many of the contemporary accounts of the time. In the American Memory Project’s “California: As I Saw It” online collection, which preserves books written in California from 1849-1900, this topic is debated, especially in conjunction with the Chinese Exclusion Act. The nine authors selected offer varying analyses on Chinese discrimination and this culminating act. Some give racist explanations, but the majority point towards the perceived economic competition between

Maxine Hong Kingston shows big concerns over ethnicity by depicting the ethnic dilemma in her fictional world. In Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book, however, ethnic malaise is reflected in the harsh split between the image of Chinese Americans which the dominant culture wishes to construct and what really exists. Kingston in her novel first of all deconstructs the preconception of the Chinese diaspora in America, subverting the socially constructed stereotypical identity of Chinese Americans.

Maxine Hong Kingston’s The China Men is a historical record of the events that had taken place in the West coast of the oppression and racism faced by Chinese immigrants and their struggle to gain the rights and citizenship of Americans. As recorded here, the most critical attack by the U.S. government to the rights of Chinese immigrants were the Chinese Exclusion acts which banned the entry of Chinese and also denied the Chinese who were already in the country the rights of citizens. As can be seen with the case of Chae Chan Ping, the denying of liberty was done by the branch of government which is meant to call out the other branches on their abuses of power and abuses of the Constitution. Instead, they carried out their own racially biased

Today, I started reading the first chapter of the memoir called The Accidental Asian by Eric Liu. Reading the first chapter is not just for pleasure or information, but for sympathy and relation. As an international student, I find the story of the author’s dad directly connecting to my life as transiting from Vietnam to the US. His dad boats across the Pacific with the hope for creating the prosper Liu family. Although he wants to maintain Chinese manner, Chao-hua Liu, the author’s father naturally assimilates into American culture.

Historians have been constantly disputed the root cause of passing the Chinese Exclusion Act, Erika Lee in her book, At America’s Gates, she said, “rather than emphasizing the ‘labor’ aspect of Chinese Exclusion”, she emphasizes, “the western part of the equation”, also she arguing that “the late 19th –century U.S. West became the birthplace of anti-Chinese legislation because of the ‘history of extending and reinforcing white supremacy in the region and its unique relationship with the federal government.” However, Mr. King is lucky; because of religious reason, he cannot stay in China anymore, he came to America to apply for political asylum in 2005. For the reason of religious, I do not talk about too much; I only can say the background was China’s only one failure

In the short story “Two Kinds,” Amy Tan talks about the clash between traditional and contemporary values. The Chinese culture wants everything to be a certain way, but Tan grow up in around American culture and she was more likely to have her own thoughts rather than be an obedient daughter. This essay illustrates the procedure of character development of the second-generation Chinese immigrant daughters who experience differences between Chinese culture and American culture, such as language, culture and generational gaps that rise between the Chinese mothers and their American born daughters.

The trans-regional narrative witnessed a remarkable narrative transformation in the late 1990s and early 2000s when many studies paid attention to create historical interpretations of Chinese-American community, culture, and identity. Some scholars began to examine Chinese-American family history by placing Chinese-Americans within a larger historical context. One of the outstanding works is The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America written by Mae

The first wave of Chinese immigrates were historically racialized as being the “Yellow Terror” with Chinese women being seen as prostitutes, and men as threats to the white labor force due to the negative propaganda that was distributed about the Chinese (Sasaki, 4/5/16). As a result, Chinese immigrants were classified as “aliens ineligible for citizenship” because the U.S. were worried about what the Chinese would do if they were given rights. They were discriminated against because they were considered as “foreign, other and those who do not belong,” giving others the justification they needed to treat them differently and violently (Sasaki, 4/5/16). In a California Nativist Movement, the white working class openly opposed Chinese laborers

In a similar fashion, in Amy Tan’s short story “A Pair of Tickets” can compare to such emotional abuse taken by Jing-Mei from her mother, this kind of abuse were bullying and embarrassment. “Cannot be helped,” my mother said when I was fifteen and had vigorously denied that I had any Chinese whatsoever below my skin.” (Tan, 129). She grew up in San Francisco and have many American friends. When her mother told her about her genetics, it made her think of everything about her mother that drove her crazy.

In the mid 19th century, America was viewed as a hotspot for freedom and wealth. When the noise of the gold rush flooded the world, immigrants started to see America more appetizing than ever. The Chinese saw America as a place to have a fresh start and as a place of refuge because of it’s generosity, so they immigrated to the west in great numbers. There was a large Chinese population in Virginia and all along the Pacific coast. Writers Mark Twain and Maxine Hong Kingston both wrote in great detail about the Chinese Immigrants. They went into detail about the immigrants and how they came over and why. Although Twain and Kingston both wrote about the immigrants in a positive light, Twain was sympathetic of the immigrants and Kingston focused more on their image and her ancestors.

In America during the 1850’s much was happing. The cartoon of Uncle Sam made its first debut in the NY Lantern weekly (National Geographic), Ohio passed notable child and women labor laws and was one of the first states to do this (Ohio, History Central), Massachusetts ruled that all school aged children had to go to school and receive an education (The Commonwealth of Massachusetts) and the first Chinese immigrants arrived at California’s shores (Seager, 49). When the Chinese first arrived at America’s shoreline they were greeted with amiable attitudes and they were “treated with favor” (Wellborn, 49). This was not the case as the immigrants began to settle and more arrived at America’s coast.

Even though looking back in history there was racism all over world, racism in America during 1880s towards Chinese was something to be noted for. In 1882, the U.S. Congress approved the Chinese Exclusion Act that prohibited the entry of Chinese, which was the first time America had ever restricted immigration. In addition, all Chinese arriving in San Francisco ports were subject to detention, interrogations, tortures, and physical examinations. One of the poems published in 1911 by Chinese immigrant wrote “So liberty is your national principle; Why is it that you practice autocracy? You uphold not justice, O, you Americans”(Arkush, Lee, 58) Even diplomats were not welcomed in America as Chen Lanbin was hit with stones and laughed at by ruffians. (Arkush, Lee, 59) According to Lin Shu in 1901, the American history of enslavement of blacks in Virginia can be dated back to 1619. But he continues by saying “Recently the treatment of blacks in America has been carried over to yellow people.”(Arkush, Lee, 78) Compared to

One’s identity can’t be given before one achieves a sense of character through self-reflection and personal experience. In “No Name Woman” Maxine Hong Kingston narrates the tale of her unmarried aunt who is obliged to suffer the consequences of her pregnancy in the ambiguous world of her Chinese roots. We are not given a name for the narrator nor for her family. We therefore might wonder who might be considered a “No name Woman” both in the book’s world and in our own. With the oxymoron No Name Woman, Kingston calls attention to reconcile both her Chinese and American identities to and mold her own identity as a result. This makes us think more deeply about the multiple meanings of Chinese experience in America.