Mark Twain And Maxine Hong Kingston

Four Chinese mothers have migrated to America. Each hope for their daughter’s success and pray that they will not experience the hardships faced in China. One mother, Suyuan, imparts her knowledge on her daughter through stories. The American culture influences her daughter, Jing Mei, to such a degree that it is hard for Jing Mei to understand her mother's culture and life lessons. Yet it is not until Jing Mei realizes that the key to understanding who her

In the “Autobiography of a Chinese immigrant” written in 1903 by Lee Chew, dialogues about his point of view

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

Sui Sin Far’s short story, “In the Land of the Free” touches on the reality of being a Chinese immigrant in late-19th century America. The story revolves around a Chinese couple. The husband is ready for his wife, Lae Choo, to arrive from China with their new son, later named Kim. However, due to policies on immigration, the American government was forced to take possession of the child due to a lack of paperwork. However, Far’s short-story has a deeper meaning than just focusing on unfair immigration policies. She takes advantage of the story’s ending to symbolize a rejection of immigrant culture, most especially Chinese immigrant culture, by taking advantage of Kim’s change in behaviors, appearance, and dialect.

Beginning in the late 19th century and continuing to the early 20th century, many Chinese families struggled to gain social, economic, and educational stature in both China and the United States. In the book, A Transnational History of a Chinese Family, by Haiming Liu, we learn about the Chang family rooted in Kaiping County, China, who unlike many typical Chinese families’ exemplified hard-work and strong cultural values allowing them to pursue an exceptional Chinese-American lifestyle. Even with immigration laws preventing Chinese laborers and citizens to enter unless maintaining merchant status, Yitang and Sam Chang managed to sponsor approximately 40 relatives to the states with their businesses in herbalist

The Chinese immigrants also contributed to us a whole new culture of which we had not been familiar with before. They brought their religious beliefs, prompting a Chinese Temple to be built in 1863 in Oroville, which provided a place of worship for Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism (Bancroft). They also brought their traditions, like the celebrations that they’d have for certain holidays like the Lunar New Year. These celebrations entailed festivals, parades, partying and all of the Chinese community coming together in the streets. Another one of the traditions they held dear to their culture was theatre, and so they continued these performances and even built their own Chinese theatre in 1852 (Bancroft). They

Furthermore, there were many opportunities that the U.S itself presented to Chinese immigrants that were very desirable. For example the United States presented different variety of jobs. Such as Chinese gold miners, this was very exquisitely beneficial to them, because most of the Chinese’s reason for migrating to the United State was because at that time gold was discovered their. The Chinese did not only mind for gold other jobs were also included like, cooks, storekeepers, launderers, railroad workers, and household servants. And the two main jobs that you can find the most variety of numbers of Chinese were miners and railroad workers. In fact of the railroad jobs, for them it was a decent paying job. It was a pretty good amount of number of Chinese immigrants that were railroad workers; it was approximately ten thousand of them. And as I stated before the pay was pretty decent, the average railroad payroll for Chinese immigrants was about thirty five dollars a month. But their pay check would soon decrease during the day. Because the cost of food was about fifteen to eighteen dollars, so basically a Chinese railroad worker would make twenty dollars a month. Even though through the good payments the two main well paying jobs the Chinese had were very dangerous in many conditions. For instance, when they usually work in mines

In the early 1800’s industrialization of the northeast and other national endeavors such as railroads and road building required much manual labor. This vast manual labor job market opened the flood gates into the United States for immigrants seeking prosperity and a better life for themselves and their families. By the mid 1800’s many Chinese immigrants had made the voyage to the U.S. and sought work mainly in the factories of the prosperous northeast as well as the California gold mines. Culturally the Chinese people’s actions are motivated by the concept of bringing honor and respect to the family as a whole, and less concerned about individual successes or prestige, which resulted in Chinese immigrant’s willingness to do high quality work for long hours for very little pay. This was beneficial to the employer and company, but displaced many other immigrant workers which caused racial tensions. Chinese immigrants were accustomed to living in tight quarters, working together as families or community units and making do with what was available. These qualities assisted in the development of China Towns, housing and cultural centers for the Chinese immigrant population, near or in the large cities where their populations were greatest such as New York and San Francisco as. Many Americans viewed these China Towns as unsanitary and unhealthy brothels where prostitution and smoking opium was commonplace.

It is crucial to recognize the huge toll the Chinese Exclusion Act took on Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans, and the negative influence of racialization it had on immigration policy of other countries. In this paper, I will discuss the consequences of the Chinese Exclusion Act on Chinese culture and society in the United States, regarding to the isolation of Chinese society in U.S., paper identities and lives of illegal Chinese immigrants and how this Act guided the establishment

After the first wave of Chinese immigrants arrived in the United States in the early 1840s during the California Gold Rush, many Chinese people continued to travel across the Pacific, escaping poor conditions in China with hopes and ambitions for a better life in America. Many more Chinese immigrants began arriving into the 1860s on the Pacific coast for work in other areas such as the railroad industry. The immigrants noticed an increasing demand for their labor because of their readiness to work for low wages. Many of those who arrived did not plan to stay long, and therefore there was no push for their naturalization. The immigrants left a country with thousands of years of a “decaying feudal system,” corruption, a growing

Frank Chin has been the most vocal critic of Kingston's who accused her "of reinforcing white fantasies about Chinese Americans" (Chin, 1991) and claimed that writers like Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan and David Henry Hwang who won approval of the American white readers deliberately distorted the image of Chinese American to reinforce stereotypes and cater to the fantasies of American readers about a traditionalist Chinese culture. (Frank Chin, 1991, pp. 3-29)

Both groups were persecuted and shunned when they arrived in America. I think Scharf’s article was probably meant for anyone who believed the Chinese were being intrusive. However, this essay would also be very effective in persuading those who were not quite sure if the Chinese were ‘good or bad.’ My parents said that when they came to the United States in the 1990s, they were not treated badly. In a way, America gradually began to accept different people and that is why America is so diverse

Lowe makes note that throughout history, people native of the large Asian countries such as the China, Japanese, Korean, (Asian) Indian, have long played “crucial roles in the building and the sustaining of America”. And for anyone to challenge that statement would be a fool. For instance, a great deal of Hawaii’s plantation immigrant workers was of Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino descent. But often, their efforts have been left unnoticed, left

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

     What culture they had was to be forgotten – a difficult and practically impossible feat. The Chinese-Americans faced a wall of cultural difference that could only be scaled with the support of their parents and local community. The book review of Bone by Nhi Le stated clearly how “ … the first generations’ struggle to survive and the second generations’ efforts to thrive … ” made the transition into American culture possible. Overcoming barriers such as language, education, work ethic, and sex roles was just a beginning to the problems that all Asian – Americans faced.