Introduction: - Joan Didion’s Play it as it Lays, Junot Diaz’ Drown, and Maxine Hong Kingstons’ The Woman Warrior all demonstrate different intersections of race, class and gender. Each novel provides a unique perspective of growing up in American society. In Play it as it Lays, Didon dictates a story of Maria Wyeth, a Caucasian wealthy actress, struggling with depression. Contrastly, Diaz’ introduces Junior, a Domincan male, who spent his childhood living in a third world country, and struggles with poverty even after moving to the States. Finally, Kingston shares her hardships of adjusting into the role of a Chinese-American woman in her memoir, The Woman Warrior.
Kingston’s story “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe” employs numerous fantasy elements in depicting her separation from the restrictiveness of China and further, her discovery of harmony between her ancient family’s culture and her new American one. Navigating through confusion and anger, Kingston is ultimately able to remove herself her Chinese bindings and find a sense of accord between her past and her future. Kingston’s rhetoric conveys her struggle with the complexities of her Chinese culture and her inability to come to a core truth. Furthermore, she gravitates toward American culture for its simplicity. Kingston is having difficulties sorting fact from fiction in her mother’s story about Moon Orchid’s encounter with her husband.
Unbound Feet The immigration of Chinese women was one of the most overlooked and understudied significant event in women’s history, until now. Their rise from being considered slaves, to gaining respect and credibility, is one of the most influential for women’s equality across America. In Unbound Feet, Judy Yung examines the hardships and rise of Chinese women as they immigrate to America to fulfill their dreams, yet are bound by discrimination and bind together to rise above racism and sexism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yung examines the immigration and rise of the culture in five decades. Yung asks herself “What sociohistorical forces were at play that can explain social change for Chinese American women in the first half of the twentieth century?” (Yung, 5) The book tells of their oppression in America through prostitution, gender roles, anti-Chinese immigration laws, and class discrimination.
Name: Instructor: Course: Date: “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan The article “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan is mainly about the author’s thoughts and judgments on broken English in comparison to Standard English. Tan is an American writer who was born in China and is torn between two different worlds: the American society and the Chinese society, which have very diverse societal behaviors and values (Tan 142-146). Tan describes how she relates with her mother who, according to her, speaks broken English. She talks about the limitations of her mother’s English including its advantages and disadvantages. This paper provides a summary of the article, including its major themes.
Red Azalea was published in 1994. Something that affects the book historically is that the China Cultural Revolution was mentioned in the book, because she had to go through the hardships of living during that period of time. 4.) Since this is a memoir of Anchee Min’s life growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution, I don’t think there’s much bias in the book, because she lived through it. It reminds me of Diary of Anne Frank.
To make her point clear she uses a lot of pathos and a lot of examples from experiences with herself and her two daughters, Louisa and Sofia. At the beginning when she tells the stories about her daughters trying to fight back you think ’what a terrible mother’, but she uses this feeling to support the view the readers have on the Chinese mothers as being mean to their kids so that afterwards she can tell how it turned out good and therefor the way she raises her kids is the best. Amy Chua has a high ethos because she is a professor at Yale which is a very respected job, and as a parent it makes her more reliable because she tells the reader that her parents treated her the same way that she treats her daughters, and as we can see she has been very successful. Also she uses loghos: ”In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70 % of the Western mothers said either that ”stressing academic success is not good for children” or that ”parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun”. By contrast,
The Significance of Eurikleria, Arete and Penelope I believe Odysseus faces two types of women, honorable and dangerous. Figuring out which women are honorable and dishonorable and which are dangerous and deadly is Odysseus’s challenge throughout the story. Eurikleria, Arete and Penelope demonstrate hospitality and morals befitting honorable women, especially when we compare them to the women Odysseus has encountered for the last ten years like Klypso, Kirke and the slave women in his own house. Eurikleria, Arete and Penelope ultimately renew his confident faith in spite of Agamemnon’s warning not to trust or confide in any woman. If we focus on the honorable women in the story and their significance to Odysseus, we must start by first
English 102 February 6th 2012 Silver Waters Run Deep The short story “Silver Waters” by Amy Bloom is a story about the opportunities and future of a young woman that is cut short by mental illness. The story takes you thru the emotions of a family that has to deal with the mental illness then the loss of the person. It makes you laugh and then cry as you travel down the road with them. As I read the story I ask? :”what does this make me think?” (Lynn) (20) When you first meet Rose you are immediately drawn in to the talents of this beautiful woman.
In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the novel is set in Alabama America during the early 1930's. The character Jean Louise Finch (Scout) is essential to the text as she helps the readers understand important life lesson's throughout the book. The life lessons learnt are it's a sin to kill a mockingbird, to walk around in someone else's shoes and courage. Scout first learns of courage when Jem has to read for the old lady down the road Mrs Dubose. During the book Mrs Dubose dies from being a morphine addict "It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what."
The Joy Luck Club Assignment The film the Joy Luck Club was an excellent account of four different accounts of Asian American women and their grown up assimilated daughters. It dealt with the marked discrepancy in the story of the rough relationships of first generation Asian American mothers and the daughters’ complete assimilation. It was interesting viewing the mothers’ adherence to their customs and beliefs clashing with their daughters’ acceptance of the American lifestyle. In addition, the stereotypes that were perpetuated by the movie were intense, mainly of Asian men and women. By showing the beliefs and customs of the Chinese still done here in America, the film makes a massive effort to reinforce negative stereotypes such of Asians as sexist, poverty-ridden, cruel, and strange, exotic, and