24 January 2013 “Half the Sky” Summarization In the book “Half the Sky Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn claim that solutions such as girls’ education and microfinance help to solve the problem of sex trafficking, forced prostitution, gender-based violence and maternal mortality. The authors introduce us to the problems of forced prostitution by depicting the story of Srey Rath, a Cambodian teenager who at the age of fifteen decided to go work as a dishwasher in Thailand to help pay the bills of the family. Srey was traveling with four friends who had all been promised jobs at the same restaurant. In the beginning, the girls were taken deep into Thailand by the job agent and handed over to gangsters who took the girls to Kuala Lumpur. They were dazzled by the big buildings and bright lights of the big city.
Chen, the bandit sold her to a Madam from Shanghai who transported Polly to America. Lalu sold to a man named Hong King who owned a saloon in Warrens. Polly's sense of home was changed, ever since she came to America. When she was in China, her home was with her family in a farming village, as she got shipped to America , she met new people, and found her home with Charlie in Salmon Canyon. In the beginning of the book, Lalu was in China with her family and was farming.
These became known as the Chinese Six Companies. The first company was the Zhonghua Gongsuo (Chung-hua Kung-so; Public Hall of the Middle Kingdom), established by Chinese immigrants on Sacramento Street in San Francisco. When a ship arrived from China, the company sent an interpreter to greet the immigrants and to offer them free rooms, water and fuel for about a month, until they could find jobs. By the early 1850s there were so many Chinese in San Francisco that the company could not take care of everyone, so members of various clans organized their own companies to help relatives who emigrated from their own districts in China. The Six Companies assisted their immigrant members, helped the sick and poor and arranged to send the bodies of deceased Chinese back to China.
People across the world come here in hopes of the “American Dream” and for some, it does happen, but at what cost? How many come in hopes of finding a better life but just realize that to find a better life they must leave behind culture and previous ways of life. They realize that although they come here to be accepted, they’re isolated and in some cases looked down upon by the natives, in this case Americans. Immigration has always been an issue to some natives, viewing immigrants as people who take and ruin their turf, rather than just trying to share it. In “The House on Mango Street” the author, Sandra Cisneros, really shows us all the troubles an immigrant faces like isolation and the struggle of assimilation.
Each of these mothers went through different hardships that kept secret for long time. The movie shows how the mothers past experiences help their daughters life. From this movie, I choose Lena who used to split bills with her husband, later divorces him. Lena’s weakness was when they had business lunches together, and she was the one who started split the meal bill half and half. Lena believes that sharing bills could make her independent and free, but the iron was different.
“I am an American citizen and she is no” is the opening line of “Two ways to Belong in America” the article written by Bharati Mukherjee. This is a story about one sister choosing to mainstream into American culture, while the other Mira chooses not to. Mira and Bharati is product of brain drain. They grow up in Calcutta, India and left that to study in Detroit to attend college to further their education and to return home. But, plans changed when Mira meet her husband an immigrant of India with a student’s visa and they later on married.
In the early 20th century as people began to spread throughout the United States and encounter people of different origins the meetings didn't flow so smoothly. Before the Civil War, introduction of minorities to white-native lands wasn't going to be accepted easily. These minorities consisting of African Americans and Asians were seeking opportunities of refuge by reconstructing their lives socially and economically. It was especially a struggle for women in a male dominated society for who were seeking equality and liberation. In the books To 'Joy My Freedom, Unbound Feet and The Rise of the New Woman, the authors had similar discussions of the struggles women encountered during a time period of emotional and physical abuse.
She struggled between the opposites her own culture and American culture for second generation of immigrant. Coffer’s father who decided to come to American tried to find a better job to get pay well and secure his children better future. By looking the word “assimilate” we could see how the immigrants integrate themselves into a new culture likes the author’s family tried to be more American and earn more money. As Coffer’s father joining the US Navy to get well pay, they all are doing this for making his family better lives. Communication is first step of living in a new culture, by looking through Coffers’ mother, she fears joining the American culture, because communication is the way to create culture and she is afraid to learn it.
Many of the immigrants from China that arrived in America came as refugees. In 1946, The War Brides Act was passed allowing Chinese Americans who fought in the war to bring their wives to America. Slowly, these immigrants began to create ethnic communities in which they could feel comfortable to live in, hence the creation of China Town. These immigrants have introduced their culture into American culture through the creation of restaurants, religious institutions, and holidays such as Chinese New Year. The creations of these institutions prove that this immigrant group is able to sustain the cultural practices from their country of origin.
She does an outstanding job with a clear argument and engaged prose providing an insight into the various aspects of immigrant life and depicted the qualities and ideals immigrants had that could truly benefit America “Adapting the best habits of first-generation immigrants, I think, can help us recall our own”. Claudia Kolker having been raised by parents who were immigrants her mother from Mexico and her father from Ukraine spark a curiosity about immigrant lives “My fascination with immigrants’ lives also stemmed from my own family experience”. Kolker narrates her research of eight varied cultural ideas: The Vietnamese money club, where Vietnamese help people to save by each month contributing an amount of money into a common pool which is distributed along the year to each member all at once. This loan clubs as Kolker states“I was witnessing a hui.....though everyone calls them different names ....rotating loans exist in nearly every traditional culture”. This loans help business to open with the pooled cash of a loan club “Japanese and Chinese immigrants relied on them heavily to build business in the nineteenth century in 1988”.