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.
First of all, the American family structure compared to Adeline’s family structure have some similarities. First, Adeline’s father and Aunt Baba want Adeline to have a good education, so Aunt Baba and her can live together when she gets a good career. Her father said, “You will go to England with Third Brother this summer and you will go to medical school” (193). Adeline wanted to be a writer, but her father said you will starve and not make any money. Next, most American and Adeline’s Chinese family have a mom and a dad.
In the essay “My two lives,” Jhumpa Lahiri writes about her struggle with being Indian-American in the American society focusing on how being part of two cultures was confusing, stressful, and full of pressure from living two lives. After 37 years living in the United States, Lahiri understands why she felt as if she were living two lives during her childhood. She describes herself as an Indian- American because she moved with her family from India to the United States when she was very young. Being part of two different cultures for Lahiri was confusing and stressful and made her feel “short in both ends” (478). She also strives to reconcile her two selves as “like many immigrant offspring, I felt intense pressure to the two things loyal to the old world and fluent in the new approved of on either side of the hyphen” (478).
Tunis1 Grace Tunis Mrs. Otway English 4 December 18, 2013 Two Women: One Household You do not get to pick your family. Sometimes you are forced to live with people you may truly not get along with. In Pearl S. Buck's novel, The Good Earth, Wang Lung brings a concubine, Lotus, into his household forcing his children and wife, Olan, to accommodate her. This creates many problems in their once happy family, causing personality changes, mood swings, and lots of drama. This was very typical in ancient Chinese culture and the story tells us of years that pass by in a house of two women.
The essay “Se Habla Espanol” by writer Tanya Barrientos is a first person narrative describing her life experiences starting from her childhood up through her adult years. Tanya Barrientos is a first generation immigrant, coming from Guatemala at the age of three. In her memoir, Barrientos explains how Americans at that time were not culturally tolerant, and foreigners were expected to “leave their cultural baggage at the border.” As a result, her parents immerse her into the American culture by speaking only English, to ensure her success. However, in doing so she became ashamed of her ethnicity, and failed to identify with her native culture (Roen, Glau, & Maid 2011). .
In Alice’s case, her characteristics and values have been drastically influenced by what her family has been through in the past. An example of the influence of past lives on the behaviors of family members is the relationship between Alice’s mother and her grandmother. There is great conflict between the two of them during Alice’s childhood because her grandmother has such high expectations of Alice’s mother that she finds difficult to fulfill. Alice’s grandmother is an old fashioned Chinese woman, who believes that the wife of the house must bring honor to her family by perfecting all domestic duties. Juggling four children, cooking, cleaning and adjusting to a new society puts pressure on Alice’s mother.
These may provide insights and possible answers to identify conflicts between mothers and daughters as Hmong women integrate into American society. This study focuses on the disagreements between Hmong mothers and daughters regarding issues associated with schooling, extra-curricular activities, dating, and responsibilities in the home. The nature of these conflicts has a direct impact on both the mothers' and daughters' levels of education and sophistication as well as the familiarity with the "new culture," language, and
The novel traces the psychological development of the American daughter and her final acceptance of the Chinese mother and what the Chinese mother stands for. It is interesting to note that when Jing-mei Woo is asked by her three “aunts” to go to China in order to fulfill her mother’s long-cherished wish to meet her lost twin babies, Jing-mei shocks and upsets
Minfong Ho is an award-winning Chinese–American writer. Her works frequently deal with the lives of people living in poverty in Southeast Asian countries. Despite being fiction, her stories are always set against the backdrop of real events, such as the student movement in Thailand in the 1970s and the Cambodian refugee problem with the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s. Her simple yet touching language and her optimistic themes have made her writing popular among children as well as young adults. Life Minfong Ho was born in Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar), to an economist father and chemist mother, who were both of Chinese descent.
First the infant bonds with its mother. It’s during this time it learns to start development of emotions. Erickson’s “Eight Stages of Development” contends that if children don’t have their basic needs for security met early in life, they can become distrustful and fearful. A baby develops a bond of security and trust during the first two years of life, called the nurturing stage. Emotional development should be the most important thing we do for the child.