In Puwat Chaukamnoetkanok's “Triply Identity: My Experience as an Immigrant in America”

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What does it mean to have a truly ‘American’ culture? The United States is and always will be a country comprised of citizens with cultural ties to other countries. After all, aside from Native Americans, every citizen should be able to trace their lineage back to another country from which an ancestor immigrated. So how does one identify himself as an American? More importantly, is there such thing as ‘American’ culture? In Randolph Bourne’s “Trans-National America” he rejects the concept of a cultural ‘melting pot’ intended to fuse together aspects of various cultures to form an inherently American one. In Puwat Chaukamnoetkanok's “Triply Identity: My Experience as an Immigrant in America”, Chaukamnoetkanok in part suffers an identity crisis upon arriving in the United States and finds himself filled with feelings of frustration and isolation. By contrasting these two papers, one can see similarities between Bourne’s reasons for the melting pot’s failure and Chaukamnoetkanok’s actual experiences. Yet through further comparison, one can also find subtle differences between the two author’s views about assimilation. World War I caused a “nationalization of politics and economic life [which] served to heighten awareness of ethnic and racial difference and spurred demands for “Americanization”” . After President Wilson declared that some Americans born in foreign countries were guilty of “disloyalty”, the government “demanded that immigrants demonstrate their unwavering devotion to the United States”. Following this, many different immigrant groups, sometimes even despite being refused citizenship, encouraged members to register for the draft. This, in turn, resulted in a demand for a method of integration known as the ‘melting pot’ or “the process by which newcomers were supposed to merge their identity into existing American nationality”. Randolph Bourne was

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