This paragraph from Kesaya Noda’s autobiographical essay “Growing Up Asian in America” represents the conflict that the author feels between her Japanese ethnicity, and her American nationality. The tension she describes in the opening pages of her essay is between what she looks like and is judged to be (a Japanese woman who faces racial stereotypes) versus what she feels like and understands (life as a United States citizen). This passage signals her connection to Japan; and highlights her American upbringing. At this point in the essay, Noda is unable to envision her identity as unified and she describes her identity as split by race. Using the image of a line, she writes, “My race is a line that stretches across ocean and time” (K.
The Japanese immigrants never quite fit in, for they were “of the yellow race” (Takaki 179). And yet, they risked it all and left their home country, their families, and headed to America, like many immigrants before them. Not many found the riches and the opportunities that they were seeking, but there was no going back. They were in America and they had to make the best of what they could; their pride stood in the way of their surrender. America proved to be a much more cruel land than they had ever expected, but Japanese immigrants insisted on coming to America and often bringing their families with them, but why?
This essay is written for the purpose of analyzing Takaki's approach on why we live in such a diverse society and how we came about it. He shares the importance of the making and the history of our country. There are many takes on how this country was formed and I will be reviewing Takaki's approach to this and personally determine if his perspective is fair and just. America in a New Perspective As a Japanese American, Ronald Takaki was born in America and is a citizen of this country. Did this have an effect on how he portrays the white race in dealing with the issues of minority groups migrating to this country?
A History of Asian Americans, Strangers From a Different Shore, written by Ronald Takaki, displays an extensive history of Asian Americans as he combines a narrative story, personal recollection and spoken assertions. As long as we can remember, many races such as the Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese and Japanese have dealt with some type of discrimination upon arriving to the United States. A particular part in the book, Chapter 11, mainly focuses on Asian immigrants and Southeast Asian refugees from the 1960s to the 1980s that were treated as the “strangers at the gate again.” Ronald Takaki refers to them as “strangers at the gate again” as a figure of speech for the people who are from Asian background who have struggled to settle in the United States, only to find out that old
DavidSoComedy made a video in response to Alexandra Wallace's video talking about Asians. In his video, Vlog #4: Asians in the Library - UCLA Girl, Alexandra Wallace is going wild on Asians. This video appeared on YouTube on March 14, 2011. In this video his purpose is to convince his viewers that Asians must equal to others. David states that there is no reason anyone should harm another person no matter how crazy their opinions.
The poem has life experiences of a fourteen-year-old girl who is caught between the Japanese and American culture. The young girl claims that she does not know how to use Japanese chopsticks that are symbolic of the Japanese culture. In fact, the girl claims that she understands more the hot dogs as opposed to using chopsticks (Rhea 7). This means that the girl seems to understand the American culture as opposed to her Japanese culture. The girl identifies more with the American culture and thus the issue of American identity.
Linsanity: The Change in Asian American Identity On February 4th, 2012, benchwarmer New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin created an international phenomenon that was known as Linsanity, which reveals the underlying racial tensions of Asian Americans in the National Basketball Association (NBA). While Lin has been acknowledged for his insane ran leading to a winning turnaround during the few weeks of Linsanity, most of it was because of his backstory of being the underdog imprisoned in the racial ideologies restraining Asian Americans. Jeremy Lin is an Asian American born in the United States to Taiwanese immigrant parents who had an infatuation towards basketball leading towards Jeremy’s interest in basketball at a young age. During Lin’s senior year of high school, he received no athletic scholarships to play basketball and eventually became an
In her autobiography, Neisei Daughter, Monica Sone shares her journey and struggles of growing up, a task made more difficult as she faced racial and gender discrimination. Over the course of the novel she becomes aware of her unique identity and goes from resenting it, to accepting and appreciating her identity. At the age of six, Sone became aware of the fact that she was different, “I made the shocking discovery that I had Japanese blood. I was a Japanese (p. 3).”
Ronald Takaki a renowned pioneer in the field of ethnic studies has over the years authored numerous books on diversity in American society. As a grandson of Japanese immigrants who became the first black studies professor at UCLA, Takaki for many years has continually tried to bridge cultures and ethnic groups in the United States. In his book “A different mirror: A history of multicultural America”, Takaki addresses the idea of multiculturalism in our society, and also talks about how for many years we have been told to acknowledge the notions that the core principles of our nation uprooted only from one group rather than a contribution from other various cultures as well. The ‘master narrative’ posed by Takaki describes the growing
Reluctance perpetrates erasure and invisibility. Despite the stagnancy in social perception of Asian Americans, one must also recognize how both narratives bring up consciousness of the issues. Persistent push of political action in the tribunal and in the commission brings about an emergence of ethnic identity. Tenacious and determined, both the Cambodians and the Japanese embraced their pasts to amend the
African Americans on the battle front are put into segregated divisions, whereas Native Americans dealt with compliment racism or unintentional racism. Chinese Americans were concerned with being accused of being Japanese, while the Japanese Americans tried to prove they were American too. Throughout his book, Takaki demonstrates the varying levels of racism experienced, and how hard work and perseverance helped these groups prove themselves to some degree. Takaki claims, all of these minorities groups, gained some form of freedom and equality either through the military or through job opportunities and improvements.
This is one of the most significant quote in the book. Instead of comparing her immigrant mother to Linda, who was American born, Linda uses the example of being in a privileged white family. Linda mentions, “from the age of seven to eighteen, there was nothing Asian about me except my body” (169-70). Linda stated that she looked Asian, but she didn’t feel Asian what so ever. She used the quote, “Since leaving Boiling Springs, I was often asked by complete strangers what it was like to grow up being Asian in the South.
Written works about American Identity are a very common theme amongst writers, including poet Dwight Okita and short-story writer Sandra Cisneros. Dwight Okita is famous for her poem “In Response to Order 9066: All Americans of Japanese Descent Must Report to Relocation Centers,” in which the theme of American identity is portrayed through a 14-year-old girl. In a similar way, Sandra Cisneros’s short story is told by a young girl of Mexican heritage who prefers American culture—in sharp contrast to her deep-rooted Mexican grandmother. Although the overall theme of the two texts is “American Identity,” both Okita's poem and Cisneros's short story delve deeper and portray that cultural heritage and physical appearances do not determine what it
Historically, groups of people whose “label” is comprised of conjunctive ethnicities experience a difficult time finding their true identity, but identity is found when unidentifiable individuals find a common goal. In the course of the last two weeks, we explored a concept called “Pan-Ethnicity” which deals with the unification of multiple ethnicities. It’s concept and practice is displayed by Yen Le Espiritu’s “Coming Together: The Asian American Movement”, and in chapter eight and nine of Diane C. Fujino’s book, “Samurai Among Panthers” respectively. In Espiritu’s text, a pan-ethnic organization or more specifically, a pan-Asian organization did two things for the Asian American movement.
In Dwight Okita’s poem the theme is physical appearance does not determine what it means to be American. The title of the poem is “In Response to Executive order 9066…”, and is by Dwight Okita. The government issued executive order 9066. This Order detained Japanese Americans. An excerpt
Moreover, the way she introduces herself in terms of a group or as “we” (24) focuses on the Japanese or rather Eastern norm of importance attached to a group rather than an individual which deviates from the Western notion of