Asian American Experience

When Asian came to America— a place where full of unfamiliar faces, speak different language, have different belief and culture, how would they respond and adapt to these changes? This essay investigates on Asian American experience in terms of culture, racial discrimination, culture assimilation and collision, and lost of identity through diverse motions in four Asian American poems- “Eating Alone”, “Eating Together”, and “Persimmons” by Li-Young Lee, and “The Lost Sister” by Cathy Song. From the motions or movement in the poems, we can further look into their life and feeling of being an Asian American. In “Eating Alone” and “Eating Together”, speaker would like to express his yearning towards his death father and convey the hierarchy of

America is a white dominant society. Asian are recognized as abnormal. Asian American students often suffer from racial discrimination. (Young & Takeuchi, 1998). From the “Persimmons”, “Mrs. Walker slapped the back of my head and made me stand in the corner.” (Lee 2-3) Speaker was suffered from the physical punishment by his teacher just because he could not distinguish between two English words: persimmons and precision. As most of the Asian learn English as their second language, their English proficiency level may be low. As a result, they often being looked down by American natives. In “Lost Sister”, “Dough-faced landlords slip in and out of your keyholes, making claims you don't understand.” (Song 48-50) This shows that the relationship between Asian and American is not good, they did not develop trust. “Making claims you don't understand.” (Song 50) indicated that the white American would think that they are superior in the country and consider other nation to be inferior. Some white Americans would think that this group of Asians was intruder to their

Women were not allowed to walk freely. “the daughters were grateful, they never left home.” (Song 10-11) The speaker used irony to satirize that women cannot have the right to determine their own fate as it is their parents to determine on their foot binding. The only thing that they can do is to accept with a “grateful” heart. On the other side of the Earth, another sister escaped to America to seek for freedom. America achieves a higher gender equality. The speaker used antithesis to illustrate that in China “they never left home” (Song 11) and in America “women can stride along with men” (Song 36), it demonstrated the women right in China and America. However, everything has its trade off. “relinquished her name” (Song 28), “diluting jade green with the blue of Pacific” (Song 29-30) the sister in America found that she felt lost of her identity. Jade is the most precious jewelry in China because, in the view of feng shui, jade has the power to protect from negative energy. Its value is determined by its color, the more emerald it is the more expensive. “Diluting jade green” means she felt lost of protection and identity from China. Thus, in the last stanza, she claimed that “need China” (Song 53), “one fragile identification” (Song 54), “a jade