Malcolm X And Lam

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The essay “Love your Immigrant Parents, follow your Bliss” by Andrew Lam is about his story of when he told his parents that he was deciding to drop out of medical school to become a writer. Giving out a message to the reader that it’s better to do the things that you love and are passionate about and not what is expected from you. What influenced Lam personally to follow his own path of becoming a writer was when he realized he fell in love with writing. However, Lam was also influenced by his bicultural background in a sense that he was Vietnamese and that made him struggle with “filial piety” but also had the influence of his American culture was what pushed him towards becoming a writer. This is reminiscent to Malcolm X’s “A Homemade Education …show more content…

In the article on “A Homemade Education” Malcolm X also had obstacles to over to get where he wanted to be. Malcom X and Lam both struggled to achieve their dream and become successful. Malcolm X struggles with his lack of education to be where he wanted to be. His drive to learn was what made in successful in the future. Both Lam and Malcolm had to go against their cultural norms to be where they wanted to be. In Malcolm’s situation he wasn’t able to have the education he felt he needed and started to from prison. Once he felt he had enough education he then became interest in his culture and started to realize that history stories he had known of didn’t exactly happened as he had thought. According to Malcolm “The teachings of Mr. Muhammad stressed how history had been “whitened” --- when white men had written history books, the black man simply had been left out.” What he means by this quote is that from what he had read Mr. Muhammad opened his eyes to how white men have pushed African Americans to the side and not want to include them as part of history. Malcolm then realized just how badly American Americans have been treated not just during slavery but all throughout history. This then encouraged him to keep studying and reading books. Although Lam and Malcolm had complete different situations they both focused on their main goals and were determined to getting to where they wanted to