ipl-logo

Summary Of An Ethnic Trump By Gish Jen

1004 Words5 Pages

An Ethnic Trump by Gish Jen narrates how a Chinese-American mother teaches her son about the involvement of racism. It is a personal essay about Gish Jen’s experience as the mother of a child that is biracial. Jen’s husband is of Irish descent and she is Chinese-American. Yet evidently, people view their son, Luke, as mainly Chinese. The author’s primary aim in writing this essay was to reflect on how multiracial people are perceived. People should not be defined according to their race or racial background. Unfortunately, these actions do occur to one of the main characters of the story, Luke. It is a known fact that Luke happens to be the most influential character throughout the entire story. Living in Cambridge, Boston, going to …show more content…

After Luke’s mother had witnessed Luke denying his Chinese culture by saying, “No, I’m not,” to the Irish boys, she had a talk with him. “Luke and I immediately went over things he could say if anything like that ever happened again. I told him that he was 100 percent American. It was a sorry chore. Since then I have not asked him about the incident, hoping that he has forgotten about it, and wishing that I could, too.” Instead of talking about what he could say next time, why not show signs of comfort that it is okay to be part Chinese? The mother obviously did not do that good of a job if she is “hoping that he has forgotten about it”. How does one simply allow a four year old to go through such a traumatizing experience and expect to forget it? Not enough action was done for the son in his time of need. To add onto that, where was the Luke’s father, Dave, in all of this? Throughout the story, the father does not say anything. Sometimes, the presence of an individual does not really need to be a factor. In society, it is well known that a father image for a son is very critical. “I knew that Luke was only interested in whales and ships.” The Irish culture provides some significance with whales and ships. In essence, it can be said that Dave unknowingly is the reason why Luke gravitated more towards his Irish culture than Chinese

Show More
Related
123 Words | 1 Pages

Using The Shifting Grounds of Race by Scott Kurashige focuses on the role of African Americans and Japanese Americans played in the social and political struggle that re-formed twentieth-century Los Angeles. By linking important historical events, such as Black Civil rights movement, NAACP, and Japanese Alien Land Law, internment camps, Kurashige also explains the classical black & white separation to then explore the multiethnic magnitudes of segregation and integration. Understanding how segregation, oppression, and racism shaped the area of Los Angeles became a shared interest between African American and Japanese Americans living together within diverse urban communities. Using this newly profound empowered a mental state that prepared

Read More
378 Words | 2 Pages

In the article, “Breeds of America: Coming of Age, Coming of Race,” which was first published in the Harper’s magazine, William Melvin Kelley recalls his “confusing” childhood of being a colored citizen in the United States. He begins his memoir by portraying a simple skin comparison with his friends. An Italy kid was blushed because he had a same brown skin color as Kelly does under the sun. Kelly raised a question about that blush: why would brown skin make the Italy kid embarrassing? Then Kelly introduces the unfair collision of race and culture.

Read More
1033 Words | 5 Pages

In this book, author Tara J. Yosso demonstrates how institutional power and racism affect the Chicano/a educational pipeline by weaving together critical race theory and counterstories. Critical race theory is a framework used to discover the ways race as well as racism implicitly and explicitly shape social structures, practices, and discourses(Yosso, pg.4). Counterstories refer to any narrative that goes against majoritarian stories, in which only the experiences and views of those with racial and social privilege are told. The counterstory methodology humanizes the need to change our educational system and critical race theory provides a structure for Yosso to base her research. This results in a beautiful hybrid of empirical data, theory, and fascinating narratives that works to analyze how forms of subordination shape the Chicana/o pipeline, while also exposing how institutions, structures, and discourses of education maintain discrimination based on gender, race, class and their intersections.

Read More
1417 Words | 6 Pages

Throughout Stephen Steinberg’s book the Ethnic Myth, multiple examples of how different ethnicities achieved economic ability and how others did not is discussed. He analysis a variety of different immigrant groups and how more than their cultural values played into whether or not they were successful in America. The following information in this paper will provide an example using black Americans as part of the “culture-of-poverty”. “The wronged are always wrong…” (New Republic, June 24, 1916) is the opening statement to chapter four and is associated with why the Negro is blamed for their own misfortune.

Read More
786 Words | 4 Pages

(Line 3) Clearly, the boy is still youthful in this situation. He begins to beg his father to tell him a story. His father, saddened by lack of a story, struggles to figure out something to tell the boy. The man then notes his fear that if he fails to tell his son stories, he will leave his father.

Read More
536 Words | 3 Pages

Consolisa Edmond Professor Sanati English Comp. 102-12 22 March 2017 Analysis of” Trying to Find Chinatown” Shortly after birth, we have our identity written on our birth certificate and we are forever defined by that. The world often defines the people within it, instead of people going off to discover their own identity themselves. Race, ethnicity and other factors like it describe who we are but not represent our identity. In David Hwang’s 1996 play “Trying to Find Chinatown” Hwang considers the role of race and ethnicity in how we identify ourselves and how others identify us.

Read More
377 Words | 2 Pages

When it comes to white nationalist movements, I personally have little knowledge about them. With that in mind, when it came to reading The White Nationalist Movement by Daniel Levitas, there were several aspects that I found interesting as well as surprising. One of the first things that I found the most interesting and surprising was that white national movement is still quite prominent in the United States. Specifically I found it surprising how intertwined they are with the modern political system. and subsequently how clever they are at gaining support.

Read More
880 Words | 4 Pages

In the novel “American Born Chinese” by Gene Luen Yang (2006), it talks about three different people’s stories. The author starts off with telling a story about a monkey called the Monkey King, who lives in the jungle, seeking for higher power to become considered a god in the book. The author also tells a story about an American born Chinese boy named Jin Wang, who moves from San Francisco and struggles with fitting in at a new school. The last story the author tells is about a boy named Danny who has his cousin Chin-Kee from China visit every year. Danny ends up struggling to keep his reputation in adequate shape at school after his cousin visits causing him to switch schools often.

Read More
1302 Words | 6 Pages

Immigration is deeply rooted in the American culture, yet it is still an issue that has the country divided. Marcelo and Carola Suarez-Orozco, in their essay, “How Immigrants Became ‘Other’” explore the topic of immigration. They argue that Americans view many immigrants as criminals entering America with the hopes of stealing jobs and taking over, but that this viewpoint is not true. They claim that immigrants give up a lot to even have a chance to come into America and will take whatever they can get when they come. The Suarez-Orozco’s support their argument using authority figures to gain credibility as well as exemplification through immigrant stories.

Read More
1686 Words | 7 Pages

Assimilation is usually meant to indicate what happens to immigrants in a new land. However, “rejection, loneliness, discrimination—these were the byproducts of living in the United States” (Ghymn 37). In Marilyn Chin’s essay on assimilation “How I Got That Name,” the speaker acquaints the readers how she got the American name “Marilyn.” The tension between the two cultures is evident, for the speaker is treated as “Model Minority.” Her race and ethnicity define her; in fact, the stereotypes inscribed with her race restricted and cage her significance in the society.

Read More
2051 Words | 9 Pages

Trying To Fit... These days we rarely see a group of people from different races hanging out together. It’s always a race that determines who are our friends and the first ones we reach out to. This problem is created either by nature or by the wrong household understanding.

Read More
694 Words | 3 Pages

“You talk so white, I would’ve never guessed you were actually black!” said everyone at my high school. “Is that your dad or just your mom’s boyfriend?” asked numerous of my classmates. Or my personal favorite: “what are you?” To answer this overly common and inherently rude question, I’m a first-generation biracial, meaning that I am a product of a direct interracial relationship.

Read More
1371 Words | 6 Pages

The world is filled with people, and like snowflakes, each person is not the same as another. Each person identifies with different aspects of their lives to create their own personal identities. I personally identify with my Italian side of my family to help form who I am today. I have found myself connecting with this side more so than the other parts of my identity. It affects how I live my life by becoming the center to the culture surrounding me.

Read More
705 Words | 3 Pages

Scenario design in high fidelity simulation The scenario being designed needs to address specific learning objectives (while not preventing other learning points to emerge). Defining a scenario – A patient case with a main story having the aim of bringing out specific learning objectives (usually 1-4, depending on the duration of the scenario). Can range from human factors (calling for help, dealing with a difficult patient) to more specific medical issues (management of acute cases) A degree of flexibility must be built into the scenarios as they have to adapt to the participant’s actions – making patients deteriorate more rapidly or using a member of staff to steer the scenario back on track by helping the participant without teaching

Read More
2008 Words | 9 Pages

Max Weber’s concept of “monopolistic closure” has been extremely influential in the analysis of ethnic relations in contemporary societies. Malesevic (2004) best describes Weber’s theory of monopolistic closure as a way of distinguishing between the open and closed relationships within society. Weber believed that ethnicity played a vital role in the identification of individuals as it was used as a device to distinguish between groups in modern society. However, through the works of Durkheim and Marx, it can be suggested that the concept of monopolistic closure holds limited analysis when understanding ethnic relations in contemporary society. The constant evolution of society now means ethnicity no longer plays such a vital role in the identification

Read More

More about Summary Of An Ethnic Trump By Gish Jen

Related Topics

Open Document