Identity By Suyuan Woo
In Peeled by Joan Bauer she uses identity in two different ways. The one way she uses it is how can our surroundings shape who we become. Another way she uses it is can first impressions be trusted. First let’s start with our surroundings shape who we are.
Many relatives view Suyuan Woo as a terrible mother with a narcissist personality, as she leaves her daughters behind and rub for safety. During World War II, the Japanese army marched into China taking control of acres of land as Chinese citizens fled for safety. Suyuan left her hometown, Kweilin, with her twins hoping to find her husband, a chinese soldier. In addition to her twins, Suyuan was also carrying food, clothes, jewelry and money. After hours of walking, her palms filled with blisters as she began to lighten the carrying weight by dropping bags on the ground, losing them forever.
Ever since Lee-Kung arrived at the Dragon Cafe, Su-Jen’s mother became closer and closer to her Step-Son. They spent time talking together, sitting on the fire escape, and being very friendly with each other. Su-Jen exclaimed to herself while looking in Lee-Kung’s bedroom window, “Lying together in the moonlight on his bed, my long, dark brother on top of my pale, slender mother, their naked bodies coiled around each other like snakes” (110). This was a truly heart wrenching thing for a young Su-Jen to see, as now she had to keep the secret from her family to stay true to her family's beliefs. This is also the point where Su-Jen turns more away from her mother and towards her father, as she now sees the type of person that her mother is.
On December 13th, 1937 Japan began it's siege on the great city of Nanking to what would stretch to a 6 week period of torture, rape, and plunder of Chinese citizens by Japanese soldiers. This event often referred to as the Nanking Massacre or The Rape Of Nanking, is considered to be the "forgotten holocaust" of World War 2. It's because of this subject's unfamiliarity that author Iris Chang writes her novel The Rape of Nanking. Her book brings to light the stories and realities of the horrors in Nanking that are often overlooked in world history. Chang has a clear passion for the topic that the reader can see throughout the book.
Family stories that I have heard of that time involve echoe the perverse tortures, the extreme violence and the disregard for Chinese lives by the Imperial Japanese Army that characterized
When Japan invaded China in 1937, they started a chain of events leading to their defeat at the end of the second world war. Between circa 1925 and circa 1950 the Chinese communist party took hold of China sparking nationalism and anti-japanese stances, bringing the people new opportunities, and advocating social and gender equality. The Chinese people felt a loss of pride when Japan invaded them, but with the rising of the communist party they felt a new sense of nationalism and pride in their country. When looking at the conversation between a teenager and his grandfather, we get a wider picture at what life was like before the communist party rose to power.
Suyuan Woo had a hard life growing up. She gives birth to two girls, but is forced to leave them in China, where she grew up. She goes onto live in America, where she marries and has June and Waverly. The secret of her twin daughters remains hidden to her daughters, until the time is right.
An-mei Hsu was a young girl in China when her mother left her to go work as a concubine for a rich man. This caused An-mei to grow up with her grandmother as her main parenting figure, which resulted in her following Popo’s beliefs and customs. Popo told An-mei cynical sides of stories about her mother, and was the leading factor of her developing dislike for her mom. But when she enters back into An-mei’s life, a traumatic accident happens and causes her to be associated with even more negative memories. “This was the kind of pain so terrible that a little child should never remember it.
“Her actions remind me that, even under unbearable circumstances, one can still believe in justice,” in David Henry Hwang’s foreword, in Ji-Li Jiang’s memoir Red Scarf Girl, commemorated even during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution anyone can overcome adversity (9). Ji-Li Jiang was a young teenager at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, and living through a very political time in China’s history made Ji-Li into the person she is today. Ji-Li’s intelligence, her choices, and family devotion made her into the headstrong and successful person she is today. Even when Ji-li thought she was unintelligent, others saw she was wise. There were many moments when Ji-Li was reminded she was very smart.
Chin-Kee had hidden his identity to be a “conscience - as a signpost to Jin’s soul” (221). Chin-Kee represents all of those ridiculous Chinese stereotypes that haunt Jin. Chin-Kee guides Danny to his true self, Chinese American
It was her mother that first understood that she couldn’t erase her Chinese side, that it was a part of her identity as much as being American was. As she reminisces on this, it starts to guide her in finding her identity. When she meets with her sisters, she thinks to herself “... I see no trace of my mother in them [her sisters]. Yet they still look familiar. And now I also see what part of me is Chinese.
In the journal article, Coble emphasizes his arguments of how the Second Sino-Japanese War during the 1940’s is remembered in China in a way that focuses on Chinese nationalism in a manner that glorifies the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts at combating fascism and China’s victimization during the war (Coble, p#401-404). These arguments are elaborated throughout the article as being driven towards the Chinese public/political preference for the patriotic nationalist narrative and atrocity numbers game which bolsters Chinese identity while downplaying possible counter evidential presentations (Coble, p#409-410). The main points of the article are to emphasis modern Japanese reception to the wartime events and the desire for major modern Japanese
Suyuan’s American Dream starts in her heart when she decides to escape from the chaotic China and find a better life by immigrating to America. However, she loses her two babies on the way to Chungking. American Dream means different things for different people. Suyuan has fulfilled her American Dream in a certain degree by trying to provide her daughters with successful, blissful and better lives. First of all, Suyuan left Kweilin for Chungking in order to find her husband and avoid the Japanese.
In the words of Jing-Mei in the last line of the story, “Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished wish” (Tan 159). Throughout her life, Suyuan, their mother, held onto the hope that she would see her daughters again. In this hope, she named Jing-Mei in connection to her sisters, keeping the “long-cherished wish” that someday her daughters would reconcile and complete their family circle. The occasion that
Nanjing Massacre: The role of Iwane Matsui The Nanjing Massacre, also called the Nanking Massacre, took place in Nanjing on December 13, 1937. It is also known as the Rape of Nanking (Rape of Nanjing). It was a genocidal war crime that lasted more than six weeks. A mass murder and rape of Japanese troops happened against Nanking, the capital of China back then.
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