What have you learned about the Chinese Americans in the three stories?
After I read the two stories (The Woman Warrior and the Joy of Luck Club) and the poem (self-help for fellow refugees) I learned about the Chinese Americans life and conflicts. I learned that Chinese Americans have a problem with describing their identity. In the two stories and in the poem the idea of losing identity is mentioned. The three writers said that they can’t categorize themselves either as Chinese since their parents left china and they were born and arise in the USA nor as Americans since they can’t free themselves from their Chinese roots.
I learned that Chinese Americans left china because of the bad situations they lived there. They lost their property (communists took it from them), were an able to have private lives, were an allowed to think or criticize and were treated bad. They went to United States in order to have a better life because United states was the land of opportunities, freedom and equality. Through the stories I learned that United State wasn’t really the land they dreamed of because these Chinese were discriminated against also in the United state and lost their property again when the communists decided to have a park lot as Kingston mentioned in her story “The Woman Warrior”.
The Chinese Americans females faced more difficult problems and they emphatic them in their stories. They had to deal with their low social status and with their parents old mentality. china was completely a male dominated society where men preferred among women. As a result women have to behave in the way that society force them to behave. These females refused to behave according to the way society sees they should behave. Moreover, to have their Chinese parents mentality or to accept being in a lower status than men. So they refused to be the ideal woman that society said they should be but to be themselves.
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