Top-Rated Free Essay
Preview

Peeling Bananas

Satisfactory Essays
369 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Peeling Bananas
English M01 A Monika Savic Autobiography Journal Peeling Bananas Wendy Lee wrote this essay when she was in high school. She was born in America, but her parents were born in China. While she focuses mainly on going to school, she wants to be an American but without losing her hybrid of two cultures. In her first paragraph, she talks about her friend’s father compared her to a banana, because she has the yellow skin of a Chinese, but inside she is white like an American. She thinks she has no different with other people in the kindergarten. In the second and third paragraph, she talks about in the kindergarten, her teacher’s decision to have students color paper dolls, and they made red for Indians, black for Afro-Americans, and yellow for Chinese. The dolls that didn’t color at all were for Americans. That experience made her got lock of similarity and equality. In the fourth paragraph, she talks about the differences between Chinese and American culture. She never noticed the disparity between her lifestyle and that of white Americans, until she began school. And her mother taught her how to use chopsticks, and showed her satin Chinese dresses, but she was more concentrated on American style. After her mother decided to send her to Chinese School, she got the same predicament with other Chinese- American children, they were not able to speak, read, or write Chinese nicely. At the same time, she began to understand more and more between Chinese culture and American culture. She found the deep respect and worship. She realizes that as a hybrid of two cultures, she is special, and perhaps that uniqueness should be preserved. As a Chinese girl and I have the same experience with her. I’m studying in a country that has totally different culture from my motherland. May be one day I can become a citizen in America, but I will always remember that I am a Chinese, and I want my first-generation children to remember the way their ancestors lived. Because we are hybrid of two cultures or more, we are unique, and we should preserve our uniqueness culture. That’s our advantage.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    GUAIA ESSAY

    • 823 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Living on the verge of two different cultures can envelop in lost identities. Michelle Law is a girl who is torn between two different identities, a prevalent theme that coexists in the many stories of Growing up Asian in Australia. During Michelle’s early stages, she has stumbled upon many conflicts for her and her family to overcome. In Australia, she was teased about her appearance, her hand-me-down, hairless arms, oversized clothing, and her peculiar lunch. “Now that I thought about it, everything up to that point in my life seemed so incredibly abnormal compared to everyone else I knew.” She is appointed with the feeling of anxiety, she wanted to be normal. Michelle confesses to her mum she simply wants to be ‘normal’. Yet we are all the same, looking for a group to fit in and be normal, not be ashamed of your own culture and heritage. Thus, being portrayed as the outsider to the Australian Culture can impact to adjust their way of life just to fit in.…

    • 823 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In 1998, Eric Liu wrote a book about his struggle with acculturation titled “The Accidental Asian”. A chapter within the book called “Notes of a Native Speaker” depicts an essay written by Liu which fully describes his struggles with race and how he overcame them. Eric Liu is an American born Taiwanese Asian. His parents immigrated to the United States before he was born and in so, gave him a mixed cultural background. He started becoming a writer after attending Yale University and graduating from Harvard Law School. In his “Notes of a Native Speaker” author Eric Liu argues that as he was “becoming white” he was achieving, learning the ways of the upper middle class and distancing himself from radicals of any hue. He has assimilated and in turn put himself into the profile of the “banana”.…

    • 876 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Tan’s word choice [diction] exposes her insecurity in her heritage and desire to be an average American teenager, in her opening. The author described traditional American food in an appealing way, “…roasted turkey and sweet potatoes…” but omitted any detail about “…Chinese food.” She labeled American manners as “proper”, but dubbed her relatives and their Chinese customs as “noisy”. The significance of this strategy lies in its ability to make the text relatable. The entire narrative relies on the author’s shared experience with the audience, being ashamed of their incongruity and their pursuit of normality.…

    • 425 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This essay can relate best with reader from a Hispanic background, being that they come from a different country and they are not fluent English speakers. They can also relate to Cisneros’s family experiences. In contrast, Tan’s audience is Asian-Americans, because they can identify to the type of speech or fragmented or “broken language” like Tan mentions in “Mother Tongue.” The simplification of certain concepts that Tan practices in her writing allows her writing to be grasped by a wide range of readers. However, both pieces of writing deal with two female writers that are writing to immigrants from whom English is a second…

    • 1111 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In The Struggle To Be An All-American Girl, Elizabeth Wong writes about her personal accounts of going to Chinese school to learn the language of her heritage and wanting to become All-American. Wong's purpose for writing this essay was to inform others of how she grew up and now she regrets her discussion. The genre of the essay is a personal essay because narrative and descriptive passages are used as well as first person. This essay's audience is other Chinese-American youth that want to become all-American or other that just want insight of her life. The social context of the essay is that there are others that are required to go to Chinese school and the cultural was the enlightenment regarding that not continuing to learn the language of her heritage. Wong's essay is a simple little passage telling about her life to others in the same situation.…

    • 511 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Each girl eventually recognizes how the older generation played a significant part in shaping their identities causing them to embrace their Chinese heritage. The short stories focus on the first American mothers and their American Chinese daughters.…

    • 490 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fish Cheeks

    • 696 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In Amy Tan’s Fish Cheeks, published in a 1987 issue of Seventeen Magazine, Tan wishes to let her audience know that it is okay to want to be different, but always hold on to who you were before as well. Ms. Tan drew in the audience by beginning her story with the common line about love. She made things interesting by tell us that her crush was set to join her at Christmas Eve. She went on to explain that her Chinese cultural family was an embarrassment to her. When her crush got to her house, she avoided him and anyway that she could embarrass herself. It didn’t take long for her family to step right up and embarrass her however. Soon after dinner, the minister and his family left and Tan was given a gift by her mother. Her mother warned her that it is okay to want to look different, thus the gift of a mini skirt, but her mother also warned her that she should never be ashamed of where she came from.…

    • 696 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The graphic novel American Born Chinese (2006), by Gene Luen Yang, is a very modern and influential piece of work that can be compared to the short indie film Two Lies (1990), directed and written by Pamela Tom, which had preceded the novel by 16 years. These two different forms of work, both utilizing their ability to teach the audience, are used as powerful venues for the topic of identity crisis among the Asian people in a majority European American world. In the film, we have Mei and her family who are all having some trouble adjusting to their lives in Southern California but more specifically we have Mei and her trouble to understand her mother 's cause and intent for having undergone double eye-lid surgery. In ABC, we have our protagonist, Jin, who is having trouble fitting into his new school in San Francisco since he is one of the very few Asian admitted to the school. Another time line in the novel is the story of the monkey king who does anything to get rid of the fact that he is a monkey in order to fit into society. The third is the story of Danny, a European American who has trouble and often becomes embarrassed with his hyperbolic Chinese cousin, Chin-Kee. This character is first introduced by saying "Harro Amellica!" while Jin 's father, carrying giant Chinese take out container says "I 'll put your luggage into your room, Chin-Kee" (48). All three of these time line show our characters having some sort of shame or embarrassment to the fact that their own image or background is different from those around them.…

    • 2458 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Never compromise your culture because you are your culture”. In the short story “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, The Red Headed Hawaiian by Chris McKinney, and The Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera, Jing Mei, Rudy Puana, and Frida Kahlo reveals how culture informs the way you view others and the world because it defines their perspectives, boundaries, and life experiences.…

    • 1296 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Rhetorical Analysis

    • 1711 Words
    • 7 Pages

    “The Squint and the Wail” is an essay by Michael Hsu. Hsu, a Taiwanese American author and editor, wrote this essay in order to express his views on the negative connotations that occur with some of the racially charged objects present in society. More specifically, the essay deals with the stereotypical nature of The Chin Family. The Chin Family is the name of Stefano Giovannoni’s tabletop collection, which includes salt and pepper shakers that have the caricaturized facial expressions of Chinese people (Giovanni, 404). In this essay, Hsu talks about the appalling nature of the stereotypical features and how those features pose a derogatory inference to Chinese culture, but then reciprocates his views on the tabletop collection to a more neutral stance. Hsu’s main claim is that it is derogatory to exaggerate on the racial-specific physical features of a race and to present that exaggeration to the public under the guise of an everyday tool. Hsu’s piece shows race from a particular perspective and then compares that perspective to the perspectives of the individuals he associates himself with. Hsu’s persuasive approach can be broken down and interpreted by viewing his stance through ethos, pathos, logos, and mythos.…

    • 1711 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fish Cheeks

    • 545 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Acceptance in a new environment is tough whether you are from distant lands or around the corner fitting in is always desired. This is something many kids can relate to at one point or another. Amy Tan’s essay “Fish Cheeks” exposes the reader to the vulnerability she felt as a young Chinese teenager growing up in America.…

    • 545 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Asian American Dreams

    • 1117 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Different from the other minorities groups, she assumed what Chinese Americans wished to be was not how to preserve their cultural identity, instead, they tried to explore by what they could be made a fully American. However, she was obviously dissatisfied with she was forever conceived as an “alien” even she was born in New Jersey.…

    • 1117 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    These physical attributes can mean people; particular school kids categorize migrants and offer a very constant reminder to the migrants of the differences they possess. In the anthology Growing up Asian in Australia Aditi Gouvrnel shares with the reader in her story “Wei-Lei and Me” of her experiences of migration in the school playground. Through this story the reader sees just how some of the simple differences in life, like where Gouvrnel is from can cause a person to feel like an outsider and making it very difficult to feel as if she belongs to any group at all. Insult after insult kids in the playground and at Gouvernel’s school would tease her, one insult she recalls, was based upon her dark skin colour, that it “even looks…

    • 1031 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This reminiscent piece hides nothing about the fact that acculturation, although very beneficial, is a difficult process to carry out in today’s society. Liu’s difficulties fitting in, however, helped him to become the person he is today. Liu’s word choice, figurative language, and personal experiences help him share his difficult coming-of-age story. Although America is a place where many different races and cultures come together, the question of whether its citizens will ever accept those of other races and cultures for who they are still…

    • 578 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Being an Outsider

    • 973 Words
    • 4 Pages

    As I walked into the room filled with eyes shooting my direction, I noticed that I was one of two Asians in my class. During the second week of school, a chubby Hispanic girl mumbled “ugh, china” as she passed the glue during our project. The feeling of anguish in one’s stomach and cold anger that I felt when she called me that was well, hard to stomach. They say that revenge is best served cold but at the time I did not know what the word china meant but I knew that it could not have been good because all the kids were laughing at me. The lone feeling of being in the middle and the laughingstock deeply scared my memory and made me a very cold and introverted person. Because of the clear segregation between…

    • 973 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics