In The American Society By Gish Jen Summary

From this week’s readings I found the story “In the American society” by Gish Jen, especially appealing. The plot of the story focuses on a narration by a daughter about her first generation immigrant father struggling to keep the balance between his own cultural beliefs and American culture. The narration cleverly portrays the father, Ralph Cheng’s behavior within his own society and the American society. Based on this story, I believe that first generation Asian Americans faced a substantial challenge adapting to American culture and rituals. Therefore, they put in a great effort to maintain their own culture within their households and personal life. However, second generation Asian Americans, where as in the case of this story the two daughters, have already adopted to American culture and are used to American way of thinking. There are couple of examples which will elaborate the above claim.
First, analyzing the dynamics of the relationship between the mother and the father it is evident that the mother, Helen Cheng, is more susceptible to American culture and she is willing to change her lifestyle to adapt the American lifestyle. However, the father was not eager to adapt to the American culture. A conversation between the two daughters and
It is evident from the story that Mr. Cheng treated his work environment as his own society. Being the owner of the pancake house gave Mr. Cheng the opportunity to showcase his cultural traits freely. I believe Mr. Cheng treated his employees the same way his father treated villagers from the village he reigned. Most of the employees left the pancake house because they were often treated as Mr. Cheng’s servants. However, Mr. Cheng seemed to be pleased with the illegal workers that he hired. They were often willing to go above and beyond what is expected of them, even though they were under