Inmigrants Like You

Struggle to Be an All-American Girl starts out with Elizabeth Wong describing a school. She tells about both her brother and her dreaded going to her Chinese school and the different atmospheres of the two schools. The Chinese school was like a dusty old chest and the other was like the box that a new pair of shoes came in. Both held treasures but she was far more interested in the new than what she felt to be old. While the Chinese school focused mainly on language, she points out that every day started with a lesson in politeness. To Wong the language was rough and without beauty. Shetells us of her grandmother’s way of speaking and how it was embarrassing to her. She didn’t want to be thought of as talking nonsense, hurried gibberish. Her brother seemed to feel the same way and he was very hard on his mother. He would constantly correct her even if she was in the middle of talking and if he messed up it was blamed on her. Wong reflects on her departure from that school, portraying it as an escape. She had multiple cultures influence her life but she was most proud that she was not a Chinese person but an American. The last sentence reveals that she regrets this.
Sometimes we just want to be like everyone else but in giving up what makes us different we lose a part of ourselves whether that is where we came from, our interests, even what we look