The Struggle To Be An All-American Girl

For more than 300 years, immigrants from every corner of the globe have settled in America, creating the most diverse and heterogeneous nation on Earth. Though immigrants have given much to the country, their process of changing from their homeland to the new land has never been easy. To immigrate does not only mean to come and live in a country after leaving your own country, but it also means to deal with many new and unfamiliar situations, social backgrounds, cultures, and mainly with the acquisition and master of a new language. This often causes mixed emotions, frustration, awkward feelings, and other conflicts. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, the author

Growing up, I always thought of myself as an American Girl — until I walked into an American Girl Doll store. As the 7 year old daughter of an Art professor who spent an unusual amount of time listening to her mother ramble about artists such as Monet at art museums, I never had the opportunity to explore an American girl doll store until one of my book club friends offered to take me there. So when that happened, I gathered up my life assets of exactly $13.22 and determined that I was going to make an American girl doll, that looked like myself, the first ever purchase purely of my own.

What does it feel like to be raised in an immigrant family? In the essay “Mother tongue” by Amy Tan, the author describes how her mother’s English influences her in her career and life that the “mother tongue” does not limit her as a writer, but shaped her and her perception on life instead. And her attitude to her mother’s English changes from the initial embarrassment to the final appreciation.

In the essay Tan writes about her mother’s English and its influence. Learning a language can be very difficult because not only you have to learn the language, but you also must learn vocabulary and having to cope with a different culture. Tan’s mother is a great illustration of this adjustment to English-based American culture while in some cases proceed to think in Chinese ways. Tan to begin with thought that her mother’s English is “broken”, but she then realized that her mother’s English reflects a blend of diverse societies, and she really benefits from this blend of both Chinese and American societies through her distributed making, appearing to as a one of a kind class of Chinese American composing both in this paper and her other books. when I carefully read through this essay.

In Richard Rodriguez's essay , “ Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood ” he writes about how he struggled as a child who only spoke Spanish language but lives in a society where the “public” language is English . He believes that speaking proper English will somehow help him fit into society and find his “true” identity. Throughout the essay he contrast the Spanish language identity and English language identity. As a young boy, Rodriguez finds consolation and safety in his home where they only speak Spanish. He feels that he only has a true identity when he is at home surrounded by those who speak the same language as him . On the contrary , he becomes trapped and disoriented when not being able to speak / understand the English language . He feels as if he is not part of “their world” and has no identity in society. By comparing and contrasting Spanish language identity and English language identity . Rodriguez's essay is an example that speaking different languages should not make anyone choose an identity . In fact being able to speak and understand multiple languages in his case Spanish and English makes the language a part of his identity, but with two different sides .

English is an invisible gate. Immigrants are the outsiders. And native speakers are the gatekeepers. Whether the gate is wide open to welcome the broken English speakers depends on their perceptions. Sadly, most of the times, the gate is shut tight, like the case of Tan’s mother as she discusses in her essay, "the mother tongue." People treat her mother with attitudes because of her improper English before they get to know her. Tan sympathizes for her mother as well as other immigrants. Tan, once embarrassed by her mother, now begins her writing journal through a brand-new kaleidoscope. She sees the beauty behind the "broken" English, even though it is different. Tan combines repetition, cause and effect, and exemplification to emphasize

The Language of Dreams by Belle Yang features the role of memory, language and story-telling in human lives, especially those displayed and complicated by the movement and the blending of culture (pp 697) whereas, Death of Josseline by Margaret Regan encourages a reconsideration of how the immigration issue is discussed in the media (pp704). Both the article describes about change in one’s life because of immigration.

A typical childhood consists of a child having two parents; a mother and a father, or two fathers, or two mothers, whatever the situations maybe. My childhood wasn’t typical, my childhood consist of one single parent, my mother, with the occasional glimpse of my father, but that was rare. My mother played a significant role in my education and how I communicate with others. You see my mother immigrant from Cuba to America and was unable to speak a word of english but she came anyway with her Heart open and her mind ready to learn. Thanks to reruns of ‘ I Love Lucy’ and Oprah; my mother was able to learn english but it was “broken” as Amy Tan would put it. Amy Tan’s essay “ Mother Tongue” discusses the many difficulties that she and her mother have face with her mother's “broken” english; which seem all to similar to my mother and me. It was like we were one in the same. Tan points out the prejudices and culture racism that immigrants are forced to endure without showing aggression or even acknowledging the reader of it. Tan is able to criticize our culture standards and expresses how we have double standards for English speakers.

Unconsciously, we all speak different languages; we categorize the way we speak by the environment and people at which we are speaking too. Whenever a character enters an unfamiliar environment, they experiment with language to find themselves and understand reality. For immigrants, language is a means to retain one’s identity; however, as they become more assimilated in their new communities their language no longer reflects that of their identity but of their new cultural surroundings. When an immigrant, immigrates to a new country they become marginalized, they’re alienated from common cultural practices, social ritual, and scripted behavior. It’s not without intercultural communication and negotiation

Julia Alvarez’s book, How the García Girls Lost their Accents, illustrates the struggle of finding an identity as an immigrant. The four girls, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia seem to be lost in their new American culture but even more lost in their home culture as adults. Finding what culture they belong to is a lifelong struggle that results in acculturation, deculturalization and culture shock.

First and foremost, new immigrants encounter copious issues to fit in the new society. The major concern among these problems is the language barrier. The excerpt from ‘Newcomer’ written by Mehri Yalfani 's highlights the challenges that Susan, an immigrant from Iran, faced throughout her course of understanding and speaking English. According to the story, both the hesitation to be fluent in an alien

As an adult, Tan understands that her mother’s English is the language of intimacy. She now understands that her “mother’s expressive command belies how much she actually understands” Her mother reads “The Wall street Journal” and converses with their stockbroker on matters Tan doesn’t comprehend. It becomes evident that her initial

Elizabeth Wong is a Chinese-American playwright who wrote “The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl”. In her essay, she describes her resentment of her Chinese roots and her protest against her parents who want her to learn and appreciate her heritage and culture. Her essay exposes the pressure that society places on immigrant children to fit into the dominant culture. The proposed solutions to fixing this problem is thinking and implementing long term plans. I make the argument that his ethical problem of society placing such a heavy burden on immigrant children to fit into the dominate culture can be solved with the implementation of multicultural classes, language classes, additional counselors and child psychologists in public schools.

For thousands of years, waves of immigrants continue joining the developed countries in the world, bringing with them the unique cultures, languages, and ideas. Over time, those unique values might be faded away with each generation because of the new culture exposition. The second-generation immigrants experience a cultural conflict between that of their parents and that of host society. Most of them are unable to preserve and empower their origin cultures. Many differences between the first-generation and the second-generation immigrants arise. Through the analysis of the mother in “Death of a Young Son by Drowning” and the Das family in “Interpreter of Maladies”, I would like to demonstrate the differences between the first-generation immigrants, who travel from other countries, and the second-generation immigrants, who were born and raised on the immigrated land. These differences include the purpose of being in the foreign land, the connections to their homelands, society’s view, and the culture differences.

Although the narrator’s parents are keeping him from learning or speaking their native languages, which is what most of his family members speak, in order to stabilize his English proficiency, there are many negative effects of doing so. The narrator constantly feels