Le Ly Hayslip Essay

Improved Essays
In discussing the legacy and impact of Le Ly Hayslip and the overall responsibility of Asian American authors in depicting Asian Americans in literature, specific ideas about gender and sexuality frame such discussions. On one side specifically among Asian American women, there is great criticism against the backlash and condemnation that was levelled against Le Ly Haislip’s When Heaven and Earth Changed Places and Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Blu’s Hanging due to such attacks being sexist and patriarchal in nature. The opposing side would argue that such depictions within the narratives only serve to reaffirm negative stereotypes of Asian males as violent, misogynistic individuals. In such arguments, there is implicit power dynamics that impact the status and role of both Asian men and women. As a result, these narratives are …show more content…
In Chin and Kingston’s rivalry was a divide on whether to affirm Asian identity or not. This would be evident in Chin’s conscious effort in espousing Chinese mythology like the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Major Problems 461). Through these actions, Chin sets out to solidify the heroes of Asian folklore to be on par with that of the European knight and American cowboy. In that respect, he feels angry for it because he feels alone in fighting for Asian pride within art (Major Problems 461). Interestingly, such tensions in the Asian American community are framed within traditional gender roles. Le Ly Hayslip is seen through her memoir and the film as a weak, feeble Asian women who is bossed around by mostly men to some individuals. In critiquing Hayslip and the veracity of her claims, there are underlying assumptions on Asian women being deceptive in their personal accounts. This is further compounded by some individuals criticizing Hayslip for not standing up against Oliver Stone in adapting her work (Lecture 4-29). As if she is to be blamed on the production of the

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    For the first time reading Trying to Find Chinatown by David Henry Hwang in 1996 which tells the story of two very contrasting culture perspectives of the Caucasian man Benjamin and the Chinese man Ronnie. The first time reading this, I was a bit taken off how rude Ronnie is at Benjamin and how unnatural the characters talk. As I read further and analyzed it, the brash arguments that Ronnie and Benjamin have are meant to be very exuberant and “in your face” about a culture that is not too often talked or represented as properly as they should be. To be honest, I am not as familiar with much works that are about or written by Asian Americans. There is not as much representation as for what is shown in media for the most part being stereotypes.…

    • 300 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Finding Kukan proved to be an exciting, and intriguing story of Li Ling-Ai. The filmmaker, Robin Lung produced an educational, and engaging documentary. The main goals of Robin Lung was to ensure that Li Ling-Ai’s story would not be lost in history, as well as to educate viewers of the war in China. Robin Lung’s passion, and dedication to these goals is glaringly obvious while viewing Finding Kukan. As a result, the documentary has won numerous awards across the United States.…

    • 745 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Asian American Media

    • 1279 Words
    • 6 Pages

    By recognizing how discourse has been constructed historically and the continuation of its presence today, producers equipped with this knowledge may be able to evade trappings of yellow peril themes and instead create new representational strategies to tell more intelligent and accurate stories about Asians and Asian…

    • 1279 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    INTRODUCTION - ~ THESIS - When evaluating Arnold “Junior” Spirit from Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Jin Wang from Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese, similarities radiate in both characters as their disparity in race deem the two of them as outcasts in the entirety of society. In addition to their lack of social interactions, their uniformity in their impulsive decisions cost them each a dear friend. Although Junior and Jin are quite similar, they share differences in the way Junior tries bettering himself by fitting into both his Indian and Reardan culture whereas Jin changes himself in every possible way to become Americanized. *** The correspondence between Junior and Jin is detected in both novels…

    • 1276 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    No-No Boy Analysis

    • 1073 Words
    • 5 Pages

    No-no Boy,’ it is stated that Asian Americans are often portrayed as ‘docile, patient’ peoples. Many of Okada’s characters do not feature…

    • 1073 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Pushing Hands (1992), Wedding Banquet (1993), and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) are Ang Lee’s award-winning trilogy that established his unprecedented success in both film critic and global market. In Ma’s article, he defined Ang Lee’s trilogy as domestic tragicomedy, the word “domestic” refers to not only family, but also nation and Chinese culture; and “tragicomedy” indicates the elaborated melancholic immigrant culture in both Chinese and Chinese diaspora with a light-hearted tone (193). Indeed, Lee’s bold innovative presentation of immigrant subjectivities challenged conventional Chinese value of sexual orientation, love relationship and marriage (Ma 191). However, Lee also presented the conservative aspect of Chinese tradition in the films…

    • 737 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Intersectionality Essay

    • 795 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Wade and Ferree describe intersectionality as “ gender is not an isolated social fact about us, but instead intersects with our other identities” (2015: 84). Intersectionality, quite literally, observes the intersections within individuals’ identities; what people encounter is based upon their race, gender, sexual orientation, and more. On the other hand, Wade and Ferree define gender strategy as “finding a way of doing gender that works for us as unique individuals who are also shaped by other parts of our identity and the realities of our lives” (85). These issues go together, as seen in how Asian men and women break from stereotypes. Because of the hardships Asian citizens encountered in the United States in the 19th century ― taking traditionally…

    • 795 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Woman Warrior Summary

    • 1260 Words
    • 6 Pages

    “Conception: The Origins of a Story” as Applied to The Woman Warrior Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior depicts the hardships Kingston faces as she attempts to balance the culture of the country in which she resides, America, and the culture of her home country, China. This struggle is shown by Kingston’s account of various parts of her childhood, which shape who she is. Rather than simply a list of Kingston’s experiences, The Woman Warrior is a novel with broad social implications.…

    • 1260 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The last two chapter of “The woman warrior” are interesting and conflicting each other at the same time. They are conflicting each other because Kingston wasn’t involved in the main events where the stories all about her mother Brave Orchid and her aunt Moon Orchid but the last chapter most of it was about Kingston’s own stories and thoughts. It is interesting because Kingston in “At the Western Palace” where she wasn’t part of the major clashes of this chapter, but at the same time she was part of it because it been brought to us by her so she stepped to a second person or a third person to present the stories. She was capable of shifting the reader’s attention from Chinese’s culture that been represented as an example of her mother and her aunt to American’s culture where also been influenced by a Chinese’s culture as herself.…

    • 780 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Throughout “Elegy for Chloe Nguyen (1955-1988),” Chin describes the impact of stereotypes of Asian Americans through her use of literary devices such as setting, diction, and juxtaposition; through each stanza, Chin demonstrates what led to Nguyen’s unstated suicide.…

    • 1503 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    X. Zhao, in the article "Chinese American Women Defense Workers in World War II," focuses on the “unique experience of Chinese American female[s]” employed as “defense workers” in the area around San Francisco. The publication bases itself on newspapers and report written in Chinese-languages, as well as oral history interviews from former workers. Narratively, the article also explores the forced placement into into tightly regulated, isolated ethnic communities could be overcome, as Chinese Americans endured through prejudice in order to use “the wartime opportunity” to insert themselves into the “larger American society;” although discrimination still existed to impede progress after the war ceased. Of course, the racism Chinese-American women faced contrasted greatly from the issues another Asian minority women dealt with during World War…

    • 969 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Spring Fever Film Analysis

    • 1095 Words
    • 4 Pages

    As exemplary pieces of off-centered queer cinema in contemporary Mainland China, the 1996 film East Palace, West Palace by Zhang Yuan and the 2009 film Spring Fever by Lou Ye denote two distinctive paradigms of artistic approaches in tackling the tension between homosexuality and heterosexuality: the former one is to emphasize power contradictions between the peripheral queer and the dominant straight to constitute the groundbreaking subversion of power relationships traditionally dictated by the authoritarian state apparatus in the 1990s China; while the latter one is to underscore trans-border narrative featured with ement of homosexual relationships and heterosexual ones, representing fluid and dissipated nature of human subjectivity, manifold…

    • 1095 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The passage, “A Pair of Tickets” is an excerpt from the book, The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan. Tan’s book is a narrative that derives from Tan’s life growing up as a Chinese-American. Jing-Mei “June” Woo is a thirty-six year old woman who has always considered herself to be “American” as she was born and raised in San Francisco, California. June finally travels to her motherland as a result of her recently deceased mother’s desire to reconcile with her long lost daughters. Throughout her journey in China, she connects with her paternal side of the family as well as her half-sisters she’s never met and begins to rediscover and acknowledges both sides of her of herself, her “American” identity and her “Chinese” identity.…

    • 1354 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Kingston launches her memoir negotiating the story of her unnamed aunt, a woman dishonored and intentionally forgotten by her family after an illegitimate pregnancy. Kingston does not merely take the story at face value with the burden of shame accompanying her aunt’s memory, rather she retells it, exploring her aunt’s perspective. Kingston entertains the concept that her aunt, “looked at a man because she liked the way the hair was tucked behind the ears” (Kingston 8). This romanticized version of her aunt’s life remains enticing, relatable, and perhaps even probable had it occurred in the United States. If this scene was set in America, the anger of the family following the actions of an errant daughter would seem justified.…

    • 798 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Reflection On Bad Girls

    • 1120 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Yifei H. 2106.03.31 Bad Girls Self-Reflections “As soon as I walked out my comfort zone and renewed everything in the States, I noticed that I was totally influenced by outside comments.” I wrote in one of my work ‘A Letter to my Daughter’ for this class, Bad Girls. It led me to rediscover the changes that happened silently. Not only for this one, every single reading and writing brought me different perspectives on gender and race.…

    • 1120 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays

Related Topics