Monfoon Leong's Short Stories

In the American land, a democratic country that believe in freedom, many first generation Chinese immigrants have a big generational distance with their American-born children. Since they were born and grown up in China, they was adopted to their motherland’s culture. Therefore, it’s hard for them to adjust back to the American culture. In the short stories, I select Monfoon Leong, Darrell Lum, and Hsien-Yung Pai to analysis how they deal with a similar issue

－cultural maintenance－ in their story treatments.

In Leong’s short stories, he mainly portrays the conflict between a father and a son. In "New Year for Fong Wing,” he points out that a father, Fong Wing, is the first generation of Chinese immigrants in the United States but he has lost three sons. In the traditional Chinese …show more content…
But in this case, he couldn’t maintain his traditional culture. So, Leong emphasizes that Fong Wing had to ease the emptiness by gambling so he would no longer feel lonely. However, here is a conflict between Fong Wing and his son. His son was serving in World War II and “was an American fighting for his country” (Leong 115). Yet, his father was celebrating for Chinese New Year and hopes to have a son to carry on his family name. It shows that his son maintains American culture while his father maintains traditional Chinese culture. In the second story of “Number One Son,” Leong emphasizes that the conflict between a father and his son, Ming. It shows that the family maintains the Chinese traditional culture, yet his son maintains American culture. It reveals that Ming has to follow the Chinese traditional culture, yet he couldn’t understand the culture at all. He thinks it’s not worth for helping his father, since his father was not a good father to him and “all he could feel was a harsh resentment against the man