In the memoir, Stealing Buddha's Dinner, by Bich Minh Nguyen, we can see the cultural struggles refugee children have growing up in America. Nguyen's life starts off fleeing to Michigan with her family from the Vietnamese war in 1975 when she was just eight months old. Throughout the novel, Nguyen's family lives an average life that consists of her grandmother Noi, her older sister Anh, uncles and a father that works endlessly for a small place to shelter in. Until her father meets Rosa, a Mexican American single mother, life gets harder for Nguyen when she has to learn to balance each culture to survive. Overall, Nguyen was born with a love for food, however, she see’s it as a sign of social status and because of this, she is influenced to neglect her Vietnamese identity and uses books to escape her reality.…
Sierra Evans BIS 257: Asian American Studies Book Report November 25, 2015 In From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express: A History of Chinese Food in the United States, Haiming Liu describes the evolution of Chinese food in America and the progressive journey of how it became the globally recognized phenomenon it is today. Liu provides an in depth description of the struggle early immigrants went through being immersed in American culture, as well as the fundamental role Chinese food played in their integration, acceptance, and survival. Chinese restaurants have spread like wildfire, and Liu describes the process in which a foreign and feared upon cuisine became the success it is today. Reading this book gave me new perspectives by drawing…
With these chitchats, Chinese, the hardest, most baffling, language, became the most beautiful and connectable language for me next to Persian. While still in middle school I felt responsible to help my Persian family, friends and teachers with the everyday language barriers they encountered. My expanded knowledge of Chinese language gave me the confidence to adventure in places, unknown to foreigners, study Chinese Painting, travel for eight hours to Xinjiang prefecture to play as a background actress in the movie The Kite Runner, and encountered director Marc Forster and the shooting crew. However my seven years of stay in China was not filled with enjoyable experience alone as I often got to see many people spitting on the ground, dogs pooping everywhere, unsanitized street foods, kids with open crotch pants, cigarette butts that could be found everywhere, and bizarre foods, that made my head turn. But I knew just as how I interpret words in context, I have to interpret people's actions in the context of their culture.…
Maya Angelou’s Champion of the World and Amy Tan’s Fish Cheeks touch on experiences with racial identity. Although Angelou and Tan’s stories share the feeling of young girls who are minorities, they have their differences. For instance, Tan resents her heritage where Angelou embraces it, their figures of admiration differ and the moods in each story differ, where one writer explains her happiness throughout the story the other explains how miserable she is .…
Documentary Concept Development I first learned about Simmone from a friend. Simmone is the fifth wife of my friend’s great grandfather. Simmone Kuo, in her 70s, owns a 30-year-old Tai-Chi studio in SF Chinatown. After moving to San Francisco, my partner and I have already paid several visits to Simmone’s Tai-Chi studio and started filming for this documentary. Every Sunday noon, she cooks for us.…
piced Chicken Queen Essay In “The Spiced Chicken Queen of Mickaweaquah, Iowa”, by Mohja Kahf, the author places great importance on food (as the title suggests), but more so on the conversations and actions surrounding food and meals. These scenes with food reveal the ulterior motives of the characters in them. One can see this in several scenes: the first of which is when Mzayyan gives Rana some of her titular spiced chicken, the second when Mzayyan serves her spiced chicken to the other refugees in the shelter, and the third when Rana’s husband Emad brings home apricots for his wife.…
“...saving lunch seats...” (Lai,229) When you come to a new school and make new friends it is nice to know that you matter. When someone saves you a lunch seat it means a lot because you don’t have to be worried about where to sit. When Ha eats the new food in America she doesn't like how the food comes wrapped in plastic or in cans. One of her favorite food back in Saigon was papaya, when she came to America she got dried papaya and was unimpressed. When Ha adjusts to the dried papaya it shows strength because she is willing to get over it and make the best out of it.…
Lucy would spend the night with her grandmother twice a month. Mama Provi would read bedtime stories to Lucy and they would cook breakfast in the morning, but when Lucy came down with chicken pox she could not visit her grandmother downstairs. Nevertheless Mama Provi decides to take pot of arroz con pollo(the best rice with chicken) upstairs to Lucy. Mama Provi always took the stairs from the bottom of the complex to the top of the 8th floor, but along the way Mama Provi smelled delicious scents from people cooking and had to stop on each floor to ask if she could make a trade with her arroz con pollo for some of their wonderful smelling food. When she eventually arrived at Lucy’s…
“BEEP BEEP BEEP.” My alarm exploded with noise. I needed to get to my plane as soon as possible to make it to Tampa Bay, Florida for the Tampa Contest. I slipped on some jeans, threw on a shirt, and combed my brown hair down. I grabbed my skateboard and my unaccompanied minor pass.…
We were at the Red Onion in Equality, Illinois- my step dad, my uncle, and I. The Red Onion was a dinky cafe set back in the miniscule town square. Being in Equality, I thought everything should be equal and fair. Things were not even-handed for Uncle Randy on that frosty, December afternoon.…
Outside the Box The group that I chose for my experience is Latinos, specifically Brazilian. I chose this group since I have always wanted to look at the group with a critical lens.…
Throughout this excerpt of his book, Wah narrates his inner confliction between wanting to eat the beef and greens dish served at the restaurant, a staple of his Chinese culture, and not wanting to be seen by other Chinese-Canadians due to his embarrassment of only being half Chinese. This confliction emerges from Wah’s insecurity of being caught in between white and Chinese, further amplifying his feeling of separation…
One morning in 2013 I woke up with an unusual stomach ache and did not think much of it, later on that day I made myself a lunch. Till this day I will never have the same meal again, just thought of it gets me sick. My second experience was a little over a month when I could not say the word bowl in my French class and instead said everything that relates to a bowl instead of the actual word itself. The two topics that I have chosen to support and explain both my experiences are Sauce Bearnaise syndrome and Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon and they will be explained below.…
Longhorn Steakhouse a casual dining restaurant founded in 1981 by George McKerrow. This restaurant well known for the western theme. Each location is decorated with paintings and photos to better complementing the western theme. The restaurant is best known for serving various kinds of mouthwatering steaks. There are locations throughout the United States and if you looking for a welcoming environment to eat.…
Steam puffed out of manhole covers that dotted the road. Penn Station came out at an intersection where the air was filled with the melody of car horns, voices and footsteps. Authentic New York style pizza was something I had always wanted to try. Across from Penn Station was this little, uncrowded restaurant that served some very addicting garlic knots. It was impossible to just eat one.…