Overseas Filipino

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts, by Maxine Hong Kingston, the narrative investigates numerous sides of the immigrant encounters in the United States. The book focuses not only on those who immigrated to the U.S. from China but preferably on the first generation born in this country. Within the woman in question stories the narrator pulls us into her problems of growing up in an immigrant society and her fight with various aspects of her Chinese heritage: her fear of being…

Works of literature raise several questions throughout their stories. Each work of art poses a main question that does not quite offer an answer as a critic named Roland Barthes has once stated. Amy Tan illustrates a question that does not completely offer an answer in her novel The Joy Luck Club in which Tan narrates the lives of four different mothers who are part of this club which meets to eat food and discuss things which brought all of them joy. The mothers emigrated from China and those…

After the juxtaposition of the Chinese opinions of the mothers and the conflicting American views of the daughter, Amy Tan sets the scene for the “American Translation” section by giving the reader a parable that identifies the details of the disconnect between the mothers and daughters. She does this by illustrating the difference between the American and the Chinese viewpoint. Harold Bloom illustrates the purpose of this prologue by observing, “The prologue sets the tone and the reasons for…

Issues with Adoption Adoption has existed for decades and originated in the United States, and since then it has come a long way and improved. When adoption was first made it had many unreasonable rules and guidelines, such as a law made in Rome stated that “France's Napoleonic Code made adoption difficult, requiring adopters to be over the age of 50, sterile, older than the adopted person by at least fifteen years, and to have fostered the adoptee for at least six years.” (Wikipedia). So in the…

The Asian woman is supposedly sexually active, exotic, overly feminine and eager to please. This character is usually called the "China Doll," and it also appears many times in movies. Examples of movies are the Return to Paradise and the Year of the Dragon. Hollywood sometimes fails to portray the Asian women in such way that is in a good matter. Usually the Asian woman is portrayed as prostitutes who are trying to support their family by offering their body to men who are rich and also because…

Tera, I could not agree with you more. In order to address a problem, we must first recognize that there is a problem. In this case it seems like the Chinese government just wants to turn a blind eye to the poor air quality. In my opinion it is because this problem has spiraled so far out of control that they know it will take a lot of money, man power, and research to correct the problem. Your suggestions on how to address the problem, I think are all excellent ideas and feasible. Clean…

Various Life Experiences The origin of our lives, the methods in which we were raised, and the experiences we have come across have shaped us into who we are today and formed our outlooks on society. People that don’t have as many life experiences will keep a general perspective on the world, while others whom experience many more will be bound to have a varied outlook on what’s going on around them. In the short story “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, the mother’s life experiences differ from those of…

This weeks reading covered the third and fourth section of Joy Luck Club: American Translation and Queen Mother of the Western Skies. These sections contain stories from both the daughters and mothers from the Joy Luck Club, with Jing-Mei’s story continued across them both. In American Translation, the daughters of the Joy Luck Club discuss the problems they have encountered as adults- mainly marital and career troubles. In Queen Mother of the Western Skies the mothers and Jing-Mei rediscover…

The wolf on the hill is never as hungry as the wolf climbing the hill. This powerful quote by Arnold Schwarzenegger goes hand to hand with Chen Guangcheng author of The Barefoot Lawyer. Chen Guangcheng a man who is blind, self-taught, and determined to fight for justice; who goes against all the odds to make sure justice was served to the people who had injustice from the government of China. In this analytical essay, I will use The Barefoot Lawyer to analyze three topics how the barefoot…

That was 2003. I went to the city of Shenyang located in the northeaster district of China. There were a lot of South Koreans as well as North Korean defectors hiding out. At first, I rent a room at 300 won per a month. I was firmly determined not to be trafficked by strangers and did everything, such as a mother’s help, a restaurant’s server, to earn money. Yet, it was very hard to get a well-paid job since I could not speak Chinese. Although I said I was not a North Korean, people could know…