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Christine
Cai Yujun
Pro. Lew
Reading Assignment
8/7/2014
Immigrates Abroad
There are many immigrates today, but do they have a happy life as we imagine?
After I read nine articles which were wrote by immigrates, I realized different people
have different attitude to the same things, such as their attitude to school, to their
native language. They also dont as happy as we think, they need to bear others bias
and misleading, but most of them are struggling to change it.
From The Sanctuary of School, Lynda Barry loved the school, she enjoyed the
time in school, so every morning, and she would get up very early and sneak out of
her home to go to school. She liked to meet and communicate with teachers and
janitors. And she really liked to draw picture for Mrs. LeSane in Room 2 before class
beginning. She thought the time she stayed in school was to enjoy a thoroughly
secure, warm and stable world (Barry, 69). However, different with Barry thought
school was a world she absolutely relied on, Bich Minh Nguyen this school was a
very terrified place. Nguyen hated herself to be an attention point; it would make her
embarrassed and feel uncomfortable. She wanted she could disappear and everyone
could ignore her. Elizabeth Wong is a student who hated her Chinese school, too. But
we can know from her essay, she was not hate school. In fact, she liked her American
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school very much, and she just disliked Chinese school. Because the idea which she
and her brother should learn Chinese was decided by her mother and they couldn't
change her mother's mind. Also, spent time on learning Chinese culture occupied the
time they could play with their friends. Besides, the Chinese teacher is strict and
students are afraid of him. The Chinese school is not as good and comfortable as her
American school (Wong, 302).
Although, the nine authors are immigrates, they have different attitude to their
native language. Almost every writer hated or felt ashamed to their native language
when they were teenager. When they grower, different authors attitude changed. In
Lost in Time and Words a Child Begins Anew, Oscar Hijuelos wrote, when she was
young, she loved to speak English instead of speaking Spanish. However, as the years
passed, she started to love Spanish. Because she think Spanish is her home and she
finally returned home (Hijuelos, 133). Jasmin Darznik also have similar feel. When
she was young, she liked to say English. But with time goes, she started to love and
learned Persian, her native language, and want more people can like Persian. Amy Tan
is different with Hijuelos and Darznik. She was born in America and she couldnt
speak Chinese, but her mother spoke "broken" English. When she was young, she felt
ashamed of her mother's English. But she also thought her mother's English is
"perfectly clear, perfectly natural", "vivid, direct, full of observation and
imagery"(Tan, 136). All of these three authors love their native language in the end,
but there are some authors still have the same feeling when she was young. Elizabeth
Wong, a girl who was born in America, but her parents are immigrates. So her mother
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sent she and her brother to Chinese school, no matter they were willing or not. Thus,
Wong hated Chinese when she started to learn Chinese. Also, in her culture, people
could speak English meaning that she would be able to keep up with the world outside
Chinatown. It is a great honor. As for Chinese, it is the language her grandmother said.
Every time she went out with her grandmother, a fragile woman in her seventies who
could outshout the best of the street vendors she always felt ashamed. In her mind,
Chinese was raunchy, rhythm less, pattern less, it was quick, it was loud, it was
unbeautiful (Wong, 303). She loved French, because French is lilting romance. She
loved American South, which is gentle refinement. Compare with other language,
Chinese sounded pedestrian. Public. Wong preferred herself as an American instead
of a Chinese.
Although different people have different attitudes to their school, to their
native language, most of people have the similar attitude to them. Most people have
bias to immigrate. In The Good Immigrant Student, Nguyen mentioned when she was
in school, she was a foreign, and some teachers had a little bias to foreigners, at least
they couldnt equal to all students, they would divide students into foreigners and
natives. For example, teacher held a spelling competition and Nguyen tried her best
and won in the end. However, in the afternoon, she heard her teacher said to another
teacher that Can you believe it? A foreigner winning our spelling bee! (Nguyen, 91)
Because of Tans mother spoke broken English; she had much more bias experience.
Many people couldn't understand her mother's broken English. People don't take her
seriously, dont give her good service, pretended not to understand her or even acted
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as if they did not hear her (Tan, 136). Not only bias, sometimes immigrates also need
to bear the misleading. In The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named
Maria, Judith Ortiz Cofer told us that, people misleading Latin culture. Because of
Latin women always wear colorful clothes; it made others think Latin girls were
supposed to mature early. In general, Latin couldnt receive good education, so many
Latin women working at menial jobs. This put up with stereotypes about Latin ethnic
group such as: "They make good domestics" (Cofer, 311).
Immigrates faced bias and misleading, some of them started to do something
to change others mind. Cofer wrote the article to show her experience and Latin
culture want to made readers know more about Latin. Because of 911, people always
think Muslim are terrorists, Jeffery sheler Michael Betzold wrote Muslim in America
and told the world that the "majority" of "American" Muslims don't agree with those
terrorists (Betzold, 313-316). Amy Tan also use the same way to eliminate the
prejudices of others. She wrote books to tell the world about Chinese people, such as
The Joy Luck Club, it is so popular that it was made into movies, and it made more
people interested in Chinese culture.
We have concluded that different immigrates have different attitudes to school
and their native language. They need to bear bias and misleading, but they try their
best to change others mind and hope them can use object attitude with them.



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Work Sited
Barry, Lynda, The Sanctuary of School. The Blair Reader: Exploring Issues and
Ideas. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Pearson Education,
New Jersey, 2014. 69-71 Print
Nguyen, Bich Minh, The Good Immigrant Student. The Blair Reader: Exploring
Issues and Ideas. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Pearson
Education, New Jersey, 2014. 87-94 Print
Hijuelos, Oscar, Lost in Time and Words a Child Begins Anew. The Blair Reader:
Exploring Issues and Ideas. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R.
Mandell. Pearson Education, New Jersey, 2014. 131-133 Print
Tan, Amy, Mother Tongue. The Blair Reader: Exploring Issues and Ideas. Ed.
Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Pearson Education, New
Jersey, 2014. 134-139 Print
Darznik, Jasmin, Persian, English. The Blair Reader: Exploring Issues and Ideas.
Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Pearson Education, New
Jersey, 2014. 140-143 Print
Wong, Elizabeth, The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl. The Blair Reader:
Exploring Issues and Ideas. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R.
Mandell. Pearson Education, New Jersey, 2014. 302-303 Print
Cofer, Judith Ortiz, The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria.
The Blair Reader: Exploring Issues and Ideas. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and
Stephen R. Mandell. Pearson Education, New Jersey, 2014. 308-312 Print
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Betzold, Jeffery sheler Michael, Muslim in America. The Blair Reader: Exploring
Issues and Ideas. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Pearson
Education, New Jersey, 2014. 313-316 Print