I was truly amazed at how closely the political rhetoric we read about in Schlund-Vials utopian and

Dystopian Citizenships meshes so well with the political rhetoric we heard in the 2016 election. The
wording that was used in the New York Times review of the immigration problem entitled "does the pot
melt it" I found to be truly shocking. I couldnt believe that a person that is supposed to be bipartisan in
their writing as a reporter should be could spew such drivel about the men and women who immigrated
to our country seeking better lives. The article in the New York Times went so far as to suggest that the
flood of immigration into America would cause a national calamity( S-V P3). Stating that the newly
arriving immigrants to American soil are largely literate and have trouble acquiring the English language
if they ever acquired at all, going so far as to suggest that our immigration policies should evaluate
immigration citizenship with certain pre-requisite conditions, such as being able to read and write
English as well as certain residency requirements. The residency requirements I assume the residency
spoken of in this article had something to do with the restrictive immigration acts that were passed by
the U.S. Congress between 1917 in 1924 which limited or banned immigration from certain Asiatic
zones.

The required reading this week with Mona in the promised land, a 1996 novel by Gish Jens. In this
novel, Jens tells the story of a second-generation Chinese-American Mona Chang. Mona is a young teen
who is struggling with the racial and ethnic changes going on with the civil rights movements in the
1960s and 70s, I say struggling because Monas trying to find herself as an American while still having
her parents try to install their traditional Chinese values that Mona finds to be backwards are un-
American. Mona seems to resent her parent's thinly veiled attempts to assimilate their new American
identities through purchasing material items or their obsession with their children getting into Harvard
which in the book seems to represent the pinnacle of the American experience. In her quest to
disassociate herself from her parent's more traditional Chinese way of thinking Mona decides to convert
to the Jewish religion which she calls the model minority due to the Jewish communitys ability to
Americanize themselves to the norms of American society. I found one of the most derogatory racial
slurs in this book was when Monas Jewish friends began referring to her as Changowitz (Jen 56).

I feel this book brings up a very significant question and that is how are ones race and ethnic identity
determined? Is a biological or-or is it something that society itself chooses to place upon us and decide
for us. This book does a great job of showing us a view of racial issues to the eyes of a teenager whos on
a quest to find herself but along the way sheds light on racial and ethnic issues that seem to be
ingrained in American society.