“So little friend, you’ve done it. Now what would you like to become?” pg. 194. In the beginning of the book, the herbalist’s wife is talking to Jin as he waits for his mother, and she tells him that it is easy to become whatever he wants to, as long as he is willing to give up his soul. Years later, she returns to him. This time she exclaims that he has succeeded in giving up his soul and can now become whatever he wants to. But what does she mean by give up your soul?

               The same day that the herbalist’s wife returned to Jin, he had just gravely disrespected and insulted his two Asian friends that he had known since the fifth grade. This was after one of the white boys in his class asked Jin not to ask his friend on any subsequent dates because, “…She’s a good friend and I want to make sure she makes good choices, you know? We’re almost in high School. She has to start paying attention to who she hangs out with.” Pg. 179. He is implying that Jin is not the type of guy Amelia should be hanging out with but does not give any specific reasons for this. Even without telling Jin any reasons, Gene Yang has done a great job of placing this character in strategic positions to observe Jin being bullied an outcast throughout school. So, his main reason for not wanting Jin to date his friend is because he is “different” and hangs out with “different” people. This is an extremely painful thing for anyone to hear, especially in such a tumultuous time as middle school. The way Jin then treats his friends is a metaphor for him beginning to distance himself from his Asian culture by denouncing all his connection to it. Would perspectives change if he acted just like everyone else?

               In the chapters leading up to the “big reveal” Danny is talking to his basketball coach about how his cousin Chin-Kee always ruins his relationship with his classmates when he comes to visit, and that he has been to a different high school every year. After reading to the end of the book, I realized that Chin-Kee was a euphemism for Jin’s Asian heritage becoming apparent to his classmates. He will be able to uphold a façade of whiteness for a time, but eventually, all the stereotypes catch up with him and begin to permeate every interaction he has. The way that Chin-Kee is so obnoxious, the way he always puts himself at the center of attention, but most of all, the way he makes Jin want to isolate himself to hide him away from everyone. All of these things humiliate Jin more than anything, all he wants is to be recognized as no different from everyone else. He wants to be seen as a white kid.

               This problematizes the experience of innumerable immigrants and immigrant children who are trying to begin a new life in America. They come for the promise of a melting pot and a better life. Often, they are met with resistance to being accepted, whether it be direct or unintentional, by the predominant white culture here. We call ourselves a Melting Pot, but people are still forced to change themselves to fit into society like it is a puzzle.

I found the way in which Gene Luen Yang incorporated transformation into the plot of his book, American Born Chinese, very complex throughout the three storylines. The theme is initially introduced in the second chapter of the book when Jin is a young boy playing with his friends. They always played with, watched, and wished to be transformers. They wanted to be someone who could transfer between forms at will. These robots would use their abilities to fight “epic battles” against each other, yet, there was never a declared winner. In fact, there was never even a reason given as to why they were fighting in the first place. After reading the quote by the herbalist’s wife, “It’s easy to become anything you wish… so long as you are willing to forfeit your soul.” Transformer robots are soulless machines created to fight, making them fall under her assertion as well. I believe that this was placed by Gene Luen to represent the violent nature of constantly altering one’s state, and the toll it takes on the relationships one has with those around them. This especially manifests when the person in question is attempting to convince their peers to accept their new state of being.

               I have come to this conclusion due to several examples present in subsequent chapters. For instance, the Monkey king in the fourth chapter jeopardizes his entire life and all his godly connections in order to have everyone recognize him as “The Great Sage, Equal of Heaven”. He beat every other god into submission and even threatened the creator, which led to his entrapment for centuries. Another example is when Wei Chen confronts Jin for kissing Suzy. Jin did it out of spite and to prove that he was not like Wei Chen.

               Eventually, both characters undergo a transformation. This change, however, is the opposite of what the characters had attempted to achieve themselves. They tried to become something that they were not; for the monkey king, this was a humanlike deity, for Jin, this was a white kid. Gene Yang portrays them coming to the realization that for them to truly find happiness and the correct identity, they must allow people to accept them as they are. The transformation ends up being the pride and self-love that they can discover through their experiences and apparently interwoven stories.

               I did not find the connection of the stories by Yang in the end of the book very compelling by any stretch of the term. It was not well set up by the rest of the story and left the reader with a sense of unfinished explanations. For example, why did the monkey king believe it was necessary to be the embodiment of a stereotype so abysmally offensive to visit Jin? I believe that this question overshadows much of the commentary afforded by the presence of such a character. I will admit, the use of a white character in the form of Danny to illustrate Jin’s outlook/presentation of himself was an ingenious way of portraying his transformation in high school. The lack of explanation, though, for Chin-Kee’s actions sully this experience as he proved to be such a central character to the storyline. ry

I admit, I am a nosy individual. I love looking over people’s shoulders at what they are doing on their phones or listening to conversations that I am not a part of. Having Swedish cousins has brought to my attention that I am often annoyed when people speak in a language that I cannot understand as a way to encode their private matters. Why should I be left out? What gives them the right to speak in a language I cannot understand, when they can understand me all the time? My mother is to blame for my prying disposition, but I believe that growing up American is to blame for this entitled feeling. This country is grown on the idea of multiculturalism, yet we are very quick to label something or someone as “un-American” if they are not using English. This outsider label is reinforced through many aspects of our daily lives. For example, actual labels on food packaging or cleaning supplies or instruction manuals for furniture usually contain directions and warnings ordered with English first, followed by other languages. It was not until very recently resulting from the influx and our heightened awareness of Latin American immigrants, that signage began containing Spanish in places such as grocery stores. That is understandable as we are an English-speaking country, yet, we also expect other countries to accommodate our language when we visit.

               The integration of poetry throughout Gloria Alzandua’s memoir Borderlands lends it emotion that can only be achieved through prose. The catch is, much of her emotion is channeled through her connection to her Mexican roots which leads her to write large sections of poetry or emotional memories in one of her many dialects of Spanish. One thing that was profound to me was the way she went about explaining all of the different forms of Spanish she used in a variety of situations, even within her family between siblings. On page 78 she casually refers to her “home” languages on the list as the ones she speaks with family and friends from the same area as her, “My ‘home’ toungues are the languages I speak with my sister and brothers, with my friends. They are he last five listed, with 6 and 7 being closest to my heart.” To me, it is almost un-imaginable for someone to speak so many languages under one roof. While it may seem like a foreign concept, America is a land of dialects. I grew up speaking a different dialect of English from my Midwestern peers, our friends from Georgia speak another dialect, our friends from the east coast speak yet another. There are often terms that differ, but normally we can effectively communicate. This is unlike Mexican dialects, as they are considered different languages and take much longer to learn and remember. And although I did not understand all of the Spanish she used, the essence of the emotion could be inferred based on the words I knew.

               Her focus of what she called “linguistic terrorism” on page 80 also resonated with me greatly as it is the same phenomenon that was experienced by black people in America who spoke “Ebonics”. She says,” Chicanas who grew up speaking Chicano Spanish have internalized the belief that we speak poor Spanish. It is illegitimate, a bastard language.”

Colonial and frontier America were both viewed as rough, unfriendly, and uncivilized places. The sort of place where you may not know where your next meal would come from, or whether you would be attacked by wild animals or people. This called for tough, resourceful, and self-sufficient people to tame the wilderness and turn it into a livable country where all could be free to exist as they pleased. I believe that this sense of entitledness coupled with a belief that America’s multicultural nature justifies the absorption of all else lead to infringement at home and abroad. Colonists came here and found the Native Americans already thriving in a land that struck them as barren and terrifying. It is probably safe to say that there was some underlying resentment when they first encountered people they believed were savage and uncivilized, already prospering on their new arayan nation.

Deloria asserts that the American consciousness is unfinished, and this leads to the definition of the demographic not based on what an it is, but primarily by what it is not. He supported this notion using the writings of 1700s british writer, D.H. Lawrence, who wrote about the issues he believed were caused by the lack of decisiveness on the matter of freedom and civilization, “Americans (and he did not hesitate to generalize) had been continually haunted by the fatal dilemma of “wanting to have their cake and eat it too,” of wanting to savor both civilized order and savage freedom at the same time.” A vague and ever-changing mentality such as this has been responsible for complex relations with other demographics such as Native Americans. On one hand, there were copious amounts of disgust at the “primal” traditions of American Indians. But on the other, there was admiration of their free spirit and ruggedness. An amalgamation of these things gave birth to the image we have of Native Americans today; confused whether to view them as savages or admirable courageous and prideful.

The main idea that the author attempted to impart was the two-faced nature of the American immigrant’s relationship with the American Indians. His prime example of this was the Boston Tea Party: Outraged colonists rebelling against the british taxation while dressed up as Indians and letting out war cries. He explains it as “The tea party had been street theater and civil disobedience of the most organized kind. In full costume, the actors had waited patiently in the wings for Francis Rotch to deliver his lines.” The event in itself was almost an oxymoron, combining organized civil disobedience with the wild “savagery” associated with Native Americans and their war traditions. I believe that these symbols were used as a mask to lend confidence to otherwise afraid rebels. They wished to embody the courage and free spirit possessed by natives. For these reasons I believe that Philip Deloria’s main point was valid. 5 Dark Acce

I believe that assimilation is the incorrect solution to a real and important problem we face in America to this day. Tension formed between ethnic groups prevailed since the United States of America came into being. Previously, this issue had been resolved in a large part by demoting certain groups of people to a sub-human class where they could not achieve respect until they had accepted European/white culture as the golden standard. This position gave rise to sentiments such as “our grandparents were ethnic, not us” attempting to conglomerate all citizens of this country under the label of American. Not only this, but it singularizes the allegiance of an immensely diverse group such as Americans to a largely undefined demographic. Assimilation was a primitive attempt to define this demographic based on the leading party of the time, white people, and their mostly European influences. Again, proving that without history, we are directionless.

In the final sentence on page 51 of the author quotes another writer, Oscar Handlin, who in 1951 reveled that, “once I thought to write a history of immigrants in America, then I realized that immigrants were America’s history.” An assertion that clearly, greatly displeased the author due to the exclusion of indigenous peoples in his definition of an American. They concluded that Handlin had the perception that Native Americans were unimportant to the formation of America’s identity. They even went as far as to say that Handlin believes, “They exist only, it would seem, as Others to be conquered, destroyed and pitied by the immigrants that Handlin viewed as true Americans.” To me, this assertion, even if it is justifiably incited, is far too harsh based on the situation. I will admit that I was actively reading this passage with the knowledge that it was addressing Native American’s role in our history, and I did not realize the lack of acknowledgement in the quote. On one hand, it slips our minds all too often who we have trodden on to get where we are today. One must also realize, though, that this land was not America until the immigrants arrived, whether or not you believe it was rightfully theirs.

            This point brings us back to the question of assimilation. If America was the product of an immigrant invasion, are they justified in forcing compliance and adjustment to their way of life? When a group is marginalized, there will always be great pushback on those in charge to recognize them as a relevant part of society. Assimilation is simply disregarding any groups on the basis of ethnicity, thereby removing a chunk of identity from people who used to belong to that group. Doing this is very problematic because it refuses to address the individual needs spawned by ethnic traditions. So in attempting to create a uniform identity, it alienates all who are unable to conform, especially those who lived here originally. fffffffff

“…this American World- a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.” As a black male in America, this quote immediately struck me. W.E.B. Du Bois put into words an internal struggle that is just as relevant today as it was in his time: the role of the black man in American society. From the first day African slaves were introduced to American soil, men were perpetually separated from their families, tearing them from their identity as fathers and husbands. Fast forward to the time when W.E.B. Du Bois wrote this book, African Americans were barely second rate citizens. Black men and women were constantly reminded of their inferiority with segregated facilities, lynchings, and policies enforced to keep them from improving their conditions. America was a white person’s world, and all Black people were good for was serving white people. Jump ahead to today, and the black man still has many roles he must play. To be successful, it often seems as though one must turn his back on blackness and attempt to fit as opposed to stand out. “He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.”

               One part of this bok that confused me was when Du Bois uses the word Holocaust to describe the “war” on black people still raging in the decade following the civil war. This work was created in 1903, more than four decades before the term was coined to represent the genocide of European Jews and other “unfavorable” races. I did not know that holocaust was its own stand alone word, but a simple bing search told me that it can denote one of two things. Either, “destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war.” or, “a Jewish sacrificial offering that is burned completely on an altar.” This is interesting and explains why the word is used in its current context, but the fact that W.E.B. Du Bois knew the word all the way back then was perhaps the most profound takeaway. During his time, African Americans were often forced to either self-educate, or live in the shadow of ignorance. Although Du Bois had escaped this and become an extremely impressive scholar, his Brothers and sisters who needed his work the most, who needed the hope of hearing that there are others who experienced their strife but rose above it, did not have access to it due to illiteracy.