ISBN: 9781436377058

FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN IDENTITIES BY ELIUD MARTÍNEZ IN MANY PARTS of the country, especially in California, when one passes by a school or strolls across a college or universit… More...

FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN IDENTITIES BY ELIUD MARTÍNEZ IN MANY PARTS of the country, especially in California, when one passes by a school or strolls across a college or university campus, it is inescapable to the eye that the American student population looks very different from that before the seventies. Young people today are accustomed to seeing people from many ancestral backgrounds. In classrooms, at schools, colleges and universities; at shopping malls, weddings and other social gatherings, young people are aware that they are living in an increasingly multicultural America. These then, are the voices and stories of today's young Americans. Diverse, by turns uplifting, insightful, illuminating and heart-warming or heartbreaking, the stories give us moving portrayals of the young authors and their families, mothers and fathers. Some offer shocking depictions of military brutality and political violence. Others recover family stories and make touching tributes to earlier generations. Some stories help us to see how young people perceive themselves and their identities when they are offspring of mothers and fathers from other lands or of different cultures. The young writers included in this anthology, or their parents and ancestors, come from Egypt, Ethiopia, Korea, China, Japan, Cambodia, Taiwan, India; from East Los Angeles, El Salvador, Mexico, Honduras, Vietnam, Italy, Denmark, the Philippines, Cuba, and other places. Generational differences are inevitable between immigrant parents and their children, who are either American-born or grow up in America. The differences shape many attitudes to the ancestral cultures, customs, language and ways of life. The stories remind us of why some people came to America, of what they left behind, and what persists in ancestral forms adapted to American ways. The stories provide telling evidence that collectively, there are many varieties of American identity among children of immigrants and their parents from other lands. These California stories tell of young lives that have been shaped by ancestry, time and place, national background, personal and generational experiences, geography, and by American social and immigrant history, conditions in their ancestral lands and lingering perceptions of race. MANY IMMIGRANTS come in search of a better life or in pursuit of the American dream. Some Americanized children of immigrants struggle self-consciously to fit in. Their experiences invite dramatic literary expression. In two of the most powerful stories in this anthology, Jan Ballesteros and Thien Hoang exorcise their extreme pain, self-consciousness and struggle for acceptance. In high school Ballesteros is repeatedly humiliated in his classes by four bullies who ridicule his Filipino appearance and his spoken accent. Extremely vulnerable, Ballesteros is perplexed because the bullies are all half-Filipino. In Hoang's case, he is self-conscious about the Chinese reflection that looks out at him from the mirror. By writing their stories these two vulnerable young men come to terms with being American, and at the same time with being Filipino and Chinese, respectively. More so than in Ballesteros and Hoang's case a heightened consciousness of color and the desire to look American leads the Vietnamese mother in Kim Bui's story "Asian Eyes Westernized" to change the shape of her eyes surgically. Ironically, the young author points out, the woman who in Vietnam used to work in the sun daily, here In America, she avoids being out in the sun, and resorts to skin whiteners. Kim Bui is struck by her mother's advice to be proud of being Vietnamese, but to look American. In their stories Megan E. Chao, Chariya Heang, and Neha Pandey highlight their views of young womanhood in America when parents observe or desire to observe the tradition of arranged marriages. Conflicting points of view and parental cultural norms aff Media ><

2008, ISBN: 9781436377058

Xlibris, Corp. Taschenbuch, 264 Seiten, Publiziert: 2008-12-12T00:00:01Z, Produktgruppe: Book, 0.86 kg, Kurzgeschichten & Anthologien, Literatur & Fiktion, Kategorien, Bücher, Biografien … More...

Xlibris, Corp. Taschenbuch, 264 Seiten, Publiziert: 2008-12-12T00:00:01Z, Produktgruppe: Book, 0.86 kg, Kurzgeschichten & Anthologien, Literatur & Fiktion, Kategorien, Bücher, Biografien & Erinnerungen, Xlibris, Corp., 2008<