Native Speaker Part One

I kind of enjoyed reading the first two chapters because I find reading made-up stories are more interesting than reading memoirs. They make your life better than in the stories you read….but I don’t know. Anyway let me get in to the story because I find this story, so far, to be very interesting. I keep noticing that Chang-Rae Lee focuses a lot on speech. On page six he writes “Her signature, again: False speaker of language.” Then on page twelve he writes “I heard then speaking Spanish, and I heard English, and then something else that Lelia said was called mixup. And at the bottom of that page “If I had to guess, you’re not a native speaker…You said Leel-ya so deliberately. You tried not to but you were taking in the sound of the syllables. You’re very careful.” It’s a reoccurring theme in the first two chapters. Another theme I see is that he points out the similarities and differences between Koreans or Asians i n general to other nationalities. “A friend in middle school taught me about Korean names, how Park and Kim were always Korean, the other names like Chung and Cho and Lee maybe Korean, maybe Chinese. Never Japanese,” a quote from page ten comparing Korean last names to Chinese and Japanese last names. Lelia annoyed me because it seemed like she liked Henry but then she would always make comments about his race like the above statement. I can’t wait to read more of The Native Speaker.

Add a comment March 30, 2008

Immigration Blues

Of all my years I have been educated I never learned quite how hard it is for people from different countries to immigrate into America and try and live here when everything is basically going against you. During and after reading this i felt sad for the people in this piece. In sucks that Alipio’s wife dies and then you have these two women are about to get deported and are telling their stories to Alipio. Although I was sad through the story I giggled a little when I read that people wanted Alipio to marry Monica so she could stay in the country. I don’t know why but every time I watch TV or hear of someone wanting to marry another person so they can stay in America I just laugh because I think that people should get married because they love each other. Also with the media influencing everything such as clothing and makeup and hair to what we watch on TV, making fun of people marrying each other to stay in the country we just laugh at it because it is absurd. Anyway I did enjoy reading this piece because I thought that it was interesting.

Add a comment March 30, 2008

All I Asking For Is My Body

I definitely vote this better than reading Frank Chin. Milton Murayama’s All I Asking For Is My Body  and Monica Sone’s Nisei Daughter had some similarities between them. For example Sone had always felt ashamed of being Japanese and in Murayama’s section that we read he says that he had also felt ashamed about being Japanese. In Nisei Daughter Sone’s mother told her to not feel ashamed of being Japanese and in Murayama they have the same thing. He says “Be proud you’re Japanese. Never bring shame to the Japanese race. What if they, all of them, bring shame to me?” In the Nisei Daughter Monica Sone feels the same way about her heritage and being both Japanese and American. Both novels talked about the internment camps as well. They both described the camps to very horrible. Murayama described the strict rules that went around in Hawaii such as a Japanese couldn’t carry more than two-hundred dollars with him or her. I also found it interesting that Murayama had many Christian things such as symbols and views. I liked that his father wanted his family to have a Christian background because it was like blending two different cultures except with religion, I think.

Add a comment March 30, 2008

The Nisei Daughter 8 till end

I found the end of The Nisei Daughter interesting because of her treatment in the camps and how her parents changed a little bit during the internment. In the beginning of chapter 8 when Henry, Sumi, and Monica heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor they were devastated and afraid of what would happen to their parents. They never thought that they would be sent to the Japanese camps although they did. I also found it  interesting that Monica’s father, whom was described as Ghandi, snapped for the first time when asked about the bombing and what would happen to the family. Also when the Americans invaded Mrs. Matsui’s home looking for her husband they were yelling and screaming at her for her husband but when she finally told them that he was dead I felt like they were happy about it and that he was one more Japanese person that they didn’t have to worry about, but I don’t know if that is true or not.

Up until this part of the book I felt that Monica hated being Japanese because she was always shunning everything Japanese and saying she was one hundred percent American. But on page 156 “Wearily we closed out eyes, filled with an indescribable sense of guilt for having destroyed the things we loved.” She was upset about getting rid of her Japanese stuff that she had for most of her life, yet she still knows that she is still Japanese even though her  and her family got rid of their stuff. I felt sorry for her but I was still confused about her feelings toward her heritage because she goes back and forth.

Skipping a bit a head to the part about George…when I first read this it made me really sad to know that this Japanese boy died fighting for the country who hated his race. His father was the one who had always had faith in America but I don’t understand how he can have faith when he was never granted citizenship and was rounded up to be put in camps after the bombing. At the same time I feel like Mr.Sawada is more of a citizen than any American because he had faith when he shouldn’t of had any.

The last paragraph on page 38 “I had discovered a deeper, stronger pulse in the American scene. I was going back into its main stream, still with Oriental eyes, but with an entirely different outlook, for now I felt more like a whole person instead of a sadly split personality. The Japanese and the American parts of me were now blended into one.”  After reading this I realized that it must take great tragedy to realize that being Japanese and American can be blended together and prove to be a good match. But then I realized that no matter your race or heritage or your country everything can be blended together to make a great person.

Add a comment March 9, 2008