Difference between revisions of "426--Week 9 Questions/Comments--Thursday"
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I have to agree with Lacey on this. I felt like I understood ''China Men'' more after reading the article, but on the other hand I had to think more about the reading this way I guess. Still, some background about Chinese-Americans would have made this book better to understand overall. --Ashley Wilkins | I have to agree with Lacey on this. I felt like I understood ''China Men'' more after reading the article, but on the other hand I had to think more about the reading this way I guess. Still, some background about Chinese-Americans would have made this book better to understand overall. --Ashley Wilkins | ||
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| + | I was definately seeing parallels between the two and Glenn's article answered alot of questions I had. It kind of connected the dots in ''China Men''. The big issue, I think, in the two readings is the importance of family, as Glenn writes,"filial piety, respect for elders and reverence for tradion" which are the principle teachings of Confucius. I agree with Lacey, I wish we had read this before the other - Celia | ||
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| + | I agree as well, if I hadn't read another Kingston book in HS, I would have had a lot more questions going into the reading. The article gave a lot more background information that might have been helpful in reading China Men. -- Kellye Sorber | ||
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| + | I think its also important to bridge the two genres of a literature/nonfiction work like Kingston with the historical article of Glenn. I think by reading Kingston's work in a history course rather than an English course, its easier for me to pull out the history of families and Chinese culture. --Joyce | ||
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| + | I definitely feel like the Glenn article was a nice addition to the reading because it really helped to put the Kingston book into context. Like we were discussing in class on Tuesday, we went into this topic with very little knowledge about the subject so reading this article maybe first, would have been helpful. It definitely put the oral histories in context, though, which answered a lot of questions. -Kelly W. | ||
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| + | I agree with everyone that this would have been nicer to have up front. I was very confused reading for Tuesday but I feel like the class discussion was really helpful. The article confirmed a lot of what we said in class. I guess like Ashley said putting the article at the end made it more challenging, but I still would have preferred background knowledge before getting so involved in a book which was so different from the others we have read. -- Kari W. | ||
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| + | I also agree that reading Glenn’s article on Chinese-American families before reading Kingston’s book would have been beneficial. Glenn’s article gives me, a reader with no prior experience with the topic-area, a foothold. I probably would have grasped some of the ideas we discussed on Tuesday a little better had I read that article first. Having the article at the end does function as a ‘wrap-up’ to the subject. It puts everything in perspective. –Andrew B | ||
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| + | As much as I agree with everyone about reading the Glenn text before the Kingston book, I still question the validity of the argument of the Chinese family and their views on America. In all of our readings thus far, there has always been a general area or specific county, city or state that the author validates his argument through their examples. Chinese vast territory and population seems to be characterized by the Guangdong Province and Hong Kong. It's interesting to note that Hong Kong has been of late a separate city whose economy is capitalist. Does the author then imply that the immigration of Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong to the United States foreshadow the economic relations between the two nations? -Joe C. | ||
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| + | == The American Father == | ||
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| + | Even though the first few pages were confusing at first, it was nice to see the narrator go back to the story about the father who got cheated out of the laundry business and took his wife to California. I did enjoy getting to read more up on that part of the family, but it was still made confusing with the tid bit about the father being born in America after telling us earlier he immigrated to America and that he was in America when he married his wife, only I thought he was in China earlier when he married his wife... @.@ The narrator should stick to one story or simply say I don't know how he got here, it was either A or B, but we're not sure. -- Ashley Wilkins | ||
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| + | Responding to Ashley's comment about the different, and contradictory, versions of the story: This makes me think that maybe King's writing is not really just about her family but is a collection of stories and experiences from many sources that King uses to synthesize one experience (another example of this is how she tells the story of the "legal father" and the "illegal father"). I think she is creating an impression of a collective experience of Chinese immigrants, rather than literally telling the story of one family. This would explain why she throws in all the seemingly random mythological stories, and why she described the experience of coming in legally to Angel island AND coming in illegally through New York. She also touches upon Chinese Americans living in various parts of the US (the east coast, the west coast, Hawaii). So I think she is trying to tell a story that represents a collective experience, not a true family history. I could be wrong though. Maybe her dad really never told her these facts about his life, and so she had to speculate. But that seems unlikely to me. Wouldn't he be willing to tell her this stuff? -- Rebecca | ||
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| + | After reading this story I truly feel bad for the Father and his family. Losing a laundry business by being cheated by your partners, moving across the country to lose another job and two houses must have been truly frustrating. I thought it was interesting how when the father gave-up the mother took on the dual role of caregiver and nagger. She both pampered him and yelled at him to try and get him to find another job. I was happy to see that in the end he was able to start a new business and raise his family in a more comfortable manner. --Sarah Gardner | ||
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| + | I really got into this first chapter. It felt like I was reading a novel because I got so involved in this family and their situation. I felt really bad for the parents working for that owner and his crazy wife. No wonder Maxine and her family tried to escape them. One part that I found interesting was when the author was talking to the other children and she felt left out because her parents didn't spank her or kiss her good night. Does anyone know if this was just a family thing or was it common in the Chinese culture to have family relationships like that, you know, kind of withheld.- Celia | ||
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| + | I agree, this chapter really read like a novel. It seemed so hard and sad to come to America only to fail. This story seemed especially sad since the men went in as partners and one cheated the other. I do not think that many Chinese families had the close personal relationships that many American families have. -- Kellye Sorber | ||
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| + | I felt bad for this family, but it was inspiring to read the lengths the family went to in order to gain success. After their hard work, their children went on to continue the tradition of teaching (the brother in Vietnam) and be successful, financially independent, and acculturated citizens.-Joyce M | ||
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| + | I also thought it was interesting reading about how the Father was treated by his wife after he lost his business. She pretty much insulted him in every way possible and in front of her children. Middle class whites would not approve of this type of relationship. In some ways I think the mother was a little too harsh on the Father, but I can see how she would be frustrated. With the Father not having a job the family was losing most of their income. I can imagine that would be a terrible situation to live in. Though, I don't think that yelling and nagging him was the most productive way to get the Father to work at the time. -- Kari W. | ||
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| + | One thing I have noticed after reading these short stories is the level of involvement women have in family matters. In this story we see the wife openly taking care of her husband and yelling at him to get another job. In a story from tuesday, I remember a wife who sent letters to her husband asking for money, and trying to tell him what to do with his earnings. I don’t think that any past family type we have discussed would permit this level of involvement by women. –Andrew B | ||
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| + | Andrew, it's funny you should say that. As I was reading this, I kept thinking that this seemed like the first book we have read where the family unit really seems like a legitimate FAMILY, and not just an adult male, adult female, and their children that are not so much family members, as possessions. It may seem like a strong word, but that's the feeling I had gotten from many of the past readings. Family members were less like people and more like a means to improved status. It's just nice to see an increased focus on what makes the family important. -Cash | ||
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| + | == Glenn, "Split Household..." == | ||
| + | I think it is interesting how the Chinese found ways to circumvent the laws and regulations placed on them by white Americans. It is both fascinating and deplorable how they could pull the wool over the eyes of these officals who saw them mashed them all together and weren't willing to learn enough about them to be able to tell them apart. Then there is also the fact that so many of these men were willing to separate themselves from their families for so long in order to be able to give them an opportunity at a life better than what they could have in China. -Lacey | ||
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| + | I also felt that the Chinese were very good about working around laws meant to restrict their immigration. Notably, I thought that the idea of "paper sons" was rather clever and shows how they used the laws to their advantage. It was not quite clear to me how they were able to report so many false births in China, it must have been fairly easy to do so. I wonder how many men came over under a false identity to start a new life in America and if their descendants were told who they truly were. --Sarah Gardner | ||
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| + | It is amazing that any Chinese immigrated to the United States at all with so many restrictions place upon them. I realized their situation in China must have been desperate that they even considered traveling to another country, to leave their families and spouses in order to live in a country where they would make menial money and never become citizens until the 40s.---Joyce M | ||
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| + | I found the debate between cultural and institutional approaches to understanding Chinese American families particularly interesting. Perhaps it is the design of the article, but I found the institutional approach particularly strong with reference to Chinese American families. Glenn makes the argument that this family structure and response was not unique to the Chinese American family (p.77), which he outlines in this article, but I was wondering what other families or ethnic groups also portray this response/structure? Are there any families this semester we have already seen that would demonstrate a situational/institutional response instead of a predominantly cultural one? – Mary Beth | ||
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| + | I can't believe that with the racism and nativism (I guess those two are the same thing) prevalent in the 19th century American life, that the number of native-born Chinese grew by the decade. Even more interesting to me is that with the blind stupidity that comes with mass-hysteria racism, that when the wave of anti-Japanese sentiment that occurred in the 1940s, there was not a nose-dive in Chinese immigration. I feel like fear of being lumped in with "the bad guys" would have been enough. It's a relief to see that this was not the case, at least as far as the numbers can show. -Cash Nelson | ||
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| + | I was a bit surprised by the statistic that in the mid-20th century, Chinese workers in America were sending remittances of two billion dollars and only seven million dollars was returned to the United States. That struck me as interesting and also explains in a broad aspect why China has been on the rise in the 20th and into the 21st centuries. But it was through this almost unstable familial relationship between those who lived in China and those that lived in the United States that made this possible. --Joe C. | ||
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| + | == The Brother in Vietnam == | ||
| + | I am really confused. We got a good impression of the Chinese impression of the Japanese here, but I thought the chapter would be really different based on the title. I feel, in this chapter more than others, that Kingston's writing is convoluted. I have a hard time understanding her points. Like we discussed before, there are clearly personal influences in her writing that make this not exactly a scholarly source. I don't know what to make of it, and am glad we have an article to supplement.--Amanda | ||
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| + | I thought that this was a very interesting section. I was surprised by the number of ways men created to try and evade the draft. I also thought that the brothers reaction to being in Taiwan was informative. The idea that by stepping back on his ancestors lands made "their whole lives suddenly make sense," indicates that Chinese Americans did maintain a sense of connection with China, even if they had never been there before (291). However, it took him until he was an adult to understand what China really meant to him. --Sarah Gardner | ||
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| + | Um, I'm with Amanda. Based on the title of the section, I was expecting something completely different. I mean, it was an interesting chapter and the involvement in the war was definitely something interesting to learn about, but the book was confusing enough as it is. I didn't really need to be thrown off by another chapter. -Kelly W. | ||
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| + | I really enjoyed this section. I thought it was interesting that the brother seemed so sure of himself and his beliefs before he went to war, but then he started having doubts and having to reassess his beliefs. I liked the part where he is in Taiwan and his roommates hire a Chinese man as a servant. The brother is embarrassed to interact with the Chinese man, partly because he fears that the man will criticize him for not being Chinese enough. I think it is interesting that the brother felt Chinese enough to be offended by comic book characters like Fu Manchu, but did not feel Chinese enough to interact with this man without embarrassment. This especially struck me because in America he seemed to be really at peace with his ethnicity (and the stupid racist stuff that sometimes came along with it), but then when he actually gets to China, he is way more unsure of himself. I would have expected it to be the other way around. -- Rebecca | ||
