Joyin Shih's essay

Joyin Shih's essay



Asian Americans in America
Asian American are typically known for being hardworking, law abiding citizens who value education and traditional family values. They grow up learning to be quite but however, when they are in America, they should learn to speak up or get left behind. There is a quote about being Asian in America from an Asian girl: ‘I'm Asian-American, and I was the only Chinese girl growing up in a white school in San Diego. So I understood what it was like to be different, to always want to fit in and never feel like you ever could”. Joyin Shih in Chyna and me is an Asian American who writes about the difficulties of growing up Chinese in America. She resists identifying with the stereotype of a good student who is polite and passive. She also rejects assimilation and pluralism because she feels that she does not belong to her culture, Chinese culture.
She is self- conscious for being singled out. She was afraid to speak Chinese when her teacher asked her to introduce her culture in front of the class. Joyin Shih states, “I stared at his sincere request, trying to pick out akin… but there was none” (520). At that time, she was very young but her thinking about his was too far away for a young little Asian girl. Follow what the teacher ask is very easy to do for children because they do not take it seriously, but for Joyin
Doan, 2
Shih, it depends on what the teacher asks. Based on what she stated, she is a very shy girl, a girl who is afraid to show her culture or to show her feeling about it. She does not share anything and she holds her thoughts and her opinions about everything inside of her. Not only her, there are
some children or even some adults who cannot express their feeling to let other people know how they really feel. Because they do not share and keep everything inside, they usually get angry about what they do not like, but they do not say it. That is a wrong way to live in a social community, especially in America...

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