In the first story "The School Days of an Indian Girl" it seemed throughout the whole thing that it seemed hard for her to stay true to her culture and cultural values due to her surroundings and new comings. It was easy for me to see that acceptance was of more importance to her then staying true to her cultural values.
"Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian: The Asian woman in this story seemed to be a lot stronger then the girl in the first excerpt. She embraced her cultural values a lot better and was able to use them in a sense to not fall into the stereotypes and stigmas society tried to place in her path. This story it seemed more like the white people were more accepting to the fact that she was Chinese whereas in the first story it was a problem for her to be racially diverse.
The first passage made me think of when I was younger and I knew i was different from all the other children because I am African American and it used to bother me a lot; because at the time didn't know any better. The last story was like a growing up story brought me back to when i got older and realised that my skin color and culture are something that makes me stronger not weaker.
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I always really like reading your blogs because you always seem to relate them to your own personal life and I think that is really cool. I agree with both of your observations, the girl in the second story showed more resilience when faced with the pressure of society trying to maker her like everyone else.
ReplyDeleteYou said that acceptance was more important than staying true to cultural values to the first girl. I could not help but think of the time when they were going to cut her hair off, so she hid. When she was found, she kicked and scratched to fight back. I felt that she did fight, but maybe since she was forced into this situation more so than the second girl, she gave up easier. Also, she was in an assimilation school essentially, and the second girl was living her life and trying to figure out who she was. I think this attributed to the different degrees of assimilation that you talked about.
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