Immigration Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Immigration - Essay Example The failure to successfully integrate the Asian culture values and norms in the American culture is ostensible through their education and the accounts of Asian American writers, who relate the hardships Asian students face in schools because of their ethnicities in an Asian American journal called â€Å"Burning Cane† (Lowe, 1996, p. 53). Lowe cites the story by Monique Thuy-Dung Truong that tells the story of a Vietnamese-American woman in a predominantly white school. She feels overwhelmed by the vast majority of white population in her school. Her feelings of isolation were further deepened by her nationalistic history teacher, Mrs. Hammerick, who constantly made her feel like â€Å"she was telling all the boys that her first name of Pearl and her last name was Harbor†. (Lowe, 1996, p. 55) Truong’s story highlights how the teacher particularly left her feeling isolated around the boys in class, as she indoctrinated them with her nationalist and bigoted ideology and forewarned them from developing any ties with her. The feelings of being ostracized were indeed painful but the narrator was able to find long-lasting friendship in outcasts like her, Kelly and Michelle. However, it was not race that had set them apart but Kelly’s weight and Michelle’s poverty. Truong’s story creates a contrast between the various ways the society has now been divided. In the midst of this social turmoil, the girls develop a unique bond that is created as a result of their empathy for one another; even though their struggles were different, but they were able to cross the boundaries of race, physical appearance and socioeconomic class. While Truong’s protagonist was reduced to a status of an enemy in the eyes of her peers, another story by Patrick Leong in the Burning cane describes the struggles of a Chinese-Mexican in America, who is torn