ABC

In American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang uses comedic art to retell an ancient story that many Chinese children may have heard growing up. He takes an ancient tale and spins it in another way, creating a story that is interesting to those who have heard it before and people who have never heard of the story.
Although steeped in tradition, he adds elements from the present, as seem with the attitude of the “bouncer” at the entrance to the party, kindly asking the monkey king to step aside for a moment. He also appeals to modern readers’ violent side by exaggerating small fights by recreating them as full blown violence. These elements combine together to provide an introduction that is witty, humorous and informative of an ancient Chinese tale.

Asian American Masculinity

I remember thinking that we have always heard about asian inferiority and what not but never erally seeing any raw data. but this time i feel that we actually have some data at least partially supporting the idea. What really struck me was that they found a way to actually quantify a test that was so hard to do. By giving a scale, the researhers were able to find trends that many asians see between while and asian males and whites and asians in general. I guess the survey agreed with what many believed was a stereotype, that asian males were a lot more submissive than white males. And that people tended to view asian women and more meek and submissive. But what the article failed to do i believe, is to try to find out why it is the way it is. How these stereotypes were formed and how they have come to be embedded in our present day society.

My Turn Topics

Asians and the Hip Hop Movement
Affirmitive actions
Stereotypes in Children
Tensions within asian cultures

Respons to Metcalf Presentation

It was really interesting to hear about how the concept of beauty could be so different in Asia than in America. It made sense after i though about what i had seen in my trip to china the previous summer. I was shopping outside with my parents when i saw a woman riding a bike with a dark visor and a white reflected sleeve pulled all the way up her arm. I believe that this represented the more eastern norm, where whiter=better. It could have come from a belief that people born from the western world was better than those from the eastern world.

The discussions that the people present had was very interesting. There was a lot of talk concerning "acting asian" and why people would try to be more white or asian. Yet i feel that we went around the issue and did't focus on the main problem, the huge difference between the two cultures and how the two cultures were not as easy to compare as they are vastly different.