Extended Culture of One -Jacob Butler

The piece of literature that affected me the most was the excerpt from A Cab Called Reliable.  Leading up to  Ahn Joo Cho’s speech, it appears that she has had a fairly typical life.  The story about her aunt however added an interesting and dark contrast.  Told in a fairly whimsical and matter of fact tone, she talks about how her aunt was “abused” (Kim 257). She is driven to “insanity” and “poisoned” her family and “burned” her house down (Kim 257).   It is an odd placement of a dark passage in this otherwise fairly positive passage.  It sets the scene for when Ahn Joo Cho gets first place and gets to read her work on stage.  It turns out to be “way too dark” (Kim 259).  I find it interesting how she was able to so calmly deliver that to the whole auditorium, and still keep her composure.  I believe the point of this work as a whole was to put forth efforts to dispel the Model Minority Myth.  It is effective because we get to see an inside look at some of the struggles that Asian Americans have to deal with directly.  It seems that she had entered a different work into the contest she won, and had read a different one to the auditorium.  Her breaking the rules is another form of counter storytelling that goes against the Model Minority Myth.

    I find the Tydings-Mcduffie Act unbelievable.  The Tydings-Mcduffie Act gave the Philippines their “independence” so that the United States would be able to deny Filipinos citizenship as they had when they were nationals (presentation 1/19/17).  I understood that many Americans did not like Asians in 1934, but at a time when America was seeing itself as an empire, to give away a colony for the sole purpose of exclusion was way more than I had ever expected.  This allowed for “fifty persons a year” to enter the US, a number that was extremely small compared to earlier numbers (Takaki 13).  The Filipinos, at the time, were very Americanized. They had been “colonized by Spain” so they had already known and been accustomed to “western culture” (presentation 1/19/17).  

In high school, we focused mainly on how the Civil Rights Movement affected African Americans and Native Americans, but rarely addressed Asian Americans.  This class opened my eyes to see how diverse America is.  I really enjoyed the new perspective on American history, and seeing the reasons why people came to America.  I had almost no experience with Asian American literature.  It was exciting to be able to read new types of work done by these authors.  Before this class, I had a fairly biracial world view.  I am now more aware of the backgrounds that make up this country.  This is much like the last Critical Race Theory tenant.   Every group has a unique story to tell, to contribute to US history.