Final Blog Post

Over the course of the month, I've read a lot of literature that has been extremely impactful. While I had known that Asian Americans did not experience the American dream when they entered America, I did not truly realize how difficult some of their experiences were until taking this class. The piece of literature and the historical event that have had the most affect on me are the events and literature of the South East Asian American people. Reading in Takaki about the horrors that this people group had to endure was horrifying - according to Takaki in the rush to get out of Saigon, "from the roof of the American embassy, hundreds climbed frantically onto helicopters" (Takaki 450). Most South East Asian immigrants were given less than ten hours preparation for leaving their countries - they did not have time to say goodbyes to their loved ones and homes that they were leaving behind, much less to learn the language or about the American culture that they were journeying to. Many of the South East Asian immigrants who came to the US had psychological scarring because of the horrors that they had faced in their home country, and had came to the US hoping to find safety and a better life... and unfortunately not all of them were able to do this in America, despite the rumors of the American dream. 

This event has had an impact on South East Asian literature, as well - and it was a piece of this group's literature that affected me the most over the course of this class. The story "Show and Tell" by Andrew Lam was impactful to me, mainly because it shows the struggles that South East Asians had to endure in their home country, and the struggles they continued to endure in America - Cao Long Nguyen watched his father be taken away by VC soldiers and imprisoned where he later died, but upon coming to America, he is unable to speak English and is teased by the other kids in his class. He gets asked questions by the other kids - "How long have you been here Long? (Haha). I hear they eat dogs over there, is that true? Have you ever eaten a dog?" (Lam 295). What really strikes me the most about this story is that Cao is such a young boy - middle school or later elementary school from my reading - who he has already had to endure so much struggle in his own country, but upon reaching America, he still doesn't find safety and acceptance - rather, he is mocked by his classmates because of his experiences. 

One thing I have noticed about myself over the course of this class is that I have often prescribed to the model minority myth. Because of the environments that I have grown up in, I have not been around Asian American peoples who have struggled to make a life in America: the only Asian students in my high school were foreign exchange students, and at Whitworth, most of the Asian American students I have met have come from middle or upper middle class families. However, with this class, especially with the Takaki readings, I have learned that this is not the case. A lot of my work with the Dornsife Center of Community Engagement has been in the West Central Neighborhood, and a lot of my training has been around working with low income people and understanding the struggles that they go through. In the future, I hope to work harder at remembering that Asian American peoples are people who have had to struggle in America as well, and that the model minority myth is just that - a myth. They, like many of the people I have met during my time with the Dornsife Center, have had to struggle to make their way in America.