People picture the United States as the promised land. The roads are paved in gold and well paying jobs are handed out to everyone and anyone. Many leave with these high expectation only to face huge struggles one they arrive. "Secretly I was glad I didn't have to go. I felt for Mah; I felt her shame and regret, to go back for solace and comfort, instead of offering banquets and stories of the good life. Twenty-five years in the land of gold and good fortune, and then she returned to tell her story: The years spent in sweatshops, the prince of Golden Mountain turned into a toad, and three daughters: one unmarried, another who-cares-where, one dead. I could hear the hushed tone of their questions: 'Why? What happened? Too sad!'" (22). Its humiliating for this family, nobody else understands how a family could not succeed in the United States. It takes a lot of courage to uproot your life and even more courage to be able listen your peers judge you and your family.
Irene Bloomer
Even if U.S. is viewed as the ideal place of escape a whole new set of challenges and obstacles they must overcome. In China the poverty they experienced is different from the poverty they experience in America but does not seem to imporve their lives as originally planned.
ReplyDeleteSince they have transitioned, the family is now trapped in the worst of both worlds versus the best of one. While they want to escape China, they value particular parts of their culture. When they transition to life in the U.S. they become partly American and must grapple with deciding between what they've always been told and what the rest of the world is doing around them. It's bad enough that their expectations were unmet, but to be trapped between two cultures can't be easy in identifying oneself.
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