Life is something that requires a significant amount of physical and mental effort. Some are deeply fortunate to have everything arranged for them and not have a single worry. For others, life is full of stress and hardships. It all just depends on how one was raised and brought into this world. Out of the Rick Bragg articles, the characters went through grief and heartache, government involvement, and the absence of life’s given moments.
“Her actions remind me that, even under unbearable circumstances, one can still believe in justice,” in David Henry Hwang’s foreword, in Ji-Li Jiang’s memoir Red Scarf Girl, commemorated even during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution anyone can overcome adversity (9). Ji-Li Jiang was a young teenager at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, and living through a very political time in China’s history made Ji-Li into the person she is today. Ji-Li’s intelligence, her choices, and family devotion made her into the headstrong and successful person she is today.
In the movie “The Loving Story”, the director Nancy Buirski presents a story about love and fight for the right of interracial marriage and social justice. In 1958, a white man whose name Richard Loving and his black fiancée Mildred Jeter travelled from Virginia to Washington to get married in a time when interracial marriage was illegal in most of the states in the United States including Virginia, according to the movie. However, the director shows that Mildred and Richard Loving were arrested in Virginia when they came back for violating a Virginia law that forbidden marriage between people of different races. Therefore, the couple had to leave Virginia so that they can live together with their children in Washington, D.C. A long way from
“Dark trees in the landscape of love” by Kao Kalia Yang is reading about the lives of Hmong girls married white men and how their lives are different. Kalia Yang started the story talking about his nephew preference for black trees, not bright trees, showing that all colors of the trees are beautiful not just the bright ones. Then she talks about his husband and when she first saw his husband, she never taught to marry him. Aaron used to hear her given the public speech and one day he sends her an email inviting for breakfast. She accepted for lunch and they met at the Hmong restaurant, but it was just a casual meeting to talk about work. Aaron was not his type of man who she will marry. The man she wants to marry was Thai an actor or any Hmong
If we bring all these struggles into one main purpose, Min-Zhan Lu’s mother falls into silence two months before her death and Min-Zhan Lu attempts to “fill up that silence with words that I have since come to by reflecting on my earlier experience as a student in China.(437) The struggles that she faced growing up in China as a student and her past experiences have really helped her overcome life obstacles and develop her as a better reader and writer. In result, she now has the ability to fill up that silence with words and puts us in the point of view of her experiences she faced in
Ludacris, a famous male singer released a song featuring Mary J. Blige in 2007 called “Runaway Love.” This song speaks for itself and Ludacris does an excellent job of portraying his message about various struggles that some people are faced with in life. Runaway Love reperents the struggle of life through hip-hop and rap music. The song portrays a story of little girls who are for instance “stuck up in a world of their own.” The people around them strictly don’t care about them, which leads them having to own up and care for themselves. These girls are at the ages from 9 to 11 and at a young age their goal in life is to run away from their home. In this song, Ludacris try to bring a message to the listeners by trying to get people to realize the struggle that children have to face. Adults aren 't the only people that go through hard times and struggles, children do as well. Though people believed adults are the only people to have problems, children just have problems in their own different ways.
In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie is a main character whose outward existence conforms, and her inward life questions. This tension helps to evolve the author’s theme of the importance of individuality and how individuality creates happiness. Janie experiences most of her life in trying to conform, and grows to despise it. Once free, she becomes herself and becomes happy.
In the article “In the Name of Love,” Miya Tokumitsu covers the issue that doing what you love (DWYL) gives false hope to the working class. Tokumitsu reviews how those who are given jobs ultimately cannot truly love what they do because of the employers who make jobs possible. These same employers keep their employees overlooked. Providing the example of Steve Jobs, the creator of Apple, she says the people who work under Jobs break their backs at factories, yet he never credits the workers’ efforts to his overall success. Tokumitsu points out that the DWYL mantra is narcissistic for those who are overpaid for less labor, while those tricked into believing they love their job are less valued for the overall
What is your American Dream? “The Joy Luck Club”, a novel by Amy Tan, talks about how four mother-daughter pairs have fulfilled their American Dreams. Suyuan and Jing-mei was one of the mother-daughter pair who wants to fulfill their dreams in America. Suyuan’s American Dream starts in her heart when she decides to escape from the chaotic China and find a better life by immigrating to America. However, she loses her two babies on the way to Chungking. American Dream means different things for different people. Suyuan has fulfilled her American Dream in a certain degree by trying to provide her daughters with successful, blissful and better lives.
At her first glance at them, she knew exactly who they were because of their resemblance to their mother. However, as she approached them, she realized that there were no evident similarities in features between them and her mother, but that the similarities she noticed at first ran deep in their blood: they were family. And at this brief moment of realization, the most perceptible change in Jing-Mei took place. She said, “Now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood. After all these years I can finally be let go” (Tan 159). For the first time in her life of being stuck between two cultures and believing that she does not belong to either, Jing-Mei feels like she belongs. As it was previously stated about the meanings of this family’s poetic names, these names that were given to them by their mother created a meaningful theme. In the words of Jing-Mei in the last line of the story, “Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished wish” (Tan 159). Throughout her life, Suyuan, their mother, held onto the hope that she would see her daughters again. In this hope, she named Jing-Mei in connection to her sisters, keeping the “long-cherished wish” that someday her daughters would reconcile and complete their family circle. The occasion that
The following events caused the tensions to raise between Japan and The United States of America which led up to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Internment of Japanese Americans. They are the Rape of Nanking and the sudden stop of U.S exports to Japan. In the 1930s Japan, had become very nationalistic, militaristic, and desired for more land to expand the population. So, Japan went to China and conquered Manchuria, Northern China, then most of China, and eventually Southeast Asia. This help Japan get out of its economic crisis but soon a very tragic and horrendous even took place. The Rape of Nanking was a total massacre of the Chinese because at the time it was a glorified city that stood testament to China’s wealth and beauty. Within a
Citizen Barlow a young African-American, arrives in Pittsburgh and is part of the freed slaves. While working at the local mill, Citizen steals a can of nails. Another man is accused and choose suicide rather than face arrest and a life in which it is unfairly identified as a thief. Citizen wants to redeem his guilt for causing the death of one person and looking at Aunt Ester, whose healing powers are legendary. A 285-year-old aunt Esther lives in a house with Eli, his friend and protector, and Black Maria, a young woman wearing the clothes for a living and who Aunt Esther hopes to pass his powers. Eli intends to build a strong wall around the house so they can be protected, both physically and metaphorically,
The author of Lives of the Nuns name is Shi Baochang and he constructed this article during the Tang Dynasty (618-906 CE). Shi Baochang was a Buddhist himself, his intention of writing these pieces is to spread the belief of Buddhism throughout the world. Lives of the Nuns is not the only Buddhist piece he has constructed , he has written many more to prevent the belief of Buddhism from going extinct. His theme in his writings is not to just spread the idea of the religion, but also to show the people what Buddhism really is about. Shi Baochang, writing pieces were so influential, they made the people of the empire have more of an open minded thinking of the idea Buddhism and saw it differently.
“With bronze as a mirror one can correct one 's appearance; with history as a mirror, one can understand the rise and fall of a state; with good men as a mirror, one can distinguish right from wrong.”
In Wang Anyi's novel Song of Everlasting Sorrow women's friendship is a major theme, however many of the friendships fail. The main reason behind the failure of the friendships was because of Wang Qiyao's ongoing identity crisis. In addition to her identity crisis Wang Qiyao's ulterior motives behind the friendships along with her distrusting personality contributed to the downfall of her two main friendships.