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Themes Of Vanessa Woods 'Baked Beanss And Burnt Toast'

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Introduction
The anthology growing up Asian in
Australia was written by a collection of authors with an unique outlook on immigrating to Australia and what they experienced there. the book was edited by acclaimed author alice pung who has a mixed cambodian and chinese background. The stories are all based around the struggles of fitting in, feeling like you belong and discovering who you are and how you want to be perceived. The issues of identity and belonging are themes found throughout however they are most prominent in chinese lessons, baked beans and burnt toast and perfect chinese children.

Baked beans and burnt toast
The humorous short story “baked beans and burnt toast” was written by jacqui larkin and explores the themes of identity …show more content…

Vanessa is an award winning science writer, author and journalist, born to a caucasian father and an asian mother vanessa shares her experiences of the asian expectation.this story is about her struggling to please her mother who has very high expectations and never seems to show any pride in her work. Her and her family live in a small house and aren't very well off. After her parents divorce vanessa starts realising that her mother sacrifices more for her then she realises and learns to appreciate her high expectations. This story connects with the themes of belonging and fitting in because vanessa feels that she is not smart enough to fit in with the asian community, she feels that since she is half Caucasian she cannot contest with the other fully Asian children, while she hears everybody else being praised her name doesn't come up once, leaving her feeling incompetent and like a failure. When trying to embrace the australian culture it seems to disappoint her mother, she says “You must pay her back with good marks. Otherwise you will make her ashamed.“(Woods p.108) this shows how much pressure was put on Vanessa as a child and how the fact she did not reach her mother's goals had such an effect on her.Therefore the key figures of identity and belong are prominent in this

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