Tuesday, 31 January: Asian American Immigrant Literature

·        Poetry reader: Linda Sulpacio

Poem: Nellie Wong, “When I was Growing Up,” UA 55

Biographical Information: 

            Nellie Wong prided herself for being a union and socialist activist.  She was born and raised in Oakland, California in the 1940’s.  Her work career included working in her parents’ restaurant, and seventeen years at Bethlehem Steel Corporation as a secretary.  During this time she also pursued an education in creative writing at San Francisco State University.  Many of Wong’s poems deal with the theme of leaving “home” behind. She stated, “I care about the roots of Asian-American culture and how and why they came here.  It’s something every Asian family has experienced.”

Objective 2.

Wong was born in Oakland, California.  Stages 1 and 2 Leave the Old World and Journey to the New World are by-passed.

Stage 3:  Shock, resistance, exploitation, and discrimination

            “When I was growing up, people told me I was dark,” Wong was told she was different.  This is experience of the American Nightmare.

            “Being Chinese was feeling foreign, was limiting, was un-American.”

Wong was feeling discrimination.

Stage 4:  Assimilation to dominant American culture and loss of ethnic identity

            “I read magazines and saw movies, blonde movies stars, white skin, sensuous lips….I began to wear imaginary pale skin.”

            “I discovered the rich white girls, a few yellow girls, their imported cotton dresses, their cashmere sweaters, their curly hair and I thought that I too should have what these lucky girls had.”

            “anxious to fit the stereotype of an oriental chick.”

Stage 5:  Rediscovery or reassertion of ethnic identity

            “I know now that once I longed to be white.”   In the first and last stanza, Wong no longer desires to be white.

2b.  Narrator or viewpoint:  Who writes the immigrant narrative?  Wong presents this poem as second-generation Chinese immigrant.

2c.  Setting:  Where does the immigrant narrative take place?  Chinatown, where Wong was raised. 

Objective 5:  How do immigrants change America?

Wong prided herself on having feminist and socialist viewpoints.  “The more I see some people fighting back, the more I see everyone acquiring the strength to fight back.”

Cultural

!a.  American Dream vs American Nightmare

Wong was living both American Dream and American Nightmare. 

In her education, she found she was good in English, grammar and spelling fitting into the group of smart children, however, she was told she was dark skinned making her feel crushed in by high walls because she was Chinese. 

Interpretation

Wong writes a poem about how she felt growing up as a Chinese in America.  She was a dark Chinese and her color could not be washed away.  As a child, she bought the American culture’s concept of beauty as being pale skin and blonde.

Discussion Questions

What does Wong wish to express when she says, “when I was growing up, people would ask if I were Filipino, Polynesian, Portuguese.  They named all colors except white, the shell of my soul but not my rough dark skin.”?

What are the “high walls” crushing Wong?

What does Wong express in , “I could not change, I could not shed my skin in the gray  water?   Why is it gray water?