My Reflection

This may sound cliché, but the first thing I thought about when asked to reflect upon this year was the great deal of stuff I learned outside of the classroom. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty to learn in Tisch Library and calc class, but somehow I think when I look back at college I won’t be thinking about derivatives and integrals. I think the main reason I learned so much here in this one year was because I was able to get away from what I thought was a suffocating home environment and finally be by myself. And even at the end of this year, I’m still just beginning to tap into my true self. So without further ado, here are some things I learned this year:

Life is not all fun all the time. Again, this is something which sounds a little cliché, but it still holds an enormous amount of truth. This year’s swim season was probably the most challenging thing I have had since being here. There were times when I really didn’t think I would make it. But it taught me how gratifying it can be to stand up and face a challenge, and overcome it. What highlighted this for me was actually the couple months after season. This is where I discovered that without work, fun is no longer fun. What is good without bad? While I thought during swim season that afterwards I would never want to swim again, now I learn that these kinds of challenges are what make life so invigorating. Also, I think looking back I can only remember a few things from parties, but I have dozens of memories in the pool working with my teammates that we will never forget.

I also learned how much I actually love and miss my family. Home is much more important to me now than it was a year ago. I think when I was in high school it was easy to get caught up in work and stuff which make you forget how important having a home is. Only by coming to college could I gain this perspective on the value of a family. There is nothing better than having somewhere to go where you will be loved unconditionally, and being “independent” this year was the best way to learn that.

Lit. Analysis paragraph

A Bildungsroman is a coming of age story; a novel that deals with the development and growth of a character and further develops his or her identity. Two novels we read, American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang and American Son by Brian Ascalon Roley, both deal with the issue of developing an Asian American identity. In American Born Chinese, the protagonist Jin Wang just wants be accepted in a community where he is the only Chinese American. The novel grapples with many of the stereotypes associated with being Asian American, and Jin eventually comes to deal with those issues in a well adapted manner. In American Son, the narrator Gabe is a quiet and reserved kid who tries to survive in a family of Filipino immigrants; with a brother who has adopted a gangster lifestyle and a mother pressuring him to be good and get good grades. Because he is ashamed of his mother’s Asian identity and he has feelings of defeat from getting beaten up by his brother, he leaves home on a journey that will eventually lead him to deal with his situation in a more violent manner. Though the protagonists of both novels have different ways of dealing with their dilemmas, both novels could be considered Bildungsromans because both protagonists grow and gain newfound meaning and a clearer identity within society.

American Son: a Bildungsroman

When I read the Victorian Web website’s definition for Bildungsroman one thing in particular caught my eye. When I read American Son, I initially thought it was not a coming of age story because at the end Gabe doesn’t take the opportunity that Ika and his Aunt Jessica tried to provide him with Westward. But then I saw that part of the definition for a Bildungsroman included that “the spirit and values of the social order become manifest in the protagonist, who is then accommodated into society. The novel ends with an assessment by the protagonist of himself and his new place in that society.” The reason I think this is applicable to American Son is because at the beginning of the story Gabe is quiet and tends to avoid conflict. Gabe is initially very reserved tends to avoid conflicts with people, and he is obviously very conflicted over his identity in America. But by the end of the novel he helps Tomas to beat up Ben Feinstein as payback for Ben’s mom chewing Ika out. I think this is because that by the end of the novel he wants to stand up for his mother, he no longer wants to keep getting stepped on because he is a Filipino immigrant, and this is his way of doing it.

I think another important reason you could consider this novel a Bildungsroman is because the narrator, Gabe, is forced to journey away from his home and begin the growth process. Part of the definition of a Bildungsroman is that the hero must have “some form of loss or discontent must jar them at an early stage away from the home or family setting.” The reason Gabe leaves his home is because he is embarrassed of his mother and upset with his brother. He runs away to California because he cannot deal with the situation, and he is violently jarred back to reality with what happens in Oregon. He begins to realize there, I think, that he shouldn’t call his mother the maid and that he should stick up for who he is and where he comes from. This is shown in the end of the story when he first stands up for his mother when she is buying makeup and then later when he gets the “yoga mom” back.

Literary Analysis Paper Topics

1. Compare the talk stories of Maxine Hong Kingston’s work Woman Warrior to a more straightforward novel.

2. Compare the literary techniques Gene Yang uses in his graphic novel, which is more flexible because of its graphic nature, to another novel which must describe everything, such as The Oracles or Woman Warrior.

3. What is the author’s goal in using many different related stories in American Born Chinese as opposed to We Are All Suspects Now?

4. Compare the literary techniques Maxine Hong Kingston uses to describe her childhood versus those Pati Poblete uses.

5. Compare the symbols used in American Born Chinese to those used in Woman Warrior.