Diaspora Essay Sample
Type of paper: Essay
Topic: China, Culture, People, Literature, Life, Chinese Culture, Race, Politics
Pages: 6
Words: 1650
Published: 2020/12/14
The book on all that matter by Wayson Choy addresses different topics including which there is the topic on the Diaspora on the old the Chinese. The author, Wayson Choy, creates a follow-up to the novel he completed the first novel on The Jade Peony. The book focuses on the family of Chen, caught up in the Diaspora of Chinese in the development of the themes. For this reason, the life in the Diaspora mostly dominates the book. The term Diaspora brings the idea that someone or a group went to the habitat in a foreign country (Parreñas 16). As such, the coverage on the topic focuses on migration, forced or by choice and the attitudes and perspectives of Diaspora to those in such situations and the people watching the Diaspora world.
The main reasons presented in the book for the migration to foreign countries include the need and quest for the freedom and search for employment opportunities. In addition, people would migrate because of the political turmoil that faced them in their native habitats. There was also need to satisfy for the poverty that encountered people. The summary and analysis of other researchers who quoted or referred the book will be an inclusive part of this work to pay the appropriate attention to the topic on Diaspora (Choy 47).
The realization of the necessity to classify people in the Chinese categories was important though contested. An interesting fact reveals from the study of the Chinese youth. Every single youth will portray characteristics of the Chinese. However, a controversy may arise when a youth in the third generation with a birthplace as Canada. The generation will have no contact with the cultural heritage such as the language. In addition, their emotions and language they will speak will not be relating to those of China as Ien Ang puts say (Ang 18). The termination of the contacts with the culture of a person results from the habitation in a foreign country for a long time, due to such factors as good job or security. Ien discusses the matter further on the topic on whether one can say no to Chinese culture.
The Diaspora people in the third generation that include Australian Chinese are people like William Yang. The people in this category possess a relationship with the country of China that has the term tenuous. The category entails those individuals who live in the imagination of their Chinese culture but have no clue on what it entails in the real sense. Indeed, some people claim that the little of the Chinese culture left in them is negligible because most of what they possessed diffused because of the influence of the foreign practices while in the Diaspora. In addition, the people in the Diaspora identifies themselves like was the case with Yang, who got an identification with a different boy from himself (Phillips 20).However, the identification was from the external definitions and the relational looks based on his physical characteristics.
A different subject develops upon the visitation in China by Yang. An experience of the fiction race is what Yang says that he would describe the experience of the first-time visitation of China. The author describes the feelings of Yang upon the arrival in the country. He says that Yang had a powerful and particular experience that had an association with the land. Yang stood on the Chinese soil where he felt the blood of the ancestors run through his veins (Eng 14). There was desperation for the native land of China no wonder Yang had the fictions feeling. He felt like in a dream upon stepping the arrival in China. Living in the Diaspora, therefore, does not fully satisfy the characters because they still need desire places of their origin.
The connection to the Chinese culture while still in the Diaspora with the race and culture would mean surrendering the agency of the person. The racial belonging fiction would lead to an implication to an interpellation reductionist from the sense of the Althusserian term presented. Consequently, there would be a construction of the on the subject in a linear and passive manner. The prior determination by blood is not active as the historical agent, which has its subject shaped through the engagement of the person with complex, multiple and the contradictory of the social relations that are over. Such measures help in the observation of the individuals living in the Diaspora (Eng 20).
The determination by the economic, political, and cultural circumstances leads to high spatiality. The “prison” of Chinese cultural ties requires breaking to achieve an identity that goes beyond that of the Chinese culture. For example, William Yang identifies himself with the gay culture of the western countries. As such, he finds himself entangled with the culture of the western nations that distinct him from the real ethnicity of his belonging. In addition, it seems that he becomes the subject for celebration for the photographs of the friends suffering from HIV/AIDS. It is clear from the case that there is not remarkable benefit for the identification with the culture of the China. Yang lives in the Diaspora successfully and gains fame that would probably lack if he decided to remain in his home. Therefore, there is no sufficient argument that can defend that the considerations of the differences in the Diaspora cultures and the culture of the nation of originality would be sufficient. The consideration of the multiplicity of other differences that locate people would require consideration. Such aspects include sexuality, gender, and class. These differences appear to dislocate when related to one another (Parreñas 11). However, the visible Chinese culture would raise a problem if it were to have the privilege of the other positions of identity. The professionals like the ethnographers must portray a broader focus on the depth of the Chinese culture in an individual because a narrow focus would blind the researcher from reaching differences that are more salient. The omitted differences would lack the required attention hence remain unresolved. The ignored features could be vital to the individuals living in Diaspora and yet face irresolution, a reason sufficient to make such persons feel neglected. The researchers must use the right mechanisms as stipulated in their professional codes because they may never get some answers if the adopt the wrong methods in their research.
There are scenarios that present individuals and the life in Diaspora for the Chinese as an articulation of the cultural of contention and intersection. The location of the cultural aspects encounters the isolation of the essential differences or different personalities that are counterproductive in some way. The success of the constitution and negotiation on the race, gender, and class would mark much significance particularly for the people living in Diaspora because it would mark across process of boundary. As such, a measure for the forcible ascription of a racial category upon a given community or group of people without the inclusion of a prior interrogation on the community will deny justice to every individual involved (Parreñas 15).
Rey Chow addresses against lures of Diaspora in her essay where he focuses on the topic of Intellectual hegemony, Chinese women, and minority discourse. In her work, Rey questions the right of Chinese women in Diaspora and challenges them that they are the voices of the oppressed women left behind in China and the lower classes of the third world. The women living in the light of the world in Diaspora must take time on self-reflection so that they can see the far they traveled and the price they had to pay to find their current positions. They moved the country at such times that poverty was prevalent, in search of employment or due to security reasons. As such, those in the privileged positions should use the privileges they have tactically and truthfully as they can and convert their words into actions.
The crippling effect of the Chinese paternalism and the Western imperialism requires suppression. The reason for the suggestion mainly draws the attention from the consideration of the profitability of the nation in general from the partners beyond her boundaries. The benefits realized do not credit the nation sufficient conviction to move further alongside the view of Western imperialism. Furthermore, the intensity in which an individual understands or is part of the Chinese practices determines how they will assume strategic differences upon consideration alongside different social classes or gender. The check would involve the persons in the Diaspora and those that are yet still in the country (Chow 176). The consideration of the deep beliefs in Chinese or Indian is an integral part of oppression just like any other forms of oppression. The argument by Eng, it is not possible to understand the racial and sexual differences in isolation. They are forms of oppression, just like any other. The racial exploration considered form part of the same sphere as presented in his analysis of the formation. The formation, in this case, entails an American male with an Asian accent and the management involved in the masculinity of the Asian American (Lim 19). As such, the “Chineseness” of a person must not have a public take that it is a permanent scar. Rather, the utilization of the same would be useful for search of fame in the fields such as politics.
Works Cited
Ang, Ien. On not speaking Chinese: living between Asia and the West. London: Routledge, 2001.
Chow, Wayson. All that matters: a novel. New York: Other Press, 2007.
Lim, Walter. Narratives of diaspora representations of Asia in Chinese American literature, 2013.
Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar, and Lok C. D. Siu. Asian diasporas: new formations, new conceptions. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2007.
Phillips, David. Ageing in the Asia-Pacific region issues, policies and future trends. London: Routledge, 2000. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=180380.
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