Journal 10: Monologue and Asian American Identity

The monologue by Shishir Kurup essentially embodies what it’s like to be a (new) immigrant to the United States. He is able to discuss the unfair, stereotypical portrayal of Asian Americans in media with a scene involving a casting process where he is forced to do a “Ghandi” accent. He also touches on the insensitive actions of unknowing Americans who accidentally mock his culture, in the scene where he is teaching a young man how to say curse words in the languages that he spoke. He was also able to portray how other colonized and marginalized countries think of one another in the scene where he speaks with Toto. One of the scenes that resonated most with me was the fast food scene. In the Philippines, my grandma made us chicken the exact same way he described except she did everything herself in our backyard and when I arrived here, I was astonished at how cheap and how fast could be made. My mother warned me not to eat at fast food restaurants, because it was unhealthy and only later did I realize that even food has been compromised for the sake of commodity and capital, here in America and now all over the world with the spread of fast food restaurant chains.

The second article discusses the very complex, clashing ideologies of an Asian American Identity. 

One of the main topics discussed is how the idea of what it means to be a certain type of Asian 

American changes among class and generation, which is something that I definitely notice. There is 

something that was pointed out in this reading that I do notice in real life: that there is, not necessarily 

a lack, but less respect for elders here in America. There is still respect, just less. When I first moved 

here, I couldn’t believe when my cousins, who grew up here, spoke to their parents in such a way that 

could get them in so much trouble, but they never did. This culture difference regarding this hierarchy 

of respect for elders is pointed out in the reading where a Chinese American factory worker must 

criticize an older Chinese American woman. There is a constant battle between assimilation and 

nativism and in a way they are two subcultures of their own, under the umbrella of Asian American 

culture. In this tension the Asian American identity is created and upheld.