Author: Lina Mohamed

Shadow Hero-Gene Luen Yang & Sonny Liew

The Shadow Hero is about immigration, stereotypes and so much more but it reminded me a lot of Tan’s Arrival for many reasons. Both stories show a family’s long journey and struggles as they learned to assimilate into a completely new world However, this novel was about so much more like heritage, race, and courage. Hank was not really sure what he wanted to do when his mom introduced him to fighting and pushed him to be more courageous than his father. This was the first and one of the the most prominent stereotypes that was enforced. It was always up to the man to be stronger, wealthier, and more capable in all aspects. Hank’s father was never appreciated by his wife even though he worked hard for his grocery shop to be able to help support his family. There is also the stereotype of the grocery store, the mom pushing her child to do more, learning Kung Fu, working extra hard and other little things. The Shadow Hero really challenges many Asian American stereotypes in this book.

Another example of this stereotyping is when the detective used chauvinistic terms to describe Asians. However, I think it is important to note that Hank did not just play along and showed his true self and race without hiding under a mask. Hank showed much pride in where he was from and always embraced where he came from and I felt this was a reoccurring theme in the book. I felt that the culture and heritage of the characters was sacred and this was present with many of the characters.  For example, the mother did this with the costume she created, the Asians in the underground bar did this with their battles and designs in the bar, and also the spirits contributed to this. The Spirits in the story were ensuring that the culture that they brought with them remained present. Even though the Spirits disagreed about who should be the emperor, they wanted to preserve some part of who they were. However, I do not think this book was about embracing stereotypes as much as as it was about breaking out of stereotypes. We see that the mom transforms from this uptight stereotypical Asian mom into a more complex character by the end of the novel. She begins in the novel by pushing Hank around and telling him what to do and what not to do but at the ned, she lets Hank do what he feels he needs to do without interfering.

Reitano Chapter 10- A “New” New York

pp. 205-214

New York was going through some major changes at this time; changes in immigration, law, developments and even financial problems. Gotham’s population was steadily increasing after the 1965 immigration reform and by the 1990s, New York became more global than ever with communities from all over the world. By 2009, minorities were the majority of voters in Gotham. Soon after, the World Trade Center tragedy occurred and shook the entire world. However, New York defied the odds and rebuilt after this tragedy.

Residents were leaving New York but new immigrants were constantly taking their place reviving many cities. Russian immigrants moved in with difficulties but were welcome unlike the Chinese. The Chinese faced segregation from society. However, soon the Chinese began to dominate as thousands of Chinese came in, conquered businesses with their networks and impacted many communities. Koreans also came along and took places of other immigrants helping declining neighborhoods flourish again. Koreans dominated Flushing as the Chinese dominated other neighborhoods. Asians remained strong through tough circumstances and adapting quite well at the end.

Settling in new place is definitely not easy as we saw with the Asians and other European immigrants and it wasn’t any easier for Latinos. Like all immigrants, Puerto Ricans brought something to the table. Puerto Ricans enriched their communities through music, language, traditions and more.However, they still struggles financially as some moved up to the middle class but most remained at the bottom with lowest education levels and highest poverty in the nation. Puerto Rican immigration constantly fluctuated, going up and down as years went by. Soon, Dominicans outnumbered Puerto Ricans in New York and unlike some immigrants, Dominicans were able to go back home relatively easy and could even vote. This led to Dominicans seeking political power in New York. Dominicans also suffered economically as they got paid low wages due to their weak union ties. However, they got along pretty well with other minorities, women helped with this union.

West Indians were also a part of the newcomers coming into New York and they held many parades as well. Their first big immigration was during the 1920s amidst the renaissance. There were tensions between West Indians and African Americans but they soon diminished. West Indians adjusted quite well as they also had connections, they also spoke English so this led to them getting good educations.

pp. 221-226

The Social Contract was constantly changing in New York as some politicians favored helping he poor and other the middle class. Giuliani soon redefined New York’s social contract as he advocated the privatization of many facilities. Giuliani was not so concerned about the poor or helping them in any way and he even wanted them out of the city. Some of his decisions led to an increasing number of homeless and needy people. The lower class were treated extremely harsh while looking for jobs or even at their jobs as conditions were despicable. Giuliani continued to cute taxes that helped large wealthy corporations while hurting the poor. Giuliana also revolutionized school systems in terms of their security, education, and testing in some ways helping schools but on the other had, weakened them. He made many cuts to school funding and standards in schooling continued to be changed.

Another part of Gotham’s changing social contract was the support for the First Amendment rights of free expression and assembly. Giuliani also made cuts toward The Brooklyn Museum because of the “offensive art” which he called sick and disgusting. People began to accuse him of abusing his power and began to resist him because they believed that his views should not be allowed to limit creative institutions. However, Giuliani persisted because his strong tactics often worked. Giuliani and Laguardia were quite similar but also opposites, however Laguardia remained Gotham’s best mayor.

-Not Seeing Past Skin Color

From the beginning of The Blacker The Berry, there were great similarities to Larsen’s Passing. Irene Redfield and Emma Lou are both the main voices in the novel. The readers only hear one side of every story and this is what they must trust. This makes the narration very unreliable and quite deceiving. One characteristic about Irene Redfield that I noticed in Emma is the judgmental thinking. Irene judged everyone and everything that surrounded her and Emma does the same in this novel. The narration of this novel allows us to get inside the protagonist’s head but it does not mean that this results in a reliable narration.

Similarities between Irene and Emma are very apparent throughout the rest of the novel as well. “Emma Lou was too powerless to resist”(p.20). This reminded me of Irene because she could not resist Clare in Passing. Also, Irene was easily influenced and discriminating towards others, which is seen in Emma Lou’s character. Emma Lou judges everyone around her by their skin color. What she chooses to believe solely depends on the person’s color. What she sees rarely goes beyond a person’s color. We see that Emma belittles everyone who is dark-skin before even getting to know them and often this is the rest of her experience with that person. This is shown in her relationship with Hazel and John. However, when a person is lighter-skinned, she treats the person a completely different way even if they do not treat her well. This is what makes everything Emma Lou unreliable. She simply does not see past the skin color because she resents her own skin color and this makes her an untrustworthy narrator.

Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry are truly complex characters in the Nella Larson’s Passing. The point of view in this novel, third person, also adds to the complexity/confusion. However, the point of view does focus more on Irene and how she is feeling, what she is thinking and what she is doing from day to day. This point of view still does not make it easy to understand what the characters are thinking.

In terms of sympathizing for one character more than the other, this is also hard. Irene seems like she is the more caring and loving one as she stays true to her race and identity which can cause one to sympathize her but the ending kind of turns what we interpret of Irene’s character. Is Irene deserving of our sympathy? Also, Irene is extremely judgmental; she judges all of Clare’s actions very harshly, she criticizes Gertrude, in a way, because she has married a white man over a man of her own race, she is also constantly talking negatively about her husband. She says that her husband does not care for his sick patients and also their relationship seems to be a problem because of Irene’s attitude. As readers, we do not see any romantic connection between Irene and her husband and this hints at a romantic relationship with Clare because they are often talking about each theory in a subtle but sexual way. However, this does not make Irene a caring or loving character. Also, during the dance, we can sense that Irene is jealous of the fact that everyone seems to love Clare and enjoy her company. Irene is just an overall, harsh, judgmental and jealous character in the novel. This judgement is made way before we become suspicious, as readers, that she may have caused Clare’s death. Also, Irene cannot seem to say no to Clare about anything which is not very admirable. This is also confusing because is Irene doing this because she is sympathetic towards Clare’s situation or something else?

On the other hard, the reader sort of sympathizes for Clare because of her tough situation and her ‘loneliness” that is brought up more than once in the novel. Clare chooses this life of lying and hiding from her personal identity. Clare, however, comes from an extremely difficult past. Her father dying, and her aunts mistreating her, these are all reasons that Clare is the way she is. One’s past ultimately affects their future forever. Clare’s past, along with her loneliness. has a great affect on how the reader views Clare. We see that Clare is lying about her race and identity but she still has a longing for her “black” side. Clare is always wanting to join Irene in gatherings, dances and other occasions to get to see people from her past that are of the same race and reconnect with them. Most of these actions make Clare look caring and genuine in her actions. The reader feels sympathy for Clare when Clare is telling Irene that she is the safer, wiser, and happier one. This leads the reader to believe that Clare still cares about her race and wishes she could get away from this life of lies. Clare gets a horrible, unexpected ending as she is pushed out of a window by one of the characters. Irene was jealous of Clare and this made the readers feel that Clare did not care about Irene’s feelings because she was suspected of getting close to Irene’s husband.

All these internal conflicts put together do not lead us to believe that Irene or Clare are very sympathetic/admirable at all. However, because of Clare’s past and consistent behavior, I would have to say that she is a little more sympathized but not sympathetic. Also, because Irene and Clare both made questionable decisions, I do not believe any of them are admirable. The only thing that is admirable about Irene is her connection with her true identity/race even though she may or may not have killed Clare.

Writing journals is an extremely different process than note-taking, in many ways. Note-taking is simpler in that it requires less thinking. While not-taking, you write things just the way they are. They are often short sentences written to trigger memories when they are re-read. On the other hand, journaling requires more thinking, analyzing, and processing different types of information. A journal can introduce an opinion, argument, detailed analysis, questioning, and so much more. I feel that when one writes a journal, one is required to think deeply about a certain thing and express their own feelings or their own interpretations about the data. Therefore, I think note-taking and journaling require completely different processes to achieve completely different outcomes.

The journal entries that are done for this class are never quite the same. Every assignment has a different prompt relating to the reading/film. The only journals that are similar are the summaries and these actually remind me the most of note-taking. However, note-taking is less crafted and organized than an informative summary. Other journal entries (non-summaries) usually require us to analyze a certain scene, certain relationships in a reading, or camera techniques in a film. These prompts usually require one to go back to the reading/movie to recall what happened. The journals often make me see something clearer than I had seen the first time around. When rewetting a movie scene, there is more clarity and awareness of what is going on and this enables the viewer to deeply scrutinize something. The same thing goes for re-reading a scene in a novel/article.

Journals, for me, are a great way to express myself. The thing I like most about my journals is the way I am able to express my opinion on a certain topic. The one thing I do not like about my journaling is that I often put too much thought into it that I feel it becomes too formal for journal writing. I feel that journals should just flow more naturally but this does not make writing them less enjoyable.

Summary of: Jews and Italians in Greater New York City, 1880 to World War I: Part ii

Most people know about some aspects of Jewish immigration and how it affected New York City. However, many more nationalities contributed greatly to the diversity of New York; like the Italians. Italians had a great impact on the New York because they were the second largest group to arrive around the same time of the Jews. Like most immigrants, the Italians came seeking a better life but they were very different than the Jews. Unlike the Jews coming in, most of the Italians were illiterate and closely resembled the Irish when they came to New York. Italians did not suffer a famine in Italy, like the Irish, but they were escaping hardships and poverty. It was not an easy task for the Italians to assimilate in New York. The first Italians to come were mainly men who emigrated looking to make money to send home. Other immigrants rarely returned to their countries. Men would either travel back to get their wives and children to New York or go back to find wives then return. The number of Italians key growing rapidly and by 1900, New York counted 250,000 Italians and this number just kept growing. The immigration number decreased during World War I but then resumed again and by 1920, the number of Italians had risen to 391,000. This was almost the number of foreign born Irish and Germans combined. Soon, counting the children, this number 800,000 in 1920.

Little Italy of Lower Manhattan quickly became the city’s most famous Italian colony but not the center of Italian population. Italians settled uptown, Greenwich Village, and soon moved

to Brooklyn and the Bronx. Italian men provided much needed manual labor for the growing New York and they based their living near their work. For example, along subway routes in Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. Soon, Italian Harlem was home to 4,000 Italian residents by 1880.

The padroni, labor contractors, had a say in determining settlement and they were looked down upon because of their promotion of contract labor. However, the padronis continued their ways even though the law prohibited it.

In 1897, the SS Trojan Senato arrived with 1,100 Italians and they were treated by over 5,000 friends and family members. Their numbers kept increasing and soon things began to become unsafe and everywhere Italians settled was often crowded and unhealthy. Because Italians came with no experience and not knowing the English language, they could not earn enough money to live in more comfortable environments.

Danish journalist, Jacob Riis, more than any other brought the city’s poor living conditions to the public view. His work contained paintings of some neighborhoods to show exactly what it looked like. Their living spaces not only were overcrowded and unhealthy, they were foul smelling and often had a large number of crimes and this made living conditions more difficult. This soon led to Italians gaining the reputation of criminals and Sicilians were accused of bringing along Mafia members. In 1909, a detective was killed while investigating possible Mafia conditions and this made things worse for Italians as there was more terror spread and this contributed to anti-immigrant sentiment.

Most Italians found work within common labor but they also found jobs outside that category. They became barbers, shoemakers, waiters, teamsters and bartenders and even musicians. They soon became involved in the city’s growing garment business. During strikes, employers looked for Italians as new employees and bosses loved them because their eagerness to work and flexibility with wages.

As mentioned before, women rarely came alone; they came as wives, daughters or sisters. Women who came to New York were expected to raise children, care for the houses rather than make money like the men. However, Italian daughters, single women and even married women, only without children, often found jobs in garment industries and garment-related jobs. Some families however, needed all family members to work to be able to afford the needs of the family. Men and women both had it hard with their different but equally arduous responsibilities. Even young girls and women had it hard as their working conditions were often unsanitary, dirty, poorly lit and they got paid very little. By World War I, Italians strived to enhance lifestyle by aiming for more skilled jobs. This was mainly pertinent to the children of the immigrants because some were able to stay in the city’s public schools and learned English and this led to some receiving white collar jobs. This was not the case for all families because they were untrusting of the public schools and needed their kids to work for the money.

Jews were the backbone of garment industries but soon, Italians became a big part as well. By the outset of WWI, a middle class had emerged from within the Italians as they became bankers, real estate promoters, newspaper editors, white collar workers, shop owners, and even a few musicians, lawyers and doctors. This led to them being able to afford moving to better better housing. Giuseppe Tuoti began selling real estate in Lower Manhattan then branched out to New Jersey, Coney Island, and Staten Island. Soon he became a success and million dollars of property was transferred through Tuoti.

Only after 1900 did Tammany Hall pay attention to Italian districts. Soon some Italians became officeholders such as Fiorello La Guardia who became quite successful In New York before WWI. Italians joined the Socialist party when they found Democrats and Republicans unresponsive to their problems as a working class. Soon groups emerged to help Italians with benefits for sickness, insurance, and other emergencies such as the Society for the Protection of Italian Immigrants formed in 1901. Italians started to publish newspapers in their language to  maintain cultural relations. Also by 1911, the city and fifty Catholic churches to meet the needs of the Italians who were not comfortable in the Irish churches. Italian New Yorkers remained a tightly knit community during the eve of the World War I.