Author: Maria Tsampas

In The Shadow Hero, Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew engage and challenge many Asian American stereotypes that are prominent in today’s society. From the beginning of the comic, we learn that Hank’s parents had gotten an arranged marriage. Hank’s mother had to oblige to her parents and her husband which enforces the stereotype that Asian women are submissive. Later on, the mother assumes a different role when she is rescued by the American superhero, the Anchor of Justice. She forces her son to become a superhero against his will and goes as far to use chemicals to gain some sort of superpower. The stereotype that Asian parents will make their child do anything if they think it’s going to make them successful in the future is seen here. Especially in this situation, the mother looked up to an American superhero and wanted Hank to be as close as possible to a white man. Many of the white American’s in the book use racist words to describe the Chinese. For instance, When Mock Beak wins in a game of billiards against a white man, another rich looking American remarks how the loser, “didn’t have a Chinaman’s chance” (59). Another example is when Detective Lawful calls the Chinese, “sneaky slant-eyed bastards” (118). Leun bolds these words in the comic to emphasize how the Chinese were really seen by many people.

However, the stereotypes are also challenged in the novel. Despite not wanting to at first, Hank actually does become a successful superhero. He recreates the presupposed image of the white superhero by becoming what was the first Asian superhero. Hank overcomes the stereotype that Asians are weak and scrawny by training hard and bulking up and actually taking down criminals. In the book, many people thought that every superhero was by default a Caucasian man. When Detective Lawful mistakes him for a white man, Hank proudly emphasizes that he is Asian and is doing just as much good as a white superhero which gains respect from the detective. When given the chance to kill Mock Beak, Hank decides to do the just thing and bring him to court instead. He does this to break the stereotype that all of the Chinese in Chinatown followed their own laws and not the American ones. Going on, Red Center is not just a damsel in distress figure in the comic. She is a woman who saves herself and overcomes the stereotype that Asian women are weak.

In the end, Hank becomes a superhero that everyone can look up to, even the Anchor of Justice. He doesn’t just save people for acceptance from the other people of America, but he does this to feel good about himself.

The Newcomers

The first part of Reitano’s Chapter 10 details New York City as “both changeless and changing” in many ways including immigration policies. Due to the 1965 immigration reform, people from the Caribbean, East Asia, Central Asia, Latin America and Russia flocked to New York and greatly changed the population of the city. In New York alone, over 110 different languages are spoken. Although many of these newcomers self-segregate in certain neighborhoods, they are able to interact with new kinds of cultures in New York creating a multicultural “cosmopolitan identity.”

As older residents were moving out of the city to the suburbs, the new immigrants came into these city neighborhoods and revived them. For example, the Russian Jewish émigrés brought Brighton Beach, Brooklyn back from it’s decaying state by living there and creating new businesses.

The Chinese immigrants faced problems of isolation upon coming to New York City. From 1882 to 1943, many Chinese people were barred from coming to the US. If they were able to come to America, they were excluded from most occupations and were left to work in restaurants, laundries, and in underground business. The Chinese were even kept out of American politics as they were controlled by the Chinatown Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA). When the Chinese immigration quota was raised in 1965, the population of Chinatown drastically rose. Most of the new Cantonese speaking immigrants were used as cheap labor in sweatshops with exploiting bosses while others immigrating from Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Taiwan who were more educated and wealthy bought real estate and developed restaurants, stores, and sweatshops. When the Chinese were granted citizenship in 1943, they began to organize politically. The Flushing community elected John C. Liu as the first Chinese American City Councilman in 2001 and the comptroller in 2009 while two other immigrants from Hong Kong were elected to the City Council as well.

Although the city’s Chinese American community has grown politically and economically, there are still internal tensions along regional and class lines. The “model minority myth” stereotypes Asians as industrious, ambitious, and smart. Many accepted this image but the working class Chinese and Korean immigrants often felt ashamed if they could not live up to the standard due to economic issues. These immigrants later pushed the model minority myth on to their children so they can live the American Dream.

Due to the given American citizenship of many Puerto Ricans in 1917, they never became fully settled in either Puerto Rico or America. The Puerto Ricans were the first dominant Latino group in New York City. They enriched the urban environment with their culture and provided a large labor force for the post World War II industrial growth. They even became a political force in the 1960s when Herman Badillo was elected as Borough President and congressman. By 2000, Dominicans outnumbered Puerto Ricans in population. Since many Dominicans had dual citizenship, they returned to the Dominican Republic frequently and even voted in the elections there. Although much of their focus was split between the two countries, Dominicans did seek local political power and elected their first city councilman in 1991. The Dominican women also raised their role in the family by earning wages in America and developing leadership skills.

Another predominant immigrant group to New York City was from the West Indies. The first large migration to New York happened during the 1920s Harlem Renaissance. While many West Indians used their British ties and British accents in order to distinguish themselves from African Americans, other figures such as Marcus Garvey and Claude McKay combatted historic American racism by emphasizing racial pride. During the civil rights era, tensions between West Indians and African Americans decreased as West Indian people won elective office in African American communities and their goals started to align more. Even though West Indians fates have aligned with the fates of African Americans, they did separately create a political identity and still continue to not be absorbed in African American politics.

The Social Contract

New York City’s political agenda has drastically changed with the turn of mayors. While LaGuardia, Lindsay, and Dinkins focused on serving the public and the poor, past Mayor Rudy Giuliani focused on the middle class and greatly defunded social programs. He believed that the “lazy” should not live at the expense of the hardworking. With new qualifying standards for welfare, Giuliani eliminated over 600,000 people from the program and was highly regarded for doing so. With a sudden increase in homeless people and attendance increase to food kitchens, it was proven that leaving welfare did not mean leaving poverty. To change the program for the better, Giuliani turned welfare centers into job centers to hopefully raise the people out of poverty. In addition, his tax cuts ultimately hurt minorities and the poor while helping wealthy private institutions and big business. He fought for control over New York City’s public schools and implemented citywide testing to raise standards and bring uniformity. Together, Giuliani and Badillo advocated the “standards movement” and drastically changed the education system of NYC.

After hearing of an art exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum called “Sensation,” Giuliani stepped up his fight to censor art at any and all costs. He threatened to cut public funding to the museum due to its “offensive” nature. Giuliani continued to use his mayoral powers to threaten different groups that were criticizing him and protesting against him. It wasn’t until the tragedy of 9/11 that he was able to be seen as a figure of strength and democracy during the aftermath. Throughout his term, he immensely changed the social contract of New York City.

 

Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry deals with the personal struggles a dark skinned girl faces with white people and with colored people. Emma Lou grew up in a family that discarded her as a disgrace just because her skin is darker than anyone else’s and even her own mother and grandmother used harsh chemicals to try and lighten her skin color. Her mindset has always been that she will never amount to as much as anyone else just because of her skin color. Even though she puts lighter skinned people above herself, she claims that she doesn’t, “mind being black, being a Negro necessitated having colored skin, but she did mind being too black” (21).  If not even her own race and her own family could accept her, how could she learn to accept herself?

Like Irene from Nella Larson’s Passing, Emma Lou is an unreliable protagonist. She never admits to herself that she hates being a dark skinned black girl and justifies her hatred towards other black people by saying they are just not educated at her level. This is evident in the scene where she meets Hazel at UCLA and immediately dismisses her because of her dark skin and the way she talks. Since the reader only sees how Hazel is through the eyes of Emma Lou, the reader is misinformed of what is true and what is not true.

After Emma Lou moves to Harlem, she meets John who quickly helps her with finding and home and showing her around the city. Although John only showed her the most kindness she’s ever received in her life, Emma Lou breaks up with him after two days because of his dark skin. When the light skinned Alva shows some interest in Emma Lou, she falls completely in love with him even though he is pretty much embarrassed of her and her dark skin. Emma Lou never truly realizes this and yet still continues to love him for mostly his light skin. She is hypocritical in her ways and racist to her own kind. That is why she is an unreliable protagonist.

Nella Larson’s Passing deals with the idea of racial identity and the conflicts that come with it. The novel follows two African-American women, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, who are both able to “pass” as white women. While Clare lives most of her life “passing,” Irene chooses to live proudly as a colored woman only choosing to “pass” to go to restaurants, get show tickets, etc. By the end of the book, it is unclear to the reader who really is the more admirable character but we seem to align with Irene more than Clare due to many different factors.

Clare renounces her race in order to marry a white man and live a rich and lavish life. She lives her life in fear of being found out by her husband and uses Irene to become closer to her race while still being separate from it. She tries to have both her white life and her African-American life but is ultimately unable able to keep them secret from each other. She is punished for her acts when she is pushed off the ledge by Irene towards the end of the story.

Although we may sympathize with Clare saying that she did not deserve to die for her acts, we can’t help but side with Irene throughout the whole story. Since we see Clare through the point of view of Irene mostly, we think that Clare is annoying and unfaithful to her race. We sympathize with Irene because she faces turmoil that drives her crazy after seeing Clare again in Chicago. Before meeting Clare again, she dedicated her life to her family and to her community. Unlike Clare, her children are her first priority and she has earned respect from various people. Clare went about her life in a manner that was way too risky. It seems like something was bound to happen to stop this all and her death absolutely did the trick. Although the reader can agree that pushing Clare off the ledge is a horrible thing, we can’t help but admire Irene for doing whatever it takes to keep her family in check and her race in check.

Before this class, I’ve never written journal entries so consistently and so often. At the beginning of the semester, I thought it would be a major pain to write journal entries almost every single week. Turns out, I was pretty wrong. Not only has it sharpened my analytical skills and how to process my thoughts into words, but it has taught me to actively read instead of passively read. I used to just read the words in a book without fully digesting what they meant but now I can gladly say that I am able to fully understand what I’m reading (most of the time anyways).

While I’m reading, I actively take notes and think about what the author is truly trying to convey to me as a reader. This applies to movies as well; I am able to fully grasp a scene in a movie better now. It’s interesting to find out what the hidden meaning is and not just what the words are literally saying. What I like about my entries is that they delve into the aspects of the passage that I just read and causes me to think even deeper about the passage itself. In many of my journals, I used direct examples to further demonstrate my analysis. I find that without examples, my entries would not be successful at all. What I dislike about my entries is that they usually don’t go as deep as I want them to go. After writing the entries, I usually find something from that passage that I may have overlooked and want to analyze it more. If I had analyzed deeper and realized this earlier at the time that I was writing my entry, they would have been much more interesting and thought provoking.

For me, note taking is completely different than journaling. Note taking is a singular task where you just write down what’s on the board or write down what the teacher says. There is usually little to no thought process while note taking. While writing a journal, you are required to think deeper than what the author or director is explicitly telling you. You must find and analyze something that is unique to the story or character. We may think of it in our heads after reading a passage, but completely analyzing something and writing it down allows us to complete our thoughts and create something great.

The second largest immigrant group to New York City, the Italians, were very different than the Jewish immigrants that came before them. Unlike the Jews, the Italian immigrants were mostly illiterate Sicilian and Southern Italian peasants or laborers. The Italians resembled the Irish of the “old immigration” in their inadequacy to prosper in an urban setting. Unlike the Irish though, the Italians were not leaving a famine such as the Irish Potato Famine but were leaving a land of poverty. Upon coming to America, the Italians were met with even more poverty, low-paying unskilled labor jobs, deficient housing, and prejudice.

In 1850, the Italian population in New York was only at 853. Towards the beginning of Italian immigration, the Italians who came over were mostly young men who were looking to make enough money in America to return home and purchase land. If a man did intend to create an actual home in America, he would usually board in a lodge to save up enough money to bring their family over. Italian bachelors in America even returned to Italy to find a spouse and then move back to America. The strong family ties that many Italians felt gave them the motivation to work enough to bring their family over to New York City.

By 1920, there were 391,000 foreign-born Italians in New York City and when including their children, over 800,000 Italians. Many of these Italians settled in the Little Italy of lower Manhattan’s Fourteenth Ward while some established themselves in Greenwich Village. After 1900, some southern Italians even crossed the rivers to settle in Brooklyn and the Bronx.

Two of the main priorities for settling in an area for the Italians was that they live with people from their own region (Genoese, Calabrian, Neapolitan, etc…) and that their home is close to work. The padroni, also known as labor contractors, took a share of the new Italian’s wages in order to help them find jobs and housing. Eventually, their services weren’t needed by the immigrants and were banned in New York City.

Since many Italian immigrants came to America with little money and were unskilled, they couldn’t earn enough wages to buy decent housing. The unwanted tenements that were abandoned by the Irish were their only options. These places were almost always cramped and poor quality.

Beyond their poor housing, the neighborhoods these buildings were in were plagued with crime. Soon, a stereotype began that Italians were criminals and belonged to the Mafia. In response to this, New York City enacted an Italian police division to investigate crime, pursue extortion threats, and expose possible ties to criminals in Sicily.

Besides some Italians working in this police division, other immigrants worked for the sanitation department or became musicians, barbers, shoemakers, masons, waiters, teamsters, and bartenders. As industries grew, so did union organization. Whenever a strike was led in any business, the Italians were called upon to break the strikes and replace the workers. Since the women were only expected to marry, raise children, and care for the home, the annual incomes for the Italians became the lowest in the city. After the boom of the garment industry in 1905, almost 85 percent of Italian women were working in garment related jobs.

As time moved on, the Italians moved upwards in the workforce. Many children of immigrants who could speak English and had some schooling were likely to find white collar work. The second generation would probably have found even more skilled jobs if the Italian parents weren’t so distrustful of the city’s public schools. Most Italian parents saw their children as wage-earners rather than as students.

Towards the beginning of World War I, an Italian middle-class had emerged. Italians were now bankers, real estate promoters, newspaper editors and publishers, white collar workers, shop owners, importers, owners of large barber shops, musicians, lawyers, and doctors. By making some money, they bought property and moved to better housing.

After integrating into American society a bit more, the Italians started to get involved politically. To go against the Irish who were predominantly Democrat, many of the Italians became Republican. Other Italians joined the Socialist party and created socialist clubs such as Brooklyn’s Club Avanti.

Another problem with the Irish that the Italians had was that the Irish-run Catholic church in New York did not accommodate to the customs of the Italian Catholics. To prevent the Italian Catholics from converting to other religions, the Catholic church created fifty new churches served by Italian priests.

Overall, the upward mobility of some Italian immigrants, their growing affiliation with the Catholic church, the emergence of a second generation and political activity allowed for more assimilation into American culture.