Chinese-American Interview (Selena)

今天我给我妈妈面试。她从广州来美国住了二十年有多。到美国的时间她在纽约生活了差不多十四年就搬到芝加哥住。她和她的家人已经在芝加哥住了三年了。现在她和她的先生在中国城的一个餐馆做工。

My mother arrived in New York, USA around June 20^th in the year of 1980 with her family by plane. A day or two after she got here, she was sent off to work in a clothes factory because her family needed all the money they could get in their new environment to survive.

In America, my mother had never felt like an outsider, she never mingled around with other people besides here own kind when she was younger. But outside of that world, she was indeed, an outsider because she didn’t know anything of the “outside” world. She didn’t understand the language being spoken around her, and when she did, everything seemed backward to her. For example, names in Chinese had their clan name listed first, yet in American people listed their clans’ name last, as if their clans were unworthily compare to their given names.

Growing up, there were really many expectations from my grandparents to my mother, mainly because they had no money or anything in a world that stresses about how money solved one’s problems. It is from this point of view that education became very important; because of the fact that people in America had public education available to children, regardless of race, my parents (as well as all Chinese parents, in my opinion) pushed me to study hardier in school so later on my education would have me get into some fancy college and get a well-paying job, so that the latter part of my life won’t be as back-straining as their was.

My mother has long since gotten hold the idea that she was living in the modern times, and there were many issues that most Chinese didn’t approve of, but nonetheless, we are living in a modern civilization, so there aren’t really much you could do to people who want to live their way. She regards marriages outside the Chinese-American community the same way – since it’s not really her business but theirs, my mother lets them be; because she’s living in a different age now and you really can’t change that fact.

It’s probably from the opinion that she’s living a modernized age that she really don’t care whether or not she’s being accepted as a American or not. My mother knows who and what she is, she’s content with, so in the end if a person is content with their life, it really shouldn’t matter if she’s being accepted or not, because she is content.