Question

Instruction

The cultural background for the short story “Two Kinds” is a Chinese American community in California. According to the story, the narrator’s mother emigrated from China in 1949, and although the narrator was born in the United States, her life in America is impacted by her Chinese heritage.

For this project, you will create an oral presentation on Chinese American life. In order to complete the presentation, you must research a topic, person, event, or theme important to Chinese American life.

Sample Project Ideas
Authors of Chinese descent have been writing and publishing work in English in the United States since the early 1900s. Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club was published almost one hundred years after Sui Sin Far, an early Chinese American author published the novel Mrs. Spring Fragrance in 1912. You might explore a research question about a Chinese-American author, or even ask a question about themes in Chinese American writing.

The American transcontinental railway was built in large part by of Chinese labor. Chinese immigrant workers received just $26-$35 a month for a twelve hour day, six days per week and had to provide their own food and tents, whereas American workers received about $35 a month and were furnished with food and shelter. You might explore a research question to discover why the Chinese workers were paid less than American workers, or why many Chinese workers returned to China instead of staying in America.

Some of the early Chinese communities in America had newspapers. Your research might explore a question about who published or who read the Chinese-language newspapers.

Other Sample Topics:

Chinese American artists
Chinese American politicians
Chinese American business
Chinese American crime
Chinese immigration
Chinese neighborhoods
Chinese food in America
Chinese language in America
Stereotypes of Chinese people in America
Immigration laws in America

Directions:
Presentation Format: Oral presentation
Time Limit: 3-5 minutes
Visual Aids: 3-5 visual aids (photographs, slides, video, music, other images per teacher approval)

To meet the minimum requirements for this project you must:

Choose a topic related to Chinese American life
Construct a research question
Create a thesis/argument out of the research question
Express a clear thesis
Speak for 3-5 minutes
Cite five different sources using the MLA documentation style
Directly quote from 5 sources
Paraphrase 4 sources
Effectively use 3 visual aids
Refer to note cards without reading from them

Answer 1

What are the stereotypes of Chinese people in America, and are they true? We all know about the stereotypes set for the Chinese Americans in this country such as "Chinese people can't drive" or "Chinese people must be better at maths and have better grades." Well even though these stereotypes are farfetched and exadurated, they do have a reasonable past in which set those stereotypes.

To start off we we can begin at where these stereotypes were all set and what the history behind it is. According to the New York Times article "Confronting Asian-American Stereotyepes, "Jennifer Lee, a professor of sociology at Columbia University and the author of “The Asian-American Achievement Paradox” and Karthick Ramakrishnan, and a professor of public policy and political science at University of California, Riverside, and director of the National Asian-American Survey. In this artical Jennifer Lee stated "While the current stereotype of Asian-Americans is that they are smart, competent and hard-working, a century ago, Asian-Americans were perceived as illiterate, undesirable, full of “filth and disease” So then why were these stereotypes set you may ask? Well as it turns out, Harvard has even been accused of "giving lower personality ratings to Asian-American applicants."

"Lippman (1922) defined stereotypes as an oversimplified picture of the world that satisfied a need to see the world as more understandable and manageable than it really is." according to a research article by University of Massachusetts Boston student, Lin Zhu. It also states in the article, "As Lakoff (1987) states, “There is nothing more basic than categorization to our thought, perception, action and speech” Basically explaining the the perception of stereotypes."

Now lets explain why these stereotypees were set in the first place. The NPR article, Bad Asian Drivers, Good at everything talks about how the stereoype of how "Chinese people can't drive" is mostly set by very old, poor driving records of the early Chinese-American people. In Acording to a writer from "YOMYOMF" Philip wrote, after diving into several studies that looked at Asian drivers. "We are more likely to notice when a bad driver is Asian simply because we expect bad drivers to be Asian thus reinforcing the stereotype," But the steriotype mostlikely stuck due to Chinese-American's "slant-eyed appearance.

Other stereotyopes such as "all Asians are good at maths" and "All asians must be hard workers" Can be explained by history but can also be exadurated by the media which is better explained and detailed in the APA artical "Countering stereotypes about Asian Americans." You can brreak down the history and reasoning for Asian stereotypes based on what you just read.

Hope this helps : )