May 16

For today’s articles where it talked about intergenerational families. How the Laotian girls struggled to meet their parent’s expectations. I can relate because my mom has expectations that I think are very high. My mom thinks school is easy and that it should be no problem for me to become a doctor, and said college was easy for her. She never took a science class how could she know how hard it is? My mom grew up in Vietnam with nine other siblings, she being the youngest she had to pay for her own education after her father died. She had to work and maintain grades in an international school. I know she worked hard as when she was young and expects me to do the same. But where we live now and how we live now is incomparable. Of course, I don’t have that struggle, but there’s other responsibilities I have to fulfill. I have maintained my grades, social life, mental and physical health, and my job. It’s probably not as bad of what my mom has been through but still, if I’m already struggling she should understand that.

            In Said’s film talked about the Orientalism. He talked about how Arabs were received in novels. He also talked about how they were presented in Western culture, how negative stereotype of the culture and how they are represented. Because of this incident of 9/11 made their reputation even worse, racially profiling became worse in America. In middle school, there were a lot joke about suicide bombers and how wearing a hijab or any type of traditional head dress automatically made you a target for these jokes. Also popular shows like Family Guy also uses these jokes. Well, Family Guy is known to bring up stereotypes into their shows, which sometimes are funny because their jokes, but some people take them seriously. The use of the media highly influenced assumptions about the oriental. Not just Arabs, but the Asian people in general. In movies Asians are depicted as weak and nerdy.