Saturday, January 11, 2020

Week 1_Melanie Manuel_ASA 114


Melanie Manuel
ASA 114 001 
10 January 2020

In reading Wanni W. Anderson and Robert G. Lee’s chapter, “Asian American Displacements” from Displacements and Diasporas: Asians in the Americas, I realized that an Asian diaspora does not separate Asian migrants from Asian Americans, but rather allows the two to exist in this sphere, not as mutually exclusive objects, but as subjects providing a deeper understanding of concepts of home and diaspora. Anderson and Lee writes, “[m]any thousands of Asian migrants who belong to the transnational working class, the new hewers of wood and haulers of water in the global economy, are tied to ‘homelands’ by debt, familial obligation, and statelessness” (13). This line reminds me of why I’m in university in the first, why I continue to push forward with the goal of a better life, and while I participate in the working class as a retail worker, my own journey still ties back to the anxieties of familial obligation and even statelessness. It’s my way of belonging and feeling as though I am giving back to my mother in some way, because I work and go to school with the intent of taking care of her and my sister when I am older.

The image I included is a poem called “Goldwasser” by Luisa A. Igloria, which elicits a sense of comfort, home, and warmth, an end goal for many Asian Americans--it is very much one that I strive for as well. 






Works Cited
Andrson, Wanni W. and Robert G. Lee Eds. 2005. Displacements and Diasporas: Asians in the Americas. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. 
Image included: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=177&issue=3&page=12

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