Essay Topic
Choose one of the following quotes from Act VI: “The Case of the Missing Asian” and write a four-page essay that describes how the novel explores (presents, develops, supports) the idea:
OLDER BROTHER: “We’ve been here two hundred years. The first Chinese came in 1815. Germans and Dutch and Irish and Italians who came at the turn of the twentieth century. They’re Americans…. Why doesn’t this face register as American?” (Yu 228).
OLDER BROTHER: “But the experience of Asians in America isn’t just a scaled-back or dialed-down version of the Black experience. Instead of co-opting someone else’s experience or consciousness, he must define his own” (Yu 235).
OLDER BROTHER: “[B]eing Chinese is and always has been, from the very beginning, a construction, a performance of features, gestures, culture, and exoticism. An invention, a reinvention, a stylization” (Yu 238-39).
YOU: “By putting ourselves below everyone, we’re building in a self-defense mechanism. Protecting against real engagement. By imagining that no one wants us, that all others are so different from us, we’re privileging our own point of view” (246).
Suggestions
Take into consideration these various themes: exclusion of the ethnic minority, stereotyping of the individual, role-playing as a means of fitting in, assimilation into the mainstream, internalization of the external experience, self-realization and fulfillment.
Develop a thesis of your own making. Make your thesis a claim: an assertion about the novel, what it says, and how it supports what it says. Avoid statements of intent: “In this essay, we will show that…”
Use sufficient textual details in the form of quotation, paraphrase, and brief summary. Be sure to cite all specific textual references. Do not generalize your discussion of the novel; be particular.
Offer critical analysis and close reading of all textual details: tell us what we are supposed to see in the text that isn’t obvious.
If you choose to include outside sources, keep your focus on the novel. Your chief concern should be what the novel says.
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