Gish Jen's Short Story Who's Term Paper

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Tran discovered her vocation for writing during her college years, and now, after having read at Gabriel's recommendation the American novel Gone with the Wind, she decides to write something similar and place in the context of the Vietnam War. Placing its events during the war between North and South, Gone with the Wind is just another story of the way in which the racist and cultural confrontations affect the inner lives of the individuals involved in it.

Tran is inspired by it and starts writing for a local newspaper, owned by Giang, under a pseudonym, so as not to be discovered by the authorities. However, this does happen eventually, and Tran finds herself on trial for her writing and for hiding her identity.

It is thus obvious that the marks left by the political oppression on personal life are very great: Tran is compelled to hide her identity so as to protect herself, and this is even more significant since the identity she must protect is that of the author, of the free mind that should be able to speak its own thoughts and opinions. Thus, both of the short stories discussed above give a painful and complex account of identity loss, displacement and racial discrimination in the lives of their characters.

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However, while Jen's story focuses on the more narrow circle of the family and on the divisions that ethnicity plants therein, Strom's novel reveals of the way in which the personal life of the characters is affected by the political problems directly. The war of Vietnam places the ethnical problem in a more dramatic and broad context. Also, Jen's narrative is given from the strict point-of-view of the Chinese grandmother, and she even uses a linguistic barrier- the story is told in broken English, while Strom uses a more artistic and lyrical frame for her story. Both stories have in common the essential problem of race and identity though, which is resumed in a witty manner by the Chinese grandmother: the differences in thinking between two cultures are reflected in their eating habits: the plain boiled food of the Irish is as opposed to the Chinese spices as the Western stereotypical culture is to the Oriental exotic life philosophy.

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https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/gish-jen-short-story-41223
   

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