Transcript The Struggle to be an All-American Girl” by: Elizabeth Wong

“The Struggle to be an AllAmerican Girl”
by: Elizabeth Wong
Period II
P1
Despite the new coat of paint and the
high wire fence, the school I knew 10
years ago remains remarkably,
stoically the same.
--- Although covered with a new coat
of paint and enclosed with a high wire
fence, the school I knew 10 years ago
continues to be the same, showing
remarkable defiance of the changing
of time.
P2
No amount of kicking, screaming, or
pleading could dissuade my mother,
who was solidly determined to have
us learn the language of our heritage.
--- No matter how desperately my
brother and I resisted going to the
Chinese school, kicking, yelling, or
repeatedly begging, we could not
make our mother change her mind,
because she was determined to get
us to learn Chinese, our mother
tongue, which had been passed down
from generation to generation.
Tran 1
Forcibly, she walked us the seven
long, hilly blocks from our home to
school, depositing our defiant tearful
faces before the stern principal.---
From our home to school there are
seven long groups of buildings
bounded by streets on all sides and
erected on hilly slopes. She forced us
to walk past these blocks, leaving
both of us in front of the grim and
serious headmaster, our faces
showing rebellious reluctance and wet
with tears.
I recognized him as a repressed
maniacal child killer, and knew that if
we ever saw his hands we'd be in
big trouble.
--- In my opinion, the principal was a
man who suffered from suppression
of emotions and who was so stern
and severe that he would be liable to
beat up a child. And I knew if we ever
saw his twitching hands, we would be
in for severe physical punishment,
extreme pain, anxiety and worry, etc.
Trans 2
Being ten years old, I had better
things to learn than ideographs
copied painstakingly in lines that ran
right to left from the tip of a moc but, a
real ink pen that had to be held in an
awkward way if blotches were to be
avoided.
---As a ten-year-old girl, I had more
interesting things to learn than
ideograms which were to be written
by hand after models, one stroke after
another, in lines that ran right to left,
from the tip of an ink pen which I had
to clasp in a clumsy way if large ink
marks, instead of Chinese characters,
were not to be made.
P3
The language was a source of
embarrassment.
--- The language caused me to feel
self-conscious or ashamed of my
racial origin.
More times than not, I had tried to
disassociate myself from the nagging
loud voice that followed me wherever
I wandered in the nearby American
supermarket outside Chinatown.
Quite often I had made efforts to
escape from the annoyingly loud
voice that accompanied me wherever
I roamed in the nearby American
supermarket outside Chinatown.
P4
It was not like the quiet, lilting
romance of French or the gentle
refinement of the American South.
Chinese sounded pedestrian. Public.
Her Chinese was quite different from
the elegant and romantic French or
the graceful, cultured sounds of the
American South. Chinese sounded
very dull, incapable of arousing
imagination or inspiration. It sounded
average and commonplace, without
any distinctive or noble
characteristics.
P5
"My, doesn't she move her lips fast, "
they would say, meaning that I'd be
able to keep up with the world outside
Chinatown.
---"My goodness, doesn't she speak
English fast?" they would say,
meaning that I would be able to keep
pace with the world outside
Chinatown. // "My God, how fast she
speaks English!" the people in my
culture would say, indicating that I
would be able to move or progress at
the same rate as the world, and that I
would be able to stay well informed
and live an active social life outside
Chinatown.
Trans 3
He was especially hard on my
mother, criticizing her, often cruelly,
for her pidgin speech -- smatterings of
Chinese scattered like chop suey in
her conversation.
--- He treated my mother with
severity, criticizing her, often
mercilessly, for her speech containing
elements of both Chinese and English
-- words and expressions of Chinese
dispersed like chop suey in her
conversation.
P6
What infuriated my mother most was
when my brother cornered her on her
consonants, especially "r".
---What made my mother extremely
angry was when my brother put her
into a difficult or awkward situation by
asking her to practice her consonants
correctly, in particular the consonant
"r".
My mother was extremely enraged
when my brother put her into an
embarrassing situation by finding fault
with her consonants and demanding
that she pronounce them again and
again, in particular the consonant "r".