Immigrants Traumatic experiences in foreign countries

The main protagonist, Parks works through these processes and tries to maintain his own melancholic identity but he finds himself in critical junctures. In fact, at the beginning of the novel, Parks seems psychologically haunted and emotionally detached because of the experiences that he goes through. With these regards, it is important to analyze the traumas that Asian immigrants go through as they try to fake a life that is not theirs in the United States such that they can avoid discrimination and compare these experiences with Gene Luen Yang’s novel, The American Born Chinese. Lee indicates that immigration land the required assimilations of the lives of Asian Americans often cause a melancholic relationship to the U. S. In this case, the loss of the Asian Americans’ identity may be irrecoverable if they lose it and become assimilated by the white majority.

It then implies that the Asian Americans have will have to lose their identity despite the consequences because it is all they live. Hence the Asian Americans have a more complex to live because they have to mimic a foreign identity for them to fit in the American context. Lee’s novel, The Native Speaker argues that Parks unwittingly intended to adopt America’s middle-class culture but since he has not weighed the damage that the white assimilation may cause on his life, he does not find an authentic self as an Asian American. Henry Parks is the most affected character who Chang-rae Lee uses to show that immigration causes trauma experiences to the immigrants including Asian Americans. In the same manner, in which assimilation forces the immigrants to lose their language and identity thus causing a psychic trauma, economic forces also force the immigrants to give away part of themselves and work for as low as 2 dollars for them to survive.

In fact, every immigrant has a story regarding a repeated trauma that fosters strong bonds between oneself, their fellows, and their countries of origin that are far away from America. With this said, Henry Parks knows that being a corporate spy creates weight in the American market. In the contemporary market and economic conditions, Parks believes that for a person to survive in America, he or she has to do the whites’ wish from them no matter how haunting the wish may be but perform for the white world. Furthermore, the choice of Lee’s title, of the novel, The Native Speaker is also traumatic in itself. Jin joins a new school but the notion that Chinese people eat dogs makes other students to isolate themselves from Jin. As a result, Kin stays alone without any friend until he meets Peter, the outcast student and make friends with one another.

In this case, Yang uses Jin to show the stereotyping that happens in schools and colleges concerning people from different origins, “my classmates kept asking me if we were related with the other kids of the Filipino origin and whether I had eaten dogs” (Yang 31). In this sense, just like Chang-rae, Gene Yang shows the trauma that an individual goes thru and the difficulties they get through as they try to become what the majority wants or expects them to do. Impliedly, Yang’s message is that students should not discriminate their fellows on racial basis because they make their studentship difficult because of the trauma that they go through when they mimic fake identities. Unfortunately, as the immigrants move seeking to improve their economic status, the capitalism conditions in America push them until they have to give away themselves to any type of job provided they earn a living.

Additionally, the act of abandoning one’s racial identity is a big problem that Asian American immigrants go through in America. For the world to overcome the problem of racism, both Chang Lee and Gene Yang say that it is important to accept that people have their unique cultures that differ from one race to another and that defines a person’s identity. Works Cited Freud, Sigmund.  On murder, mourning and melancholia.