no-no boy
Who are you? In today's society people face every day situations that beg the question. As Americans, we are unable to claim that we stand for one culture or ethnicity as a whole. In fact, we claim the complete defiance. Many people are torn between worlds- America versus their motherland. The idea that all ethnicity's could live together in one country and produce an environment culturally diverse was enacted in America; however, no one accounted for racism. People fled their homelands to escape persecution but they soon realized that the American Dream turned into a nightmare. The melting pot turned into to a melting mess. Since the beginning "Americans" have been oppressed by their neighbors and have had their culture crippled. The colonists enacted their fundamental idea of what America should be and by doing so they disabled a country. America's ethnicity has been diverse and divided since the first ship dropped anchor on the new land. Even today in the twenty-first century we still remain to be divided and withhold a culture of our own. The gap between races is still apparent and the color line is still being used. The colonists who inhabited and ruled the country placed laws and took actions against anyone wh
No-No boy, a novel by John Okada, defines a nation and the cruelty it contained towards Japanese-Americans during and after World War II. In addition, this novel explores the odyssey of Ichiro, a first generation American-born Japanese-American, who spent time in prison because he refused to join the army in order to escape the internment camps where his family and himself had been placed. He answered no to two incriminating and persecuting questions and his consequence was prison for two years. The novel examines Ichiro's quest for his identity- American or Japanese. It picks up with the release of Ichiro from prison and his return to his disinterred family and home in Seattle. America took actions that obliterate him as well as other Japanese-Americans of their identity. During this time the powers that were, decided to take action against Japanese-Americans and discriminate against them and put them into a class of their own. By doing so they destroyed families by m! The idealistic America implored the idea that this was the land of the free and the prosperous. When analyzing a portion of the text, we are able to look through the eyes of Ichiro and his prior beliefs of America. "Where is that place they talk about and paint nice pictures of and describe in all the homey magazines? ... life is like living in the land of the happily-ever-after? Surely it must be around here someplace, someplace in America. Or is it just not for me?" This questioning induces that the white picketed fence and the prosperous economy for all people was just a myth that was created and then destroyed once a person non-white came to America. There was no such thing as the American Dream. Ichiro faces a world that is the defiance of the picture that was painted for him. In this passage Ichiro goes on to state that the people who were not white were the people who were on the outside looking in and then he questions whether the answer is that there is no in. "! o's pigment was not like theirs, was not white. Even during the most trivial times when a nation needed to band together it separated apart. The era this passage was written in was the aftermath of WWII, during the nineteen-forties; however the feelin
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1498
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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