Monday, November 26, 2012

Miss Representation

Growing up in a rural community in Southeast China, I did not have much media presented to me. While everyone in America grew up with Disney influences and watching television, I had none of that. My grandparents raised me for five years in China while my parents worked for more money in America. Living with grandparents that only farmed, I only knew the life of playing in mud and running the streets barefoot. I did not have female role models besides my mother, who used to work in a garment factory. Later, as I returned to America, I would go with my mother to her work, and in my eyes, she was the hardest worker there; she would eat her lunch in a flash and head back to work. I had to run around like crazy getting her more fabric for her to use and make into clothing. She would tell me that she worked so hard because there was no other job for women like her and that she couldn't let go of the job because she had to support my sister and me. I would never see my father because he worked hard too. He worked in a busy restaurant and would come home late at night, when I would be already asleep. Even though my mother works, I was thrown in the direction that women and mothers were the ones that took care of the children and the house and the men would be making the bulk of the money. Years ago, when my mother and my aunt asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I told them that I didn't know. Then they would push me in the direction that I could be a teacher, or a nurse or something that they thought a general female would be. They would say that being a CEO or a president of a company was impossible because they were jobs for men. Even though I did not agree with them, I was still afraid to challenge that. I ended up choosing to become a nurse because I though it suited me best and not because it was a typical career for a female. I do agree with the idea that the lack of female role models lead to a lack of women leaders because it is so heavily portrayed in the media that we, as women should not be as powerful as men. However, there are many female role models out there but they are not as heavily shown in the media. I think this leads us to feel like it is impossible to accomplish, to be just as powerful as men.                                                            


Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Home

Whenever my parents would talk about where their home is, I truly wonder because they do not know and I barely know as well. Many Chinese people like my parents have moved away from our home country, China, to various other countries but still consider China as our main home. Even though my parents have lived in America for over 20 years, they still talk about going home, to their hometown and retire there. From my viewpoint, land used to be very important to my grandparents and my great-grandparents, because they farmed and have lived in the same place for about seven generations.
 
Land to the Sapelo island people however, is way more important. For them, land is a symbol of who they are as a people, and without it, they see their old way of life dying away. Their roots on that land dated all the way back to the slavery time period, a whole nine generations, so I see why they are so protective of it. Their land means a lot to them, all their stories and traditions come from the earth, so when the government took it away from them they have all the right to be extremely upset and angry. For my ancestors in China, land was never owned by them, so even though they lived there for many generations too, land was not that valuable. They viewed it more like a job and not something that defined who they were.

 For my family and all my relatives, it is not land that is important but rather family. Even though we own land in America, it is not where our heart is. Personally, I spent most of my time growing up in the coal regions of Pennsylvania, and even though I've lived there for ten years, I always feel that something is missing, and that it is truly not my home. For the Sapelo people, I feel that they are more connected with each other, and that even though they have moved away from Africa to America, both land and family are very important.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Prezi

Prezi Presentation
God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man