An American is someone born in America. If they have parents from a different country, it is up to them to decide if they want to embrace that heritage or not. In Audre Lorde’s “The Fourth of July”, Lorde did not understand the society she lived in. She did not understand that the colour of her skin could affect her status as an American. In Elizabeth Wong’s “The Struggle to be an All American Girl”, Wong was ashamed of her Chinese culture. She thought of it as a way for her to not fit in. In Caroline Hwang’s “The Good Daughter”, she did not know who or what she was. Her parents made that difficult for her by not establishing any culture over the other. Nevertheless, being American meets fitting certain standards. These standards form around…show more content… Neither American nor Korean, Hwang struggled to find a place where she belonged growing up. Hwang describes that “her parents didn’t want their daughter to be Korean” nor “fully American” (225). This is proven when a woman laughs at her because “[she] does not know how to speak [her] own name” (224). Hwang claims that her parents do not make it easy for her, never correcting her because “[she is] American” (224). Hwang claims that her parents do not “see that [she straddles] two cultures” (224), due to the fact that her parents had never truly expressed which culture they want her to pick. She felt “displaced in the only country [she knew]” (225), because of it. Hwang went on to explain that she did “identify with Americans, but Americans [did] not identify” (224) with her. This is because she is a place in between. She was born and raised in the United States by Korean parents to be neither Korean nor American, but to cater to their wishes. Stuck in a maniacal state of being in between to figure out who she was, and where she belonged, Hwang was left in the dark. Never knowing what she
