Asian Historical Events

Two major wars come to mind when thinking about the history Americans and Asians have shared. The Korean War and the Vietnam War.

For starters, the Korean War was actually a war that the U.S.A. helped in. They came to the rescue of the Korean's instead of fighting against them like in the other battles mentioned with the different cultures. At the time of the war, Korea was being taken over by Communism and because the United States is part of the United Nations and believe in the Truman Doctrine, America sent troops to Korea to help.

Just like the Korean War, the Vietnam War was centered around the fear of Communism as well. In high hopes to stop Communism from spreading, American once again got involved to help support the South Vietnamese government resist the attack of the North Communists. 

Native American Historical Events

The American Indian Wars were the conflicts between settlers and the natives before and after the American Revolutionary War. The wars were a result of European settlers  becoming greedy over land and pushing the natives out of their own territories. In order to "remove" the natives, the European Settlers either did it by force, or created treaties.

Reservations also played a major role in the historical events between the Americans and the Native Americans. Because of the white man's greed, they constantly were taking the land that did not belong to them from the natives by force. They decided to give the natives the so called "unwanted" land and called them reservations. The whites may argue that the reservations they provided were a means of survival for the natives. However, a lot of natives strongly disagree with this statement and believe the reservations were created in order to "kill off" their kind.

Hispanic American Historical Events

Immigration has been a major source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of the history of the United States. The economic, social and political aspects of immigration have caused quite the controversy between Americans and Hispanics. There has been increased border control enforcement in the recent years in order to "better protect America."However, as of 2006, the United States accepts more legal immigrants as permanent residents then all the other countries in the world combined." The United States has a lot of work on with this controversial topic.


The Mexican-American War is also a major historical event to take place between Americans and the Hispanics. To put the battle in a nut shell-the major causes of this war for starters was America's greed to expand their nation from "sea to shinning sea." Even if this meant starting a war; nothing was going to stand in their way of creating a bigger and better nation. The second main reason was the fight for Texas terriotory. American ended up with the bigger part of the stick in this war and came away with California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. 
Sources: http://www.eoilangreo.net/herminio/culture/elalamo.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States

African American Historical Events

After the American Civil War, most states in the south passed anti-African American legislation know as the Jim Crow Laws. These laws were severely discriminant towards the African Americans and believed they should be "separate but equal" (Plessy v. Ferguson) These laws separated the whites and blacks in public places such as schools, restrooms, hotels, cinemas, and transportation. Even drinking fountains were distinctively "white" or "black only!" These awful laws were finally ended and over-ruled by Brown V. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Acts.  


Not only did white Americans put the African Americans through those unfair laws, they also made them constantly fear for their lives. Two ways they did this was by the use of lynching and the group of the gruesome Klu Klux Klan. (KKK) "The Klu Klux Klan is a racist, anti-Semitic movement with a commitment to extreme violence to achieve its goals of racial segregation and white supremacy." "Lynching was an execution carried out by a mob (usually the Klu Klux Klan) often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting. The Klan killed over 3,446 in over 86 years by the method of lynching." 


Source: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkkk.htm

Hispanic American Music

Hispanic American music is used as a means of celebration and providing entertainment. Jennifer Lopez is an example of a successful Hispanic American musiciam how has albums out in both English and Spanish. She is known for singing powerful songs that are also entertaining. Below is an example of one of her songs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c-2DxCw4VU

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Lopez

Native American Music

Native American music is generally comprised of traditional tribal music passed down through the generations and perforemed as a celebration of their culture. Some of their music, however, has also entered into subgenres of popular music such as reggae, rock, and hip hop. Below is an example of a Cherokee morning song, it is characterized by beautiful sounds and rhythms.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VqoxOcEqpk

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_music

Asian American Music

There is a great defict in main stream Asian American music. Asians are stereotyped as the "studious geek," doing well in school, know kung-fu, and experts of classical instruments. One Asian singer/songwriter was told on a number of occasions that if it were not for him being Asian he would have been signed. Below is an example of music from an Asian band trying to break these stereotypes and become successful in the music industry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IixhdO96W_s

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/fashion/04asians.html?pagewanted=all

African American Music

African American music has its roots in the rhythms carried over from Africa mainly by slave trade. The music has evolved significantly since its first arrival. Currenty, Hip Hop/Rap and R&B makes up most of the main stream of African American music. This music is generally described as race neutral and more part of the new hip hop culture than the African American culture. Below is an example of a song sung by an African American, Beyonce, reflecting the hip hop culture, which is all about living life and finding love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnVUHWCynig&ob=av2e

  source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_music#The_1990s_and_2000s

Hispanic American Poetry

Hispanic American poetry decribes both everyday and more significant life events. A major topic for Mexican American poetry is crossing the border into the United States. The poem below is the work of a Mexican American poet describing the stereotpyical life of a Mexian field worker toiling in the sun in order to create a better life for his family. This reflects the ideas of Hispanic culture of hard work and the importance of family.

 A Red Palm
You're in this dream of cotton plants.
You raise a hoe, swing, and the first weeds
Fall with a sigh. You take another step,
Chop, and the sigh comes again,
Until you yourself are breathing that way
With each step, a sigh that will follow you into town.
That's hours later. The sun is a red blister
Coming up in your palm. Your back is strong,
Young, not yet the broken chair
In an abandoned school of dry spiders.
Dust settles on your forehead, dirt
Smiles under each fingernail.
You chop, step, and by the end of the first row,
You can buy one splendid fish for wife
And three sons. Another row, another fish,
Until you have enough and move on to milk,
Bread, meat. Ten hours and the cupboards creak.
You can rest in the back yard under a tree.
Your hands twitch on your lap,
Not unlike the fish on a pier or the bottom
Of a boat. You drink iced tea.
The minutes jerk Like flies.

It's dusk, now night,
And the lights in your home are on.
That costs money, yellow light
In the kitchen. That's thirty steps,
You say to your hands,
Now shaped into binoculars.
You could raise them to your eyes:
You were a fool in school, now look at you.
You're a giant among cotton plants.
Now you see your oldest boy, also running.
Papa, he says, it's time to come in.
You pull him into your lap
And ask, What's forty times nine?
He knows as well as you, and you smile.
The wind makes peace with the trees,
The stars strike themselves in the dark.
You get up and walk with the sigh of cotton plants.
You go to sleep with a red sun on your palm,
The sore light you see when you first stir in bed.
By Gary Soto

Dances With Wolves ( Native American Movie)

Lt. John Dunbar is exiled to a remote western Civil War outpost. Dunbar requests to be sent here so he can see the frontier before it's gone. Although he finds it abandoned and in disrepair, he fixes the place up and doesn't actually mind living the life of solitude. Dunbar realizes he is in the territory of the Sioux Indian Tribe and as time continues on he befriends them and gradually earns their trust and respect.
I know this movie was made in 1990, however in my opinion, it does an excellent job of showing the Native American lifestyle. It instills a lot of respect for their culture in the viewers who watch this movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMOQORiWn80

Native American Poetry

"A Sioux Prayer"
Translated by Chief Yellow Lark - 1887

Oh, Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the winds
Whose breath gives life to the world, hear me
I come to you as one of your many children
I am small and weak
I need your strength and wisdom
May I walk in beauty
Make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things you have made
And my ears sharp to your voice.
Make me wise so that I may know the things you have taught your children.
The lessons you have written in every leaf and rock
Make me strong--------!
Not to be superior to my brothers, but to fight my greatest enemy....myself
Make me ever ready to come to you with straight eyes,
So that when life fades as the fading sunset,
May my spirit come to you without shame.

This is an older example of Native American poetry, but reveals much of the culture of this people group. This culture is characterized by spirtuality and love of nature. Man is seen as part of the earth, not ruler over it. The author uses reveals these ideas in desribing an individual as being their own biggest enemy, along with the use of nature imagery.

Source: http://www.firstpeople.us/html/A-Sioux-Prayer.html

Crazy Beautiful (Hispanic American Movie)

Nicole is a 17 year old troubled daughter of a congressman. She comes from a wealthy family and breaks all the rules that she possibly can. When she meets Carlos, a straight A student from a poor Latino family, they fall hard for each other. Throughout the movie it shows in great detail how their lives and cultures are completely different. A couple examples- Nicole is spoiled rotten, Carlos has to work for everything. Nicole is just living through the motions, getting drunk and skipping class, while Carlos is striving to become a pilot for the navy. Finally, Nicole bums of rides from her friend, while Carlos rides the bus for two hours in order to attend a good school.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCX6ofByDrg&feature=related

Asian American Poetry

Asian American poetry reflects the construction of asian identiy in the American culture. Since the 1970's Asian American involvement in society has increased. Asian American poets display the different types of involvements through their works. Janice Mirikitani in her poem, "Looking for America" describes the stereotypes Asian Americans face

Gran Torino (Asian American)

Walt is a grumpy, widower, Korean War vet who holds onto his prejudices despite the changes in his Michigan neighborhood and the world around him. When his neighbor Thao, a Hmong teenager under pressure from his gang, tries to steel Walt's Gran Torino, Walt takes him under his wing and conforms the troubled teen. After taking time to actually get to know Thao, Walt helps and protects his family from the surrounding gangs. This film takes place in a neighborhood dominated by poor Asian familes in Detroit Michigan.
Side Note: The Hmong are an Asian ethnic group from the mountainous regions of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8Z2n534q1Q

Precious (African American Movie )

Precious goes through unimaginable hardships in her young life. Abused by her mother and raped by her father, she grows up poor, angry, illiterate and overweight.  In hopes to start her life in a new direction she enrolls in an alternative school where she learns how to read and meets girls who share some of the same issues she does. This movie takes place in the New York ghetto of Harlem.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx-3jYJkUWQ

Hispanic American Art

This Hispanic American piece of art celebrates aspects and strengths of Latino people. The bright colors of the traditional clothing and the closeness to which the figures stand next to each other illustrate the tight-knit colorful nature of the Hispanic culture.  The painting almost makes the people appear to be dressed in one long band of colorful material with their children also enclosed tightly; these features could speak to the importance of family and of being unified and loyal to one another.   

Asian American Art

Where is my Mother by Yun Gee

Asian American artist Yun Gee strives to give visual expression to his personal experiences. Many of his paintings show his desire to express the universal through his own personal experiences with race and depict that experience in art.   In this particular painting, Where is my Mother?, Yun Gee paints a lament for is family, friends, and compatriots that he left behind in China.  The painting relates to many who have left behind those they love to journey to a new place and start a new life. The painting explores the difficulty of leaving a country and a home and especially speaks to the difficulty of leaving those things and becoming a minority in a new place. 

African American Poetry

Letter Home by Natasha Trethewey

--New Orleans, November 1910

Four weeks have passed since I left, and still
I must write to you of no work. I've worn down
the soles and walked through the tightness
of my new shoes calling upon the merchants,
their offices bustling. All the while I kept thinking
my plain English and good writing would secure
for me some modest position Though I dress each day
in my best, hands covered with the lace gloves
you crocheted--no one needs a girl. How flat
the word sounds, and heavy. My purse thins.
I spend foolishly to make an appearance of quiet
industry, to mask the desperation that tightens
my throat. I sit watching--

though I pretend not to notice--the dark maids
ambling by with their white charges. Do I deceive
anyone? Were they to see my hands, brown
as your dear face, they'd know I'm not quite
what I pretend to be. I walk these streets
a white woman, or so I think, until I catch the eyes
of some stranger upon me, and I must lower mine,
a negress again. There are enough things here
to remind me who I am. Mules lumbering through
the crowded streets send me into reverie, their footfall
the sound of a pointer and chalk hitting the blackboard
at school, only louder. Then there are women, clicking
their tongues in conversation, carrying their loads
on their heads. Their husky voices, the wash pots
and irons of the laundresses call to me.

I thought not to do the work I once did, back bending
and domestic; my schooling a gift--even those half days
at picking time, listening to Miss J--. How
I'd come to know words, the recitations I practiced
to sound like her, lilting, my sentences curling up
or trailing off at the ends. I read my books until
I nearly broke their spines, and in the cotton field,
I repeated whole sections I'd learned by heart,
spelling each word in my head to make a picture
I could see, as well as a weight I could feel
in my mouth. So now, even as I write this
and think of you at home, Goodbye

is the waving map of your palm, is
a stone on my tongue.

 

Poetry is used as a way to describe an experience. This poem desicbes the African American experience dealing with the ideas of white supremacy and living in a culture where an individual's dark skin tone is looked down upon. This poem reveals the hardships and injustices a woman goes through as she searches for work. She is constantly reminded of her skin color as she struggles to find a job of higher standing than the work she grew up doing. She is hoping for something more, but is struck down due to both her ethnicity and gender.

Source: http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/natasha_trethewey/poems/17894

Native American Art

Judith Lowry: Welgatim’s Song (2001)

The painting Welgatim’s Song, is an example of how Judith Lowry uses art to capture and record the Native American oral and musical traditions with which she was raised.  Lowry’s father was mixed Maidu and Washoe and Lowry uses the bright colors, clear details, and interesting scale of her paintings to illustrate the legends of his history.  Her paintings tell stories in the vivid way she and many other Native Americans heard and still hear legends as they pass from generation to generation.  Welgatim’s Song is Lowry’s way to tell the story in a visual way for many to appreciate.   

African American Art

William H. Johnson, Children Playing London Bridge

William H. Johnson is an African American artist whose painting “Children Playing London Bridge” explores his memories of growing up in South Carolina.  Much of Johnson’s later work portrayed African American everyday life using bright colors and simplified, heavy outlined forms.  He used this art form to characterize black life in both rural and urban settings.  Johnson’s piece is type of reflection of his own past and experience and speaks of honesty and simplicity that is not lacking in integrity as he paints children at play.

Hispanic American Book

Esperanza Rising by Pamela Mu-oz Ryan

Esperanza Rising by Pamela Mu-oz Ryan is a story that captures both the personal story of a Mexican American immigrant as well as the political and economic structure and struggle many immigrants faced during the Depression.  When Esperanza is thirteen, her father dies and her whole life changes.  She is forced to leave her life of privilege in Mexico and move to California to work in the fields with her mother.  Esperanza faces the loss of her father and her Mexican home and must come to terms with her role in a new place.  The story invites the reader into Esperanza’s life as she struggles with the lack of privileges and resources and pride she knew in Mexico.  However, the story also portrays the strength of Esperanza and her realization that family and friends, loyalty and inner resources can overcome even the most difficult of situations. 

Asian American Book

Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok

Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok is a story of Kimberly Chang, an immigrant girl that faces the cultural challenges of moving from China to New York and adapting to a new life.  An immigrant herself, Jean Kwok portrays an honest engaging account of the difficulties immigrants must face.  As the audience journeys with Kimberly Chang through the day-to-day battles of growing up in a world only half understood, we can see a glimpse into both the Chinese culture and the complex blending of two worlds.  The reader enters into the embarrassing moments, the victories (both small and large), the choices that must be made, and the balancing act of holding on to the Chinese heritage while learning to live fully and functionally in a new land. 

American Thunder

Yerxa, Leo

In this children’s book “American Thunder,” Native American author Leo Yerxa uses illustration techniques from his Ojibwa ancestry to make the pages look like leather.  The story is a beautiful tale celebrating wild horses and their significant role in the lives of the Native American peoples in history.  The illustrations and story both celebrate Native American culture and the connection with nature that is so vital in their history and their life.

African American Book

Ashley Bryan: words to my life’s song

by Ashley Bryan

This autobiography of Ashley Bryan gives a vivid portrayal of an African American artist who lived through the depression, fought in the Segregated Army on the beaches of Normandy, and also struggled with discrimination and injustice as he fought to make it in the art world as an African American.  Bryan tells his story through both text and pictures and the colors and words creatively tell a tale that is both relatable and motivational.  Bryan is an example of an African American who did not give up in the face of the many injustices pushed upon him.  His story is an encouragement to African American children but is a testimony to children of all ethnicities to press ahead for greatness even in the face of difficulty.