In Phuc Tran’s book, Sigh, Gone, he discusses the difficulty of figuring out his identity as an immigrant in a mostly American neighborhood. From questioning his name to determining where he fits in the social structure of his high school, Tran has to navigate learning who he is with an additional barrier to the average teenager, having a whole other culture as a large part of his life. One way that Tran finds ways to carve out his place is to read, not just to improve his vocabulary, but so he can have the same cultural references as the typical white guy, using Clifton Fadiman’s The Lifetime Reading Plan as a guide.
At one point in the story, he references The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and how Hester agrees to the social contract of being labeled as an adulterer with the scarlet A on all of her clothing. He transfers this piece of literature to the experiences he had in the second grade where one peer relentlessly referred to him as a “gook”. Despite not knowing what this meant, he handled it as a great insult, punching the other student in the face, therefore creating a social contract that he was, in fact, a “gook”, “I could have ignored it or allowed my ignorance to shield myself, but that very ignorance would have further isolated me, and ultimately dehumanized me…But if I allowed myself to be harmed by words, I was showing them that I belonged at least by virtue of understanding their language. And all I wanted was to belong.” (Tran 56).
Based on this, and your own text, how impactful is language in how immigrants are assimilating? What are other types of social contracts Americans hold immigrants to? Are these helpful or harmful?
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