3. Group G---Teacher (Replacement D)

In my book the surprising power of a good dumpling by Wai Chim, the family deals with immigration barriers by being stereotyped also because they are Chinese and everyone else at the children schools are not. Where they originally come from they have different rules at school compared to there new place where the rules are much more strict. In my novel out of the three children the oldest daughter struggles to be her own person and all she wants to do is follow trends and fit in with the crowd instead of being herself. There is times in my novel where the family is not defined by there culture but not often. 

In my book Tre aspires to make it D1 and to the NBA. His brother, Jaxon, who died in a car accident was the leader of the basketball team, the top scorer. Jaxon his sophomore year, after a long summer of training, tries out and does not get varsity. After a couple of teammates get caught drinking he takes the position, but he keeps it. He is a commander of the team, and eventually the top scorer for his highschool, beating his brothers and dads previous records. The book ends with a few major events. Wes reached out to SLAM magazine and got them to come to their school to interview the team. The warriors are on their way to states. With them running over every other team leading up to the regional finals they just had to beat Bemidji. A game they lost earlier. A close game the entire time it ends with Tre landing a huge dunk and a free throw for the win. This took them to states. They play Crestview Christian Academy, an undefeated team. Playing as close a game as he could while coming down from a shot, Tre bruised his ankle badly. After a few minutes on the bench he told the coach he was going back in, even with his wobble he was able to get the lead. With barely any time left on the clock Crestview throws a long ball that hits nothing but net and they lose.

Tre is already his own person, as my characters are not immigrants. He lives inside of a reservation and barely ever leaves. From this place he is never defined by stereotypes, but from outside of the reservation he is seen as a bad little drug ridden rez kid. This becomes apparent when they get pulled over out of the reservation and they get searched based on stereotypes. “‘We don't have any drugs on us. You also have no reason to believe that we would have any drugs on us, other than racially profiling us for being from the reservation.’” (Graves 37). It just goes to show that they are completely different people outside of the reservation than inside. People that know them would know that they aren't actually bad kids, they are just like everyone else. 

In my novel "the brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz, there is a Dominican family who has been cursed by a fuku for as long as they can remember, the novel surrounds a boy named Oscar, Oscar is someone who struggles to find community, a sense of identity, and all above love. Oscars lives with his mother and his older sister Lola, their mother Beli develops cancer and it sends Lola in increase grief and a rebellious side. Lola plans to run away and leaves to live with her boyfriend near Jersey Shore, she tells Oscar to come bring her money and hopes he will stay with her, but instead he brings their mother and they bring Lola home. As punishment they sent Lola to live with her grandmother in the Dominican republic. Oscars is in college and is still an outcast, he met a girl and instantly fell in love with her but fell into a dark spiral when she saw him with another man, he attempted suicide by jumping off a bridge but survived. Though physically broken he embarked on an ambitious writing project hoping to become "The Dominican Tolkien". Over the next three years Oscar grew severely depressed. One summer he traveled to Santo Domingo with his family, while there Oscar fell in love with a girl who already had a boyfriend named "the Captian". One day when Oscar was found kissing Ybon (the girl) "The Captian" had henchmen take Oscar to a cane field and beat him, he survived and his family traveled back home, but Oscar could not stop thinking about Ybon so he went back to see her and this time "the Captian" had Oscar executed. His mother died not to much longer after Oscars funeral, Lola broke up with her boyfriend Yunior, she moved to Miami and had a baby with another man. Yunior imagined that her daughter, Iris, might one day put an end to their family's curse. 

Oscar and his family do not struggles with immigration, but they all struggle with being their own person ecpessially when they were all younger. "during her lost years there had been no education of any kind, and that gap had taken a toll on her neural pathways."(Diaz 85) in this quote their mother Beli (when she was younger) was struggling to become her own person and she had felt lost, until she finally was able to grow up.