The Rice Room - A Conflict of Generations

The relationship between the Statesns and Chinese immigrants in atomic number 20 is complex, to verbalize the least. Chinese immigrants helped build oft of the infrastructure and introduced intensive tillage to the Bay Area in the 1800s, but, despite these contributions, continued to be viewed as unwanted laborers by the Americans. By the 1870s unemployment rates were procession in America, and the Chinese immigrants pronto became the scapegoat for American duress. thither was a rise in Anti-Chinese (anti-coolie) movements that swept across California (24). These movements lead to the closure of many an(prenominal) Chinese settlements and prompted Congress to strive the 1882 Chinese Exclusion be and the 1924 Immigration Act. These Congressional decisions scarce perpetuated the history of racism and discredit felt between the Americans and Chinese in California, which would continue salubrious into the 20th century. In his newfangled The Rice Room, Ben Fong-Torres traces his complex cross- heathen heritage as a second generation Chinese American during the mid 1900s; lacerated between the alluring American lifestyle and the traditional cultural heritage his immigrant parents struggled to instill in him.\nLike intimately immigrants, Bens parents came to America in search of the American Dream. Referred to California as the flourishing Mountains , the United States offered an opportunity to hazard more money and can for family back in China. Ben notes that his engender was encouraged by his family to look a greater dowery and then return to lend them  (11). His arrive did as he was told, and came to America via the Philippines. Like most Chinese immigrants in the 1920s, Bens father entered the inelegant illegally. Because there were harsh limits on the number of Chinese immigrants allowed into America, Bens father added Torres to his name to lead immigration officials that he was of Filipino descent. Bens mother also entered the countr y illegally, and both lived in panic of being disc...