Memoir Of A Chinese-American                            

"Fresh Off The Boat”, written by a first generation Chinese-American Eddie Huang is unlike any book I have ever read. This is not a literary work of the highest order, and the writer doesn’t mean it to be. This is an extraordinary story of a very talented, but sometimes troubled young man, trying to find his place in the world. This is a story with which a young reader can relate to in so many different levels. Fast pace, unusual language, humor and his own spin on various aspects of life makes his book an excellent read.

Eddie Huang was born in a Chinese immigrant family, who he loved to call "fresh off the boat." He grew up in Florida. As a kid, he used to go to his parents furniture store every day before school age. He was clearly bored and "Before I knew about guns, I was trying to shoot myself."¹ These early years taught him various aspects of Chinese culture. Close relationship with siblings, connection between members of extended family, respect for the elders, Chinese food etc was being engrained within him in this time. Although his parents were working very hard, he grew up poor."My brothers and I shared three comics, two dinosaurs, and one copy of 'Coming to America' between three of us.”²He clearly loathed his life and culture, "If I died, I wanted to come back as a white man."³

Young Eddie with his parents.

As he grew older, he got accustomed to Chinese way of life. He accepted his own tradition. His high school was troublesome. Sometimes he was fighting with other kids or doing drugs and sometime he is thinking about his future, destiny and religion. In this period he got disillusioned with religion. "There isn`t a god that pulls the string."⁴In this period his life changed a lot after he realized his parents have money. They moved into a posh neighborhood and he went to several private schools. He was always getting into trouble, but always maintained good grades.

Not unlike his teen age, his adulthood also had ups and downs. Sometimes he got into a fight and then leave “the hospital just so I could write the paper"⁵. He got in big trouble because of the fight. He had to choose between jail time and visiting Taiwan. He chose the latter. It was a life altering event for him. We see him romanticizing how different his life would be if his parents didn’t immigrate to USA.”I was happy.  Reconciled . I learned my lesson from America and didn’t want to go back.”⁶ Although he realized within minutes “I was already bugging` out because I was about to miss Redskins` second preseason game.”⁷ I think this feeling resonates with so many immigrants in the USA, who don’t want to leave the homeland, but at the same time miss home while there.

In the last part of the book, we see Eddie finding his true passion, food. He opened “BaoHaus” in New York, a Taiwanese restaurant and becomes an instant success. He tries his unconventional ways, and they pays off. Sometime he posts funny job posting, sometimes he smokes weed in the sidewalk and people seem to love it. In the last line of the book, we see that Eddie was finally able to make his parents proud. His drunken mother called him, “You are in the WORLD JOURNAL!”⁸

This book is full of duality. Eddie is sometimes a very nice young man, full of culture, a loyal friend who studies Shakespeare, watches basketball, studies day and night to pass the exam. He also gets in fight with people, does drugs and has a very foul mouth. Even in the picture in the back of the book, in which poses in front of his own restaurant, he looks more like a "punk" than an entrepreneur. Which one of them is the true Eddie? In this book he tried hard seem like do doesn’t care about a lot of things, I felt this is just an act of rebellion. He led the reader to believe that he doesn’t care about studies, or about his parent`s wishes, or even getting arrested. At the end of the book we get a glimpse of his true self, "I just woke up everyday thinking my life was over"<sup>9</sup>, indicating he had to tick the “convicted felon” box and it truly troubled him. He finishes the book with his mom`s word. He dedicated this book to his two brothers. He even finishes the book with a four page long acknowledgement of people who he cares about and says really nice things about them. All this indicates a very different side of Eddie that he didn’t want to reader to know about.

Huang brothers.

What is an American Dream? To me, it is the freedom to work your own way to become successful. Eddie Huang might be a first generation immigrant from a different culture, but to me, he is the embodiment of the American dream. He had his troubles, sometimes faced racism, parental pressure, even jail, but nothing stopped him from his goal to become successful in doing something that he loves to do, what is more American than that? As a fresh of the boat immigrant myself, I wish I would be able to become successful following my dream, just like Eddie did.

[1] Eddie Huang, Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2013), 11.

[2] Huang, Fresh Off the Boat, 37.

[3] Huang, Fresh Off the Boat, 39.

[4] Huang, Fresh Off the Boat, 116.

[5] Huang, Fresh Off the Boat, 176.

[6] Huang, Fresh Off the Boat, 199.

[7] Huang, Fresh Off the Boat, 199.

[8] Huang, Fresh Off the Boat, 272.

[9] Huang, Fresh Off the Boat, 253.

Changing World With Drugs

                                              Changing World With Drugs

  

     Since the start of the century, American society was going thorough radical changes. It seems like every decade had a crucial event that made a lasting effect on the society. In the 20`s, it was the demise of the red light districts and increase in women rights, 30`s were the decade of great depression, in the 40`s the whole world was swept away with world war, 50`s had huge economic prosperity. Just when it seemed like the society has found its stability, two Harvard professors burst into the scene with their radical ideas of changing the world.

     The book, "Harvard Psychedelic Club" by Don Lattin begins with the story of four important characters, each of whom would play important role in the psychedelic movement. Three of them were academics, regarded very highly in their field, and  Andrew Weill, a Harvard undergraduate. The first chapter of the book is not as exhilarating as the later chapters, but the writer did a great job in laying the foundation for what is about to happen.

     Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary, two of the most vocal proponent of the movement met at Harvard. Richard was a colorful character."His Cambridge apartment was filled with exquisite antiques. He had a Mercedes sedan, a MG sports car, a Triumph motorcycle, and his own Cessna airplane. It was the dawn of the swinging sixties and Alpert was all set for life in the fast lane."¹ Alpert struggled with his sexuality all his life, he was a bisexual and had relationships with both men and women.

     Alpert`s partner in crime, Timothy Leary was no slouch himself. He got recruited to Harvard when he met with Harvard professor David McClelland in Florence, Italy , where he rented  a "penthouse overlooking the red-tilted domes of the picturesque Tuscan City."² Later he became the leader of the psychedelic movement. "A charismatic leader, a man of intelligence, culture and charm who is completely self-assured and apparently absolutely fearless."³ He was not held that highly by the establishment though, president Nixon called him, "the most dangerous man in America."⁴

     Later in the first chapter we meet Andrew Weill, the Harvard undergraduate student who wrote an Exposé on the two professors that eventually brought them down, and Huston smith, the religious studies professor at MIT who was with the movement from the beginning but later drifted out.

     The whole thing started when the Harvard professors had their first trip with magic mushroom in Mexico. As academics of psychology, they saw it`s enormous potential; ranging from connecting with god to changing homosexuals. At one point Leary actually believed he had, “cut the recidivism rate in half” and “found a way to solve the nation’s crime problem.”⁵ They saw how it might effect in the study of religious mysticism, as psilocybin, the ingredient of magic mushrooms creates of the illusion of reaching into a higher consciousness. They wanted to get some noted religious scholars into their psilocybin society. Houston smith was their man. They were somewhat successful in the beginning, as Huston Smith describes the event as, "the most powerful cosmic homecoming I have ever experienced."⁶

                     

Andrew Weill`s Expose about the two professors.

     Everything was going fine until Andrew well decided to write an exposé on the two professors. They were both kicked out of Harvard. They took their experiment to Mexico and later tried three Caribbean countries but authorities kicked them out. So they settled in  a huge mansion in Millbrook, New York, “They were about to turn it into the Disneyland of the psychedelic sixties.”⁷Thousands of hippies came from all over the country in search of happiness and peace, but Alpert began to see that their movement is becoming something else other than the psychological experiment that they began with. He fell out with Leary later to be reunited again.

                                               

     San-Francisco is the place where the hippy movement really took off. Thousands of people flocked to the city with the book, "The Psychedelic Experience", a manual on how to enjoy the LSD trip written by Leary and Alpert in their pocket. Poets, students, singers, writes all got together in search of happiness and unity. The wild 60`s we see from the photos are mostly from San-Francisco. The hippie movement was  drifted away far from it`s initial goal, now it was the medium to change the world.

     The free reign of the psychedelic drugs were about to come to an abrupt end. Possession of psychedelic drugs were banned in California in 1966 and a federal bad  followed in 2 years. In the end of chapter six we see Tim Leary looking a life in prison.

     In plain view, we would assume it was a very unwise idea to experiment with psychedelic drugs to alter personality, but we have to think within a context. That was a very different time, and psychology was changing rapidly. Most of the psychological theories from previous era are not considered potent enough toady and the theories that prevails now were mostly developed in the sixties, notably my Abraham Maslow, Erikson, Bandura etc. There were many ideas about personality floating around, and changing personality with psychedelic drugs was one of them. So we should forgive these two professors for thinking that psychedelics might have the ability to alter personality. Although their experiment failed, the effect they had are still felt today.

Decade of love

   The effect 60`s had in our society is enormous.Even the word "Psychedelic" was created in the 60`s.The hippies were also a product of that era.It has effected in various aspects of life ranging from higher birthrate in the baby boomers to the rise of rock music. The war on drugs, that is still going on today had it`s roots in the 60`s. The 60`s were the decade of love, and it is felt by the higher birthrate in that era. The baby-boomer generation was surely effected by the psychedelic chemicals. This era is mostly signified by the effect it had on the music industry. The whole music scene changed, giving rise to popular musician such as "The Grateful Dead", Janis Joplin etc. It showed a whole generation of young people how to transcend above themselves and have find the deeper meaning of life. Things people see while on psychedelic drugs may be just illusion, but those illusion has the power to change the world.

^Referencs

^{[1] Don Lattin, The Harvard Psychedelic Club (New York: HarperOne, 2011) 5.}

^{[2] Lattin, The Harvard Psychedelic Club 20.}

^{[3] Lattin, The Harvard Psychedelic Club 143.}

^{[4] Lattin, The Harvard Psychedelic Club 61.}

^{[5] Lattin, The Harvard Psychedelic Club 72.}

^{[6]Smith, Huston. Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2000. [7] Lattin, The Harvard Psychedelic Club 104.}

^{[7] Lattin, The Harvard Psychedelic Club 104.}

Legacy of The Flappers

                                 Legacy of The Flappers



     The 1920`s is one of the most influential decades in American history. It is the buffer between the Victorian era and the modern America that we know today. Numerous social changes during this period changed American culture forever. In part one of the novel "Flapper," writer Joshua Jeitz captures the beginning of the transformation through some very influential characters, namely F. Scott Fitzgerald, his wife Zelda Fitzgerald and journalist Lois lane.

   The novel begins with the story of Zelda Sayre, who later becomes Zelda Fitzgerald. She is from Montgomery, Alabama,  America's heartland. She is the resemblance of a free spirit that is unparalleled in the Victorian era. She is nothing like the warm, courteous Victorian girl we read in the books. She lives in the moment. She flees home to join exotic dance parties, drinks all sorts of alcohol, smokes and dates. Her high school yearbook reads,

"Why should life be work, when we all can borrow.

Let's only think of today, and not worry about tomorrow."¹

     F. Scott Fitzgerald, the celebrated author who created so many character throughout his career, becomes a character himself in this novel. In the beginning, he is a young army officer who falls head over heels for Zelda Sayre. Although Zelda is not the sort of girl who settles for one guy, he succeeds and manages to get her heart. After a brief period of romance they get married in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. The writer regards him as the "Flapper King."² 

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald.

     The couple resembles the sort of celebrity couple that  we see today. Everything they did was news. They also did their part in doing extravagant antics to feed the magazines and gossip columns. Nationwide people followed this couple and they showed them how to enjoy life. They used to throw legendary parties. Although Scott was making considerable amount of money, they were having hard times maintaining the lifestyle. The couple was always short of cash.Once Zelda even had to borrow money from her parents to go out, "Zelda borrowed $20 from her mother-incredibly, but typically, she and Scott were dead broke-and husband and wifeballyhooed out for a night on the town."³ They even had to move  to France, "they hoped to profit from France's deep postwar economic slump. Since the franc had plummeted to an all-time low against the dollar, a good meal with wine could be bought for less than 20 cents."⁴

     Another strong female character in the first part of the novel is Lois Long, The New Yorker`s "resident flapper journalist."⁵ She is the embodiment of a strong single woman who earns her own living and depends on no one. She goes out every night and reports it  in her weekly column. She is not the typical "working women in the 1920s toiled at less glamorous and remunerative jobs-nearly a third as domestic servants, the rest as clerical workers, factory workers, store clerks, and fanners."⁶ She's is what every single woman aspired to become.

Lois Long at Vassar College

     These carefree individuals shaped the future of the flappers and ultimately the course of  freedom for women. It wasn't too easy; they got backlash form all sorts of people. To the people who were  worried about the unraveling of the age old Victorian customs, flappers were nothing more than spoiled girls, "introduction into this country of a new and devastating type of girl whose movements, thoughts and actions-to say nothing of deeds-have become matters of international importance."⁷ They also got reactions from the feminists, "1920s-women like Lois Long and Zelda Fitzgerald-struck many veteran feminists as an apolitical creature interested only in romantic and sexual frivolities."⁸ Some religious leaders also condemned these kind of behavior. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920`s was also influenced by the flapper movement..

     With all these social changes, the dating scene was also changing. Young girls were unhappy with their lives. Young people become more materialistic. The traditional courtship was challenged and single women were going out with guys without the watchful eyes of their parents. More and more people were indulging in premarital sexual escapades. Sex was the theme of the era indeed. The younger generation was fascinated by Freud and wanted to satisfy their sexual desires.In fact,"14 percent of women born before 1900 engaged in premarital sex by the age of twenty-five, somewhere between 36 percent and 39 percent of women who came of age in the 1910s and 1920s lost their virginity before marriage."⁹ This is a total paradigm shift which is very similar to today`s society.

Flappers

     Flappers had great effects on mass media. One of the most celebrated authors in American history, F. Scott Fitzgerald was truly shaped by it; "I sometimes wonder whether the flapper made me or I made her."¹⁰ It also changed the landscapes of American print and entertainment media and centered it around New York; "it had just recently displaced Boston as the capital of American publishing and was home to every major literary house from Doubleday, Harper, and Scribner's to Knopf and Viking. By the end of the decade, it would also surface as the hub of  American radio broadcasting."¹¹ The emergence of "The New Yorker", one of the most circulated magazines even today can be attributed to the changing social landscapes caused by the flappers.

     The pioneer women of the 1920`s changed the outlook of American society that eventually lead to a better life for American girls. The foundation they laid almost a century ago is still the framework of today's modern society. The flappers changed the dating scene and sexual expression, and instilled the notion that women are as good as men and deserve same respect at work.

References 

     1) Zeitz, Joshua. Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern. New York: Crown Publishers, 2006. 67.

     2)Zeitz, Flapper, 41.

     3)Zeitz, Flapper, 57. 

     4)Zeitz, Flapper, 96.

     5)Zeitz, Flapper, 89.

     6)Zeitz, Flapper, 92.

     7)Zeitz, Flapper, 47.

     8)Zeitz, Flapper, 55.

     9)Zeitz, Flapper, 21.

     10)Zeitz, Flapper, 48.

     11)Zeitz, Flapper, 84.