Literary Analysis - Article Example

The war with the Koreans symbolized a sense of not belonging or alienation in America. The story is a portentous reminder of the devastations that families went through and male emigration during the Vietnam War. The story provides different versions of the Chinese-American experiences and different contradictions that shaped these experiences. The character ‘Brother’ reveals the contradictions that shaped Chinese-American experiences that were felt during the historical period in which the story is set.

The younger of the author highly opposed the Vietnam War. The brother was forced to make a decision between running away to Canada and going to the Vietnam War which made him enlist himself in the navy in order to fight in that war even though he joined the navy with no intention of killing anyone. Even though he was born in America and fought for America, the brother remained an object of suspicion. The author points out how many Chinese men were going into America in order to avoid being forced to serve in the Chinese military.

During the basic training, he was asked by the company commander on where he came from. He was also found to speak pretty good English which makes him a communications specialist. This entails something analogous to a certification or the confirmation of his Americanness. In this chapter, Kingston imagined of how her brother was able to resolve the contradictions that were faced by the Chinese Americans-this is a sense of a fragmented belonging and identity. He was able to manage both Chinese and American hence bringing in an integrated identity (Ludwig and lexoae-Zagni 152).

Her brother moved from one experience to the other and in he returned back to America in the end. The brother had managed both Chinese and Americans but ended up returning to America, which brings in a contradiction of the Chinese-American experience. A similar case is found in “Birds of paradise lost” by Andrew Lam. The story is